Clean podcast audio, from a working bench: record it right, then fix less
Your podcast doesn’t need a studio. It needs a door that closes, a $0 cleanup pass, and twenty minutes of setup you do exactly once. This bench holds both halves of that promise: the recording habits that prevent noise, and the workflows that remove whatever got through — each one priced per episode, assumptions printed.
The recording station
The twenty-minute setup
Room, distance, levels, headphones — how to record audio for a podcast so cleanup becomes a formality.
Remote guests on Zoom
Separate tracks, original sound, and the settings that stop Zoom sounding like a meeting.
The $0 recording stack
Free podcast recording software that holds up: Audacity, Zoom’s recorder, Descript’s free tier — assembled into a stack.
The cleanup station
Remove background noise, in order
The triage guide: what to fix, what to process, what to re-record, and which tool takes which job.
The Adobe Enhance lane ($0)
A weekly show cleaned free inside the daily hour — the workflow, caps and splits.
The Krisp lane (live)
Clean the interview while it happens, so the file lands finished — $2.00 an episode.
The Descript lane
Edit like a doc, clean like a booth — when you want the whole workshop, not just the vacuum.
The cost worksheet
Every route priced per episode on one wall, assumptions printed where you can argue with them.
How this bench works
We’ve ruined enough takes to know the order of operations matters more than the gear list. So the bench is opinionated: prevention guides come before cleanup guides, every workflow page ends in the same worksheet math, prices carry their verification date (this pass: July 30, 2026), and when a free lane genuinely covers you — which for a weekly solo show it usually does — the page says so instead of upselling. The bench rules and the sponsor note spell out the rest.
Asked at the bench
- What is PodPolish?
- A bench for podcasters who want clean audio without a studio: recording setups that prevent noise, cleanup workflows that remove what slipped through, and a cost worksheet that prices every route per episode.
- What does podcast cleanup actually cost?
- Between $0.00 and about $4.00 per episode at a weekly cadence: Adobe Enhance's free tier and Audacity cost nothing, Krisp's live cleanup works out to $2.00 an episode, Cleanvoice about $2.75, Descript $4.00. The worksheet page shows the arithmetic and its assumptions.
- I'm drowning in noise right now — where do I start?
- The cleanup guide, in order: fix what you can re-record, then run the finished file through Adobe Enhance's free hour. Then spend twenty minutes on the recording-setup guide so next episode needs neither.