Shorten silences in a recording

How silence is detected

• Loudness (RMS) is measured every 10 ms. Anything quieter than the silence level counts as silence; exactly the same level counts as sound.
• For stereo, sound in either channel counts as sound. If someone speaks on one side only, that part is not cut.
• Only silences at least as long as the shortest silence to cut are shortened. Shorter pauses stay as they are.
• Long silences are shortened to the pause to keep. Half of it stays at each end and the middle is cut.
• Only loudness is used. The tool does not judge what is said or remove mistakes, and it does not remove noise or separate voices. If quiet speech or breathing is being cut, move the silence level to the left.

Checking before you save

• The silences to cut are shown as stripes on the waveform and in a list. Untick “Cut” to keep a silence.
• “Hear the join” plays 1.5 seconds before and after the cut, joined as they will be.
• You can play the created WAV on the page before saving it.

Joins and saving

• At each cut, the sound fades out and back in over 5 ms (linear) to avoid clicks. With a pause to keep of 10 ms or more, the fades stay inside the kept silence.
• The file is saved as WAV (linear PCM, 16-bit) with the same sample rate and channels as the original. If the original sample rate cannot be read, the audio is converted to 48,000 Hz. Your original file is not changed.

Supported audio and limits

• Only audio this browser can actually decode is used. Supported formats vary by browser; the file extension is not used to decide.
• Files up to 250 MB, and up to 15 minutes of 48 kHz stereo (30 minutes mono), because the decoded audio is held in memory.
• The list shows up to 300 silences. Any beyond that are cut too.