How to use it
- Choose an audio file.
- Pick All long pauses or Only start and end.
- Set the threshold, the shortest pause to cut and the quiet to keep. The count and the time removed update at once.
- Press Remove silence, listen and download.
How it works
The audio is scanned in 10-millisecond windows. A window is silent when its loudest sample in any channel is below the threshold (−40 dB is an amplitude of 0.01 of full scale). Runs of silent windows at least as long as the shortest pause are found; from each, the padding is left at both sound sides and the rest is cut. A silence at the very start or end keeps padding only on the side of the sound.
Worked example
A 60-second talk with pauses of 2 s, 1.2 s and 0.3 s, at the defaults (−40 dB, 0.5 s, 0.1 s): the 0.3 s pause is too short to cut. The others lose 2 − 0.2 = 1.8 s and 1.2 − 0.2 = 1.0 s, so 2.8 s is removed and the length goes from 1:00.0 to 0:57.2. Times are found to the nearest 10 ms window.
Tips
- Use Only start and end to tidy a recording without touching its rhythm.
- Music with quiet passages can lose parts you want; check the result before replacing the original.
- After cutting, the LUFS loudness meter can bring the level to a standard target.