The new studio sound upgrade from last month is so much WORSE than the original feature used to be. With the original version, I could literally just record voiceovers in my office, click the button, and they were broadcast ready. In your effort to increase the sensitivity, so that laughter in podcasts would come through (which is I think the new ability you touted) the studio sound effect now lets all sorts of breath and mouth noises and other artifact through. Yes, it does still take away that empty-room echo and make it sound like it's in a studio, but the resulting audio track is still unusable garbage. I have to export it into audacity and run it through a series of noise gates, and de-esser's, and de-clickers, and spend hours removing noises by hand just to make it usable. Even then, it doesn't sound half as good as your original amazing studio sound filter did with one click. I understand that I am using descript more for narration and less for podcasts, so I am probably more sensitive to the change. Perhaps you could put the old studio sound back as a second option, for instance have one studio sound intended for podcasts, that allows that breathing and laughter to come through during the conversation, and then the original studio sound for us narrators, who are sitting right up on top of the mic, trying to get a good, rich, clean, breathless tone, free from gasping or spit in our mouth.

Future Improvement?

Hi Descript. We love you guys. The DreamSpeak Podcast doesn't know how we could do it without you. That said, part of our production pipeline has been to use Adobe Enhance, and then you came out with Studio Sound, and we were pumped. But the results leave something to be desired. For now, we still have to export from Descript because Adobe Enhance is better meeting our needs. An upgrade to the Studio Sound algorithm would be a big help. Keep up the good work - we're using SquadCast now, too!

Studio sound chops off certain words making them unintelligble. I have noticed this issue when editing podcast.

Studio sound is amazing feature otherwise but this choppyness makes it unusable for podcasts.

Over the past several months I've noticed a decline in Studio Sound's quality. So much so that it's largely unusable. I've had to completely switch to Adobe Podcast Enhance because its significantly better

I find that studio sound can make big ducking swings like a boat in the waves. It’s not great for the sound quality so I typically just put it on 40%. I'd love to get that taken care of.

Sometimes, it leaves really high-highs in the volume, which makes the entire episode volume get turned waaaay down. So I need to go in and catch and edit each one down individually. And if I try to fix it with the limiter, it just cuts out the sound completely.

Also- it doesn’t take care of my breathing sounds. Like a nose-breath at beginning or end of a sentence. I have to go in and clip them each and turn them into background noise to get a clean effect without the sound of my voice also dipping.

I am not an expert sound editor but just an expert doing my own podcasts! Which is why I really like the simplicity of a lot of things here on Descript. I'd love Studio sound to be a little more sensitive... but if we turned it into another compressor / EQ/ limiter thing... I won't be able to figure it out. :(