Audio Silence Remover: Detect and Cut Silent Parts
Find the silent gaps in a recording and remove or shorten them. The waveform highlights the parts that will be cut, so you can tune the threshold and minimum silence length and see how much shorter the audio gets before and after. Handy for tidying up meetings, lectures, voice-overs and podcasts. Everything runs in your browser, so your file is never uploaded. To change the tempo, use the Audio Speed & Pitch Changer; to join several files, try the Audio Merger.
🔒 Runs in your browser · Your data is never sent to a server
You can also drag and drop a file here
Waveform and silence
Blue: loudness (logarithmic dB scale) / red band: silence to be cut / orange line: threshold
-100 to 0. Anything at or below this level counts as silence. Lower is stricter (-60); higher treats more as silence (-30).
0.05 to 60. Only silences at least this long are affected. Use a longer value to keep short breaths.
0 to 5. Time kept on each side of the sound. With 0, the audio is cut right at the start and end of the sound.
0 to 10. Long silences are shortened to this length. Only used with "Shorten silence (to a set length)".
Processing. Long recordings may take a moment…
Result
How to use
- Choose an audio file (drag and drop also works).
- Watching the waveform, adjust "Threshold (dB)" and "Minimum silence length (seconds)" until the red bands cover the silences you want to remove.
- Pick "How to handle silence" and set "Padding to keep (seconds)" or the shortened length. The lengths before and after are shown.
- Press "Remove silence", listen to the result, and save the WAV with "Download".
Notes
- Silence is judged per 10 ms: a slice counts as silent when its peak level is at or below the threshold. Recordings with background music or room noise need a threshold a little above the noise level, or nothing will be detected.
- The waveform uses a logarithmic dB scale so quiet sounds stay visible. The heights are therefore not proportional to the real amplitude.
- "Cut silence (keep only padding)" keeps padding only on the side next to sound; silence at the very start or end of the file is removed up to the padding. With padding set to 0 the cuts land right at the edge of the sound, which can feel abrupt.
- A 2 ms fade is applied at each cut to avoid clicks, but a steady background sound can still make the joins noticeable.
- The output is 16-bit PCM WAV, so it is larger than the original. To compress it to MP3 or similar, run the saved WAV through the converter tool.
- Any format your browser can decode works. The limits are 10 minutes of audio and a 200 MB file.
- All processing happens in your browser; the file you choose is never sent to a server.
Glossary
dB (decibel)
A logarithmic unit for loudness. In digital audio the maximum level is 0 dB, and quieter sounds are negative values such as -20 dB or -40 dB.
Threshold
The level that separates sound from silence. Stretches that stay at or below it are treated as silent.
Padding (margin)
A short amount of silence deliberately kept before and after the sound when removing silence. It stops word beginnings and endings from being clipped and keeps the joins natural.
WAV
A file format that stores audio uncompressed. There is no quality loss, but the files are large.
FAQ
What threshold in dB should I use?
For a voice recorded in a quiet room, around -40 dB is a good start. If no silence is found, raise it (for example -30 dB); if the ends of words are getting clipped, lower it (for example -50 dB). The orange line and red bands on the waveform show the effect as you adjust.
How do I stop the starts and ends of words from being clipped?
Set "Padding to keep (seconds)" to about 0.1 to 0.3 so a little silence stays before and after the sound. A longer "Minimum silence length (seconds)" also leaves short gaps such as breaths untouched.
What is the difference between cutting and shortening?
"Cut silence (keep only padding)" removes silence except for the padding. "Shorten silence (to a set length)" shrinks long silences to a length you choose (for example 0.3 seconds), so pauses never disappear completely. Use it when you only want to tighten the pacing.
Does it work on audio with background music?
If music or room noise is always playing, the level never drops below the threshold and no silence is detected. You can raise the threshold above that noise, but quiet speech may then count as silence too. The tool works best on voice-only recordings.
Is WAV the only output? Can I keep the original format?
The output is always 16-bit PCM WAV, so an MP3 input becomes a larger WAV file. To get MP3 or similar, open the saved WAV in the video and audio converter tool.
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