If you are looking for a noise cancelling app, start by asking which sound you want gone: the noise your caller hears, the hiss on a recording, or the room in your own ears. The two apps in this guide are built for the first two. The noise cancelling people know from earbuds is built into the headphones themselves.
The explanation below draws on Krisp, Audacity’s Noise Reduction page, Wikipedia’s article on noise-cancelling headphones and a Reddit thread from someone who wanted an app to do the job. EARSOLE has not tested any of these apps.
Key takeaways
- Krisp says its noise cancellation for meetings removes noise, echo and cross-talk.
- Audacity says its Noise Reduction effect works best on stationary noise, backgrounds that stay roughly constant throughout a recording.
- Wikipedia describes feedforward headphones with microphones on the outside of the earcups and feedback headphones with microphones inside the earcup.
Which sound do you want gone?
| What you want gone | Kind of tool | Example in this guide |
|---|---|---|
| Noise your caller hears | Call noise suppression | Krisp |
| Hiss or hum on a recording | Recording noise reduction | Audacity’s Noise Reduction |
| The room in your own ears | Noise-cancelling headphones | See the last section |
Apps that clean the audio of a call
Krisp describes its product as AI noise cancellation for meetings that removes noise, echo and cross-talk. It says that because Krisp works at the audio level, it integrates with conferencing apps such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Slack Huddles. Krisp’s FAQ says its mobile app does not include noise cancellation today.
A tool like this works on the meeting audio, not on the sound of the room reaching your ears.
Apps that clean a recording
Audacity says its Noise Reduction effect can eliminate hiss, hum, fan noise and buzzing from a recording. It needs a noise profile, which Audacity describes as a short sample of pure background noise with no speech or music. Audacity says the effect works best on stationary noise, backgrounds that stay roughly constant throughout the recording. For non-stationary noise such as traffic, crowd chatter or background music, it says other tools and techniques will typically be more effective.
This works on a file after it has been recorded, not on what you hear live.
Can an app add noise cancelling to plain earbuds?
One Reddit user went looking for exactly this: an Android app that would use the phone’s or headphones’ microphone to capture ambient audio and play processed audio in the headphones to cancel it. They noted that a lot of earbuds and headphones have this function natively, most likely on a hardware level.
Wikipedia describes where those microphones sit. It says feedforward systems place microphones on the outside of the earcups to monitor noise before it reaches the ear, while feedback systems place microphones inside the earcup. It says hybrid systems combine both methods. Wikipedia also says most noise-cancelling headphones depend on sound isolation to keep higher-frequency noise from reaching the ear.
One reply to that Reddit post said: “I think it is impossible to do this in software at this level.” The same reply said the position of the microphone in relation to the headphones matters a lot, and that “headphones that have environmental noise cancelling have the microphone in the earpiece itself.” It added that it takes a sound wave 29.1 microseconds to travel 1 cm in air.
So if quiet ears are the goal, look at earbuds with noise cancelling and pay attention to the seal. Our explainer on how ANC and ENC work on earbuds covers the hardware side.
Is there an app that adds noise cancelling to any headphones?
One Reddit reply to exactly that request said: “I think it is impossible to do this in software at this level.” Wikipedia describes noise-cancelling headphones with microphones on the outside of the earcups, inside them, or both. EARSOLE has not tested any app that claims to do this.
Does Krisp’s noise cancellation work on a phone?
Krisp’s FAQ says its mobile app does not include noise cancellation today. It says Krisp integrates with conferencing apps such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Slack Huddles.
