[00:00:00] There's an old saying in audio, shit in, shit out. What's up everybody and welcome back to the channel. In this video my aim is to show you how to use Adobe Speech Enhancement, how to use Descript Studio Sound and let you decide for yourself which one sounds better. Podcasters, YouTubers and other content creators use these tools to help improve their audio. You can beef up your sound, you can reduce background noise, you can level things out and you can ultimately make the audio that you record sound a lot better.

[00:00:28] Yes, you still want to record good audio off the bat, need a good microphone, need a good recording environment because you want your sound to sound as good as it can on the way in. So by the end of this, you'll have an idea of how to use each tool and you can decide for yourself which one sounds better on the piece of audio that I'm going to put into them. Let's get into it. So the piece of audio we're going to use for this is actually from a podcast episode that I recorded last week and we're going to run this through Descript Studio Sound on several settings so that you can hear

[00:00:58] what Descript Studio Sound sounds like with low intensity and with like full AI intensity. So I'm going to play it right here. This is like the raw audio. It's decent audio. It was recorded on a lav in a somewhat quiet room, but let's listen to it raw and then we're going to add the effect and see how it improves it.

[00:01:18] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in how long do Maltese dogs live, Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators' articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:01:43] Okay, so that was without any Studio Sound. Let's play that same section again with Studio Sound set at 25%. And to access Studio Sound, you're going to go to Underlord, Studio Sound, scroll down here. And this is how you toggle it on and off. And this little doodad here is how you control the intensity. I'm going to put it at 25%.

[00:02:06] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in how long do Maltese dogs live, Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators' articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:02:31] Okay, so right away I noticed it removed some of the background reverb and it kind of just beefed up some of the low end. Let's try it at 50%.

[00:02:42] And I will say depending on the quality of the audio you have going in, you probably are never really going to have to go too much above 50%. You'll see as we continue to crank this up how it makes the voice kind of sound robotic and gives it this weird modulation like robotic feature, which you don't want.

[00:03:01] So with any tool you're using with audio, you probably crank it to 100%, you're going to get other types of problems within your sound. The key is one, to have great audio going in and two, when you're doing processing, improve the audio without overdoing it.

[00:03:19] Just got to give a shout out to Riverside. They sponsor this podcast. Riverside's my favorite place to record high fidelity audio and 4K video. They've got a bunch of features to help creators such as AI transcription, AI show notes. Those are both great for podcasters.

[00:03:35] And if you're a YouTuber or someone that likes to create vertical short form content for social media, check out their feature called Magic Clips. You upload your video into Riverside and their AI will turn that video into vertical short form content for social media. All you have to do is click a few buttons, type in some keywords and their AI will search those keywords in your transcript and create those vertical videos for you.

[00:04:00] It's really done with just a click of a couple buttons. And that's why I love Riverside and I'm stoked to have them as a sponsor. And if you're interested in getting started with Riverside, head on over to Riverside.fm and enter promo code CLIPPED, the name of this show, C-L-I-P-P-E-D, at checkout for 20% off. So here it is at 50%.

[00:04:20] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in how long do Maltese dogs live, Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators' articles and blogs and information.

[00:04:42] Okay, so already I probably wouldn't crank it higher than this. Sounds good. There's a little modulation, but it sounds super focused. The lav actually sounds more like a dynamic microphone like this. It's up front. It's in your face. It's full. It's rich. Let's crank it up to 75. We'll see how it sounds. And if you're not wearing headphones, you're probably not gonna be able to hear this. So stop now. Grab your headphones.

[00:05:04] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in how long do Maltese dogs live, Google's gonna pull in all that information from different creators' articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:05:28] Okay, so if you didn't tell already, I have a Maltese dog. He is 15 in a month. He's gonna be 15. Still in good health. So that was just an example I did. Don't worry about the content. I just wanted to share that I have a Maltese. 75% Descript Studio sound. So it doesn't sound as bad as I thought it would. Sometimes, again, when you crank it up really high, you get weird artifacts.

[00:05:53] Sounded pretty good. Not too much different from the 50% setting. I probably wouldn't go higher than this, but let's see what it's like at 100 just for shits. The point is here is you could see what it's doing to the audio, right? It's reducing the room reflections. It's beefing things up. It's just making it sound more centered and focused as if you're in like a broadcast environment.

[00:06:22] Here we go. 100%. I've never used this at 100% for testing purposes. Yes, I've never like put a piece of content out with it at 100. And again, this audio is pretty good going in. If you have really crappy audio and you put it to 100, it really kind of messes it up. Since this is already pretty good, we'll see.

[00:06:42] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in, how long do Maltese dogs live? Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators' articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:07:06] I'm in a garage. I'm in a studio, but I'm in my garage and there's a little bit of live sound, meaning that the room is alive. It shouldn't sound so dead, which this does. It basically sucked all the sound of the room out of it.

[00:07:22] And it's just like putting this sound directly in front of your face, which to some extent you want. But when it sounds like not real like this, in my opinion, you don't want that. Hopefully you could tell the difference. Hopefully you could hear 25, 50, 75, 100 and see what it did to the audio.

[00:07:42] In my opinion, I probably would have not put it above 50 to release this piece of content. Maybe 35, 40 in that range because the audio is decent going in. But if you got a podcast interview with a guest who doesn't know what the hell they're doing and their audio is poor, you might have to go higher. But again, the higher you go, you're risking those artificial robotic kind of modulation elements getting embedded into the audio.

[00:08:12] So that's Descript in a nutshell. Very easy to use. Studio sound. I do use it. I have released content with it at more minimal settings. I don't always use it for everything. I try to get the best audio going in.

[00:08:26] But in the event that I need to beef things up a little bit, I'll throw it on there. And it's great for content creators, YouTubers, podcasters. And I think with any audio tool in your toolbox, you got to know when to use it and why you're using it. You don't do it just to do it. You got to have a why and have an idea of what you're looking to achieve. All right. Let's hop on over to Adobe and check out their speech enhancement tool.

[00:08:53] All right. So here's what the Adobe speech enhancement interface looks like. You just go to the URL podcast.adobe.com slash enhance. This is all done through your web browser. You don't need to download anything. And this is what it looks like. And so I have the same audio file loaded up. You just choose files. You can load it in right here. And then there's a couple settings. You can see speech enhancement and background.

[00:09:19] I'm going to leave background where it is. And I'm going to put the enhancement at 25%. And we'll listen to that same audio file. Oh, and before we get into it real quick, there's a free version of this and a paid. So I'm on the paid plan. And within the paid plan, you get access to these sliders where you can adjust the AI. On the free plan, you don't. You just upload it and click the button.

[00:09:42] And then the AI, I guess, determines how much processing to put on its own. But you don't get individual control over it. It just kind of does a processing thing and then spits it back out. Okay. So this is at 25%. Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query.

[00:10:07] So if you type in, how long do Maltese dogs live? Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators, articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:10:20] Okay. So first thing I noticed, it seemed to like really push it forward. Like, I don't know if it got louder. It didn't sound like it got a whole lot better. It sounded more like open-ended or like kind of breathy or like I was far away from the mic or something.

[00:10:38] Okay. Let's crank this up to 50%. And let's see here. Just the loudness of the isolated background. Let's put that up a little bit. Okay. 50%. We're putting the background up as well.

[00:10:58] So this adjust the loudness of the background noise, which I think it sounded so weird because I had it lower. Let's try this.

[00:11:09] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in, how long do Maltese dogs live? Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators, articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:11:33] Okay. Got it. So I think I had to add a little bit more background and it sounded a little bit more normal. I think it had taken so much of that live sound like we were talking about earlier, the room tone away that it kind of sounded strange. Again, if there's a ton of reverb, you want to reduce a lot of that background noise. But if it's already like a decent recording on the way in, if you suck too much life out of it, it's going to sound too fake.

[00:11:59] Okay. So I'm going to go up to 75%. And this is all just so you can hear it. You make your own judgments of what you like and what you don't like, what you think sounds better.

[00:12:09] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in, how long do Maltese dogs live? Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators, articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:12:33] I think this put more high end, more like treble or like high mids into the audio than Descript Studio Sound did. It doesn't seem to add more of the low end frequencies that Studio Sound does. I will say at the higher processing at 75, I think it sounds not as processed as Descript's setting at 75.

[00:12:57] And the background, you may have seen me sliding it. I was kind of going in between 25 and 40%. Let's try it. And I'll fully play around with this one. Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everything. Like that, 100% and at 34 in the background. I think that sounds rad.

[00:13:19] Everybody's content and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in, how long do Maltese dogs live? Google's going to pull in all that information from different creators' articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:13:37] Okay, I think 100% actually on Adobe Speech in Hand sounds pretty good. On Descript, I think 100% the technology isn't there. Adobe's a bigger company, been in the game longer. I think it actually doesn't sound bad at 100% and with the background between 30% and 40%.

[00:14:08] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content, and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in, how long do Maltese dogs live? Google's going to... Okay, let's go to here. ...to pull in all that information from different creators' articles and blogs and information and come up with their own answer via AI.

[00:14:37] Google is searching the web and pulling everybody's content in, aka stealing everybody's content, and basically writing an AI summary to your search query. So if you type in, how long do Maltese dogs live? Google's going to pull in all that information. It's almost like a balancing game where the higher you crank the speech, the more background you need to crank to.

[00:15:02] On a lower setting, I felt like I needed to bring down the background. But what do you think? What do you think of Adobe Speech Enhanced versus Descript Studio Sound? Let's click on this. I can just show you a couple things. Okay, so yeah, February 2025, they did an update. Let's see. V2 delivers clearer, more natural-sounding dialogue. I feel like this was a little bit clearer than Descript.

[00:15:32] Whether you're capturing an interview in a noisy cafe or dealing with poor acoustics, V2 transforms your audio into studio-quality sound. And just some other stuff here. This isn't as full of a production suite as Descript is. In Descript, you can do a bunch of stuff with your audio, with your video. This is more of a simpler tool, but I think I'd like it more, at least for now. There's a couple things you could check out here. I'm not going to get into this.

[00:16:01] The main purpose of this video was to give you an idea of what each of the tools sound like, how each of the tools work, and for you to decide which one you like. So hit me up in the comments. Do you have any experience using Adobe Speech Enhancement or Studio Sound? What do you like about them? What do you not like about them? Let's get the conversation going. And I hope you enjoyed this video, guys. Wanted to shed some light on how you can improve your audio with AI.

[00:16:29] And if you liked what you're hearing, what you're looking at, would love for you to check out the channel and hit that subscribe button. I'm here trying to help you guys to create a place where you can learn more about audio and video and resources and tips to help you as a content creator. I want you to crush those content goals. I want you to start putting out better content with more efficient workflows. And I want to help you along your way. My name is Eric. And until next time, guys, keep listening. Keep engaging. Keep creating.

[00:16:59] I'm out.