Overview

Audacity is free, powerful, and does everything you need for podcast editing. This guide gives you the exact workflow — from raw recording to finished MP3 — including the settings that actually matter and the order in which to apply them.

What You Need

Audacity 3.x (free at audacityteam.org)
Your raw podcast recording (WAV or MP3)
FFmpeg library installed in Audacity (for MP3 export)

Steps

1

Import your recording

Open Audacity → File → Import → Audio. Your waveform appears as a horizontal track. Use Ctrl+Scroll (or pinch on trackpad) to zoom in on the timeline. You need to see individual words and breaths clearly — zoom in until the waveform fills most of the screen.

2

Cut the bad takes and long pauses

Select a region with your mouse, then press Delete to remove it. For false starts, select from just before the mistake to just before the clean take. For long pauses (over 1.5 seconds), select most of the silence and delete it — leave 0.3s of room tone. Avoid cutting too aggressively; the conversation needs to breathe.

3

Apply noise reduction

Select a 1–2 second region of pure room noise (before you started speaking). Go to Effect → Noise Reduction → Get Noise Profile. Then select all (Ctrl+A) → Effect → Noise Reduction → set Noise Reduction: 12, Sensitivity: 6, Frequency Smoothing: 3 → OK. Listen back and check it doesn't sound phasey or robotic — reduce the dB value if needed.

4

Add compression

Select all → Effect → Compressor. Use: Threshold −18dB, Noise Floor −40dB, Ratio 3:1, Attack 0.20s, Release 1.0s. Tick Make-up gain for 0dB after compressing. Compression brings loud moments down so quiet moments sound relatively louder — the result is a voice that sits consistently in the listener's ears.

5

Normalise loudness to LUFS

Select all → Effect → Loudness Normalization. Set: Normalize Stereo/Mono to −16 LUFS. This is a single clean gain pass applied last — after all your processing is locked in. It ensures your episode meets podcast platform standards.

6

Export as MP3

Go to File → Export → Export as MP3. Set: Bit Rate Mode = Constant, Quality = 128 kbps for mono voice, 192 kbps for stereo with music. Add metadata tags (artist, title, album art). Save and you're done. Upload the MP3 to your podcast host.

Pro Tips

Always save the Audacity project file (.aup3) before exporting — if you need to re-export later, you won't have to redo your edits.
Use keyboard shortcut Z in Audacity to snap selections to zero-crossings, which eliminates click artefacts when cutting.
Record in WAV, edit in WAV, export to MP3 only at the final step — re-encoding an MP3 compounds quality loss.

How to Edit Podcast Audio in Audacity