What can and cannot be removed
This works by spectral noise reduction. It builds a profile of the steady background sound in the recording, then subtracts that profile from every moment of the audio. The consequence is important: it is very effective against noise that is constant and unchanging, and close to useless against noise that is not.
- Removes well — tape hiss, mains hum, computer fans, air conditioning, distant traffic, the general room tone of a quiet office.
- Removes poorly or not at all — a door slamming, a dog barking, someone else talking, a chair scraping, wind gusts. These are events rather than a constant floor, so there is no stable profile to subtract.
For one-off noises, cutting them out with the MP3 Cutter is the realistic fix. Turn on Remove Selection, highlight the cough or the bang, and the audio either side is joined back together.
How much reduction to use
The reduction control runs from 0 to 100%. More is not better. Noise reduction works by removing spectral content, and voices share spectrum with the noise, so aggressive settings take part of the voice with the hiss. That is what produces the underwater, robotic quality familiar from over-processed recordings.
Start around 40 to 60%. That is usually enough to push background noise below the point where you notice it while leaving the voice intact. Push higher only if the noise is genuinely loud, and listen to consonants — s and t sounds degrade first and are the earliest warning that you have gone too far.
A recording with audible noise and an intact voice is better than a silent-background recording with a damaged voice. Listeners tolerate background hiss far more readily than processing artefacts.
Where it fits in a clean-up
Order matters. Reduce noise before compressing, not after: the Audio Compressor raises quiet passages, and any noise still present gets raised along with them, so compressing first makes the noise harder to remove. A sensible sequence is trim the dead air, reduce noise, compress to even out the levels, then adjust overall volume last. Processing happens on the server at export and the uploaded file is deleted immediately afterwards.