Enhance voice: settings and best results

01Step 1: Add your recordings

Click Tools in the sidebar, open the Audio tab and click Enhance Voice in the Edit section. It also appears on the Video tab, under Also works with video. You can also type "remove background noise" in the search box at the top.

Enhance Voice opens as a Studio. Click Drop a recording to pick files, or drag audio or video files onto the window. Each file gets a tile in the strip at the bottom: audio files show a small waveform, and videos show a frame. Click a tile to bring that file onto the stage. Use the + tile to add more files, point at a tile and click its × to take it out, or click Clear all to start again.

The top bar shows a rough time for the run, such as "≈ 18 min", next to the Enhance 3 files button, which counts your files. Enhance works at about five times the speed of playback, so an hour of recording takes around 12 minutes. On a narrow window the estimate is hidden.

02Step 2: Listen before you run

The stage shows the file’s name, its format and its length. Under it is the deck: two lanes on one timeline, Original on top and Enhanced under it. Each lane shows the whole file, and you can play any part of it, from start to end. A video also shows its picture above the deck, in time with the sound.

Hangar starts enhancing as soon as the file is on the stage, from where you are listening, and works through the rest of the file in the background. A thin bar under the Enhanced label shows how much is ready, such as "4:30 of 48:12". Where a part is not ready yet, the Enhanced lane says "Not enhanced yet. The original plays here." and the original plays there instead.

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1. 1Your files
2. 2Original lane
3. 3Enhanced lane
4. 4How much is ready
5. 5Play
6. 6Settings
7. 7Run

• Press Space, or click the play button, to play or pause.
• Press E, or click a lane’s name, to switch between Original and Enhanced. The switch is instant and keeps your place. Both play at the same loudness, so you hear only what the cleanup changes. The Original lane says how far it was turned to match, such as "turned up +13.4 dB to match".
• Click anywhere on the deck to jump there, or drag to scrub. Press ← and →, or the arrow buttons, to skip 5 seconds. The time shows where you are and the file’s length, such as "12:31.4 / 48:12.0".
• Press L to loop 10 seconds from where you are, or to bring back the loop box you made before. Hold Shift and drag on the deck to loop a part you choose. The loop shows as a box on the deck: drag the box to move it, or drag its left or right edge to make it shorter or longer. Press L again to stop looping.
• Press N to jump to the next noisy part. Small diamonds on the timeline mark the stretches with the most background noise, where the difference is easiest to hear.
• Set how loud you listen with the volume fader, or click the speaker to mute. This only changes what you hear, never the file, and Hangar remembers it.
• On a long file, use Zoom to see a few seconds up close, or click Fit to see the whole file again. You can also hold ⌘ (Ctrl on Windows) and scroll on the deck.
• Press [ and ], or the outer arrow buttons, to go to the previous or next file.

On a wide window, a line beside the file strip lists these keys, so you don’t need to remember them.

Change a setting while it plays, and Hangar starts again on the new settings from the same place, so you can compare two settings by ear. Playback can pause for a moment with "Loading…" while it gets that part ready. Changing only Loudness is quick, because the cleaned voice is kept and only turned up or down. Going back to a Background or Even out setting you already heard picks up what was ready. Hangar deletes these preview files when the run is done.

If a recording has very little noise to remove, a line under the play controls says: "This recording is already clean. Enhance will mostly set its loudness."

A video shows its picture above the deck, in time with what you hear. The picture has no sound of its own: you hear the lane you picked.

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1. 1The video’s picture
2. 2The video’s tile

03Step 3: Adjust the settings

The panel on the right holds one set of settings for every file in the Studio. The line at the bottom of the panel says so: "Applies to all 3 files". Each setting has a default, so you can also click Enhance straight away.

• Background decides what happens to everything that is not the voice. At its left end it reads Removed: "Only the voice. Room, street and hum are removed." The pauses between words become quiet. Move the fader to the right to keep some of the room under the voice, from -29 to -12 dB under it. The line under the fader then says how far, for example "The room stays, 24 dB under the voice." dB (decibels) is a step of volume: the bigger the number under the voice, the quieter the room.
• Even out voices brings loud and quiet phrases closer together, so a soft guest and a loud host, or a speaker who turns away from the microphone, are easier to follow. Choose Off, Gentle, Normal or Strong.
• Loudness sets how loud each finished file sounds, in LUFS. LUFS is a unit for how loud a whole recording sounds; the numbers are negative, and closer to zero is louder. Choose Podcast (-16 LUFS, the podcast standard), YouTube (-14 LUFS, for YouTube and social), Broadcast (-23 LUFS, the EBU R128 level for radio and TV), Keep (the recording’s own loudness) or Custom. With Custom, click − and + beside the number to pick your own target, from -30 to -10 LUFS. For example, -19 LUFS suits a mono podcast for Apple Podcasts. Podcast is chosen until you pick another. For a video for YouTube or social, choose YouTube. Hangar also keeps the loudest moments just under the maximum, so they do not distort.
• Format picks the kind of file you get for audio: Same as source, MP3, M4A, WAV or FLAC. When every file is a video, the panel has no Format, because a video keeps its own format. See What format do the new files use?

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1. 1Background
2. 2Even out voices
3. 3Custom loudness
4. 4Format

04Step 4: Run, then check the result

Click Enhance 3 files (the button counts your files). While it works, the button shows how far it got, such as "Enhancing 2 of 3 · 47%", and the settings are locked so they can’t change halfway through. The run also appears in Runs.

The new files go to your workspace’s output folder, in an enhance folder with a subfolder for today’s date, such as 11-02. Each one keeps its name with -enhanced added, such as interview-ep12-enhanced.wav. To save them somewhere else, change the workspace’s default output folder first: press ⌘B (Ctrl+B on Windows) and open Default output. See Where your files are saved.

When the run ends, the top bar shows Start over and Enhance more, and the stage switches to the finished file, such as studio-notes-ep14-enhanced.m4a. The same deck plays it, with the same keys: play, jump, skip, loop and switch between Enhanced and Original as before. The original plays at the same loudness as the enhanced file, so a quiet recording is turned up to compare.

To hear the difference fast, click Before → after above the deck. It plays the loop box again and again, the original first, then the enhanced sound. With no loop box, it plays 6 seconds of the noisiest part of the file. Drag the box to hear another part. The button says which one you hear, such as "Now: before". Click it again to stop.

The settings panel now shows the result of the file on the stage: the new file’s name, its format and size, such as "M4A · 47.1 MB", and Show file, which opens its folder. Under What changed, each row has a small gauge, with a ring for before and a dot for after. The panel says "Measuring…" for a moment while it reads the new file.

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1. 1What changed
2. 2Show file
3. 3Before → after
4. 4Start over

• Background: the level of the sound in the pauses, for example "27 dB quieter, −41 → −68 dB".
• Voices: how far apart the loudest and quietest phrases are, for example "9.1 → 1.5 dB apart".
• Loudness: how loud the whole file sounds, in LUFS, for example "−27.4 → −16 LUFS". The small tick is the loudness you chose.
• Peak: the loudest moment, in dB. The tick is the −1 dB limit.

A row shows only when its number changed enough to hear: 3 dB for Background, 1 dB for Voices, half a LUFS for Loudness. When none did, the panel says "Nothing changed enough to hear." Background needs a few seconds of pauses to measure, and Voices needs at least three phrases. Click another tile to see that file. A file that failed says "Couldn’t enhance this file." with the reason. A file Hangar left alone says "Nothing to change in this file.", and one the run stopped before says "The run was cancelled before this file."

Click Enhance more to go back to the settings with the same files, for example to try another Background level. The next run starts again from your original recordings. Click Start over to clear the files and begin with new ones.