Welcome to CleanCutAudio

✦Welcome

What you can do with this program, in a nutshell.

CleanCutAudio is a program for fixing up the audio files on your computer: a recording of your voice, a podcast, a song, an old track that needs cleaning up. You don't need to be technical: a few steps are all it takes. Basically, it helps you do three things.

Follow this guide from start to finish: by the time you reach “the end”, you will have taken a track and made it ready to publish.

◱The screen at a glance

Where to find the things you need.

The three areas you'll use most:

• On the left — the list of folders on your computer, to find and open your files.
• In the middle — the picture of the sound: here you see the track and choose where to cut.
• At the bottom — the Play (green) and Stop (red) buttons for listening.

The two coloured “clocks” at the bottom right are the level meters: they move with the music and tell you how loud the sound is in your left and right ear.

1Open a track

Get your file into the program.

The easiest way: drag an MP3 or WAV file from your computer and drop it onto the picture in the middle. Or:

1. In the list on the left, open the folder where you keep the track.
2. Double-click the file: its picture will appear in the middle.

2Listen

Press Play and hear where to make changes.

Press the space bar (or the green Play button) to listen; press it again to stop. The light-blue line moving across the picture shows the spot you're listening to: you can drag it anywhere to jump to another moment.

3Cut the parts

Keep only what you need.

There are two ways, from the simplest to the most complete.

a) Keep just one piece

At the sides of the picture there are two handles (the edges of the selection): drag them to frame the part you want to keep. Then, from the menu, choose Edit ▸ Trim to Selection: everything else is removed and only the part you chose is left.

b) Split into several pieces (regions)

If a file contains several tracks or several parts, you can split it by adding cut marks: move the light-blue line to where you want to split and press the + key. Each mark creates a new region (a piece of its own). Press the − key to remove a mark.

4Improve the sound

Clean up and add presence, using ready-made “recipes”.

Press the DSP button (top right) or the F9 key: the effects window opens. It looks full of knobs, but you don't need to touch them: each effect has a drop-down menu with ready-made recipes (the “presets”). Pick the right one and you're done.

For speech / podcasts, this combination works almost every time:

Turn on the effects you need (the switch on the left of the row), choose the recipe and listen: if you like it, keep it; if not, try another recipe or turn the effect off. Nothing is final until you save.

5Get the right volume

Bring the track to the “standard” volume used by the platforms.

YouTube, Spotify and podcasts have a reference volume: if your track is too quiet or too loud, it will sound “different” from the others. The program fixes it for you. Press Normalize LUFS (top right).

1. In the Preset menu, choose the target: StreamingStandard for YouTube/Spotify, AppleMusic for podcasts.
2. Press Analyze LUFS: the program measures how loud the track is.
3. Press Apply Normalization: the volume is brought to the right level, without distortion.

6Save

Create the final file, ready to use.

When you're happy, save the result to a new file: menu File ▸ Save As…. Choose where to save it and give it a name. The final file will contain all your changes (cuts, effects, volume).

1. Open File ▸ Save As…
2. Choose the folder and type the file name.
3. Confirm: a progress bar shows you the saving.

★Handy tricks

The few keys that make life easier.

?Easy words

The “technical” words you'll come across, explained in one line.

Want to go deeper (all the parameters, the analysis tools, advanced export)? There's the CleanCutAudio full manual, with the same screenshots and the technical details.