6 Best Noise Reduction Plugins & 6 Free Denoiser Plugins

All Best VSTs

All Best Free VSTs

VST Effects

• Compressor
• Sidechain
• Mastering Limiter
• Metering
• Noise Reduction
• Noise Gate
• Pitch Shifter
• UAD Plugins

VST Instruments

• Synths
• Piano
• Guitar

Misc

• Rent-to-own
• For EDM
• Best places to buy

Noise reduction plugins are essential if you want clean audio. They should always be a part of a music producer’s toolkit but should be the last resort in the post-production phase. Getting a good recording is the single most important thing to ensure clean audio, but sometimes it’s not always possible – especially if you’re recording a band in a small studio, or recording foley samples.

With so many different noise reduction VST options on the market, it can be difficult to decide which is the best. So, in this article, we’re going to cover the best noise reduction plug ins on the market.

We’ve made sure to include options for all ranges of budgets, and even included a free vst plugins section on this page. So, whatever your noise suppression needs, there should be something on this list for you!

What is Noise Reduction?

Noise is pretty prevalent in most recordings, especially when working in outside environments, or working in studios where amps and other analog gear is used. A good noise suppression plugin can help you to clean up this noise before processing so that you don’t hear the compressed background noise or hum.

Noise removal VSTs can also be used in TV, Film, Podcasts & YouTube production, to get rid of hiss.

Whatever you’re working with, in audio, it’s likely you need a noise reduction VST and a good one at that! Stock tools don’t always cut it, so let’s start with the top noise reduction plugins.

When Should I Use A Noise Reduction Plugin?

Noise reduction is the last resort to cleaning up audio. Ideally, you want to have a fantastic recording first, before you reach for any post production tools. So, make sure you have great mics set up, sound-proofing, and ensure you have the right mic placements.

If your audio is noisy and you’ve pre-emptively done everything you can to remove the background noise, then it’s time to use a noise reduction or a gate VST plugin.

• For background noise like: hiss, rumble, hum, chatter, birds etc. You’ll want to use noise removal tools.
• For mic bleed and spill, you’ll want to use noise gates. They’re especially useful on drums.

Where Does Noise Reduction Go in The Signal Chain?

Make sure to use noise reduction first, remove the noise to your best ability, and then apply extra processing.

Do I Really Need A Noise Removal VST Plugin?

Noise reduction is not essential for EDM, or music that is made entirely using VST plugins, and effects. You will need noise reduction when you want to remove things like hiss, buzz, hum etc.

If you have hiss in your tracks and they’re entirely electronic, it’s likely a setting you have on a plugin that you need to turn off. To find this, you’ll have to look at your meters when everything is quiet and see which channel the culprit is. Then, head into the plugin and turn off the noise (usually an analogue button).

Are Free Noise Reduction Plugins Good or Should I Invest in A Paid One?

You may not need a paid one, but they’re better. If you’re serious about audio/video and record a lot of content, it’s worth investing in a noise removal plugin – it will save you on numerous occasions.

If you’re working in the Podcast & YouTube territory, you’ll definitely want a noise reduction plugin.

The Best Noise Reduction Plugins 2022

Here’s our complete list of the best noise reduction plugins in 2022:

1. Acon Digital De-Noise
2. Waves Z Noise
3. Oxford DeNoiser
4. Waves NS1
5. Antares Soundsoap
6. Accusonus ERA 5

1. Acon Digital De-Noise (Best Noise Reduction Plugin for Mixing Music & Film)

Acon Digital make some of the best plugins for mixing & mastering, that are specifically for TV and film production. But, that doesn’t limit their use to just TV and film production.

They’re fantastic audio plugins that can be used right inside your DAW, or can be used in their standalone software – Acoustica.

We personally use De-Noise for cleaning up foley, and instrument recordings, before levelling them out using normalisation tools, or dragging them in a project. And, we can safely say that De-Noise is the best noise reduction plugin we’ve ever used.

Sometimes noise reduction can introduce artefacts, with De-Noise this doesn’t happen (unless you go overboard with the settings)

You get a nice, clean noise removal, that doesn’t introduce any unwanted artefacts, and is capable of cleaning the background noise, or problem areas of your recording, precisely and easily.

De-Noise also takes the guesswork out of noise reduction and offers a listen mode, which will listen to your recording and learn the noise reduction profile it needs. This feature is scarily accurate, and 90% of the time we never change the settings De-Noise finds for us.

There’s also a dynamic response mode, which adapts to your recording over time.

This is especially useful for recordings, or samples that change drastically over time, and need the noise reduction to morph to the sound. Without this, you would have to spend a lot of time automating a lot of parameters!

You have a lot of control with De-Noise, with knobs for reduction, soft knee, maximum attenuation & reaction time.

On top of this, there are options for mid/side processing, and additional settings to target only broadband or tonal frequencies. And, if you think you couldn’t get any more there’s A/B functionally, as well as solo’ing and a preset browser.

De-Noise also comes as part of Acon Digital’s restoration suite, which means you’ll get:

• De-Noise
• De-Hum
• De-Clip
• De-Click

We can’t recommend this enough for only $79!

It’s a fantastic tool for vocals too, but if you’re looking for podcast gear, we’d recommend checking out Acon Digital’s Dialogue Extract tool. It’s also part of Acoustica 7, which we’d highly recommend getting the entire suite – it’s pretty much a cheaper version of iZotope RX.

2. Waves Z Noise (Best Noise Removal Plugin for Control)

Waves Z Noise is an incredibly in-depth noise removal plugin, that’s capable of cleaning up audio, with precision & clarity. It’s pretty similar to Acon Digital’s De-Noise in terms of what options you have for control but differs slightly.

The first difference you’ll notice is the interface, and it’s pretty unappealing. The noise reduction is great, and if you can get over this, then you’ll be fine, but we personally aren’t a fan of plugins that don’t have a clean UI.

The quality of noise reduction makes up for this, and the sheer amount of control you get is insane.

With Z Noise you get a 5 band EQ that can be used to shape your noise profile, helping you identify and reduce those problematic background frequencies. Like De-Noise, this can also be used in conjunction with the learn function that automatically detects the right profile to apply to your audio.

You’ll also notice there’s an extra added layer of control over De-Noise, with attack, release and transient control for your noise reduction, which is extremely useful if you know what you’re doing and can make a huge difference to the end result of a session.

Waves Z Noise additionally has adaptive noise reduction, meaning that it can quickly change to sudden movements of wind, increased hum etc.

And has a useful threshold control, so that Z Noise will only kick it once it hits a certain volume.

3. Sonnox Oxford De-Noiser (Most Expensive & Feature Rich Background Noise Removal Plugin)

Sonnox’s Oxford range is almost essential when it comes to mastering. DeNoiser is a noise reduction plugin that offers surgical noise reduction in real-time and includes a De-Hisser unit too.

With DeNoiser you got a whole range of options and an amazing noise profile algorithm that automatically detects the right noise profile for your recording. And, although most of the plugins on this list do that, what makes DeNoiser different is the freeze option that lets you freeze your audio in place to remove a specific type of noise.

This becomes useful when using multiple instances in the mixing process because you can target one instance for one specific noise, allowing the noise reduction to be more precise and clean.

There’s also a separate De-Hisser that focuses on hiss, leaving the noise module for things like hum, crackle or other annoying audio imperfections you want to remove.

De-Noiser offers the best control over noise profiles on this list and we’d recommend it for pinpointing and removing specific noises, rather than just a blanket over your audio that removes the background noise.

It proves this because there’s a 10 band EQ, that you can use to shape your noise profile.

On top of this, DeNoiser includes warmth control, to add subtle, harmonic distortion to your audio.

This is useful because noise reduction can flatten your sound and ruin the natural EQ curves, the harmonic distortion attempts to preserve your sound as it is naturally.

DeNoiser is certainly the best option for features and high-end studios.

4. Waves NS1 (Best Denoise Software for YouTube & Podcasts)

Waves NS1 is a noise reduction plugin that has been designed with simplicity in mind. And, although it may look simple, the results this plugin can get are pretty incredible.

The NS1 is mostly used by people who are into video editing, and you’ll often come across it in Adobe Premiere Pro tutorials.

It’s the easiest noise suppression VST we’ve ever tried out.

All you do it pull the slider down, until you start to hear it react on your audio, and it will apply an adaptive noise reduction profile to your video, or recording.

For mixing & mastering, you might want something a little more advanced, but due to simplicity, we had to include this.

Sometimes you don’t need all the bells & whistles, you just need to get a sound quickly, so you can move on to the more important tasks in the mixing process.

Load up a Waves NS1, dial a setting in, and within a couple of seconds, you’ve got noise-free audio that sounds perfect.

5. Antares Sound Soap (Easiest To Use Noise Reduction Tool)

Antares makes some of the best autotune plugins, and are actually the first company to invent Auto Tune technology. Every other company is technically a vocal pitch editor because Antares own the trademark for Auto Tune.

Anyway, interesting facts aside, Soundsoap is Antares answer to noise reduction, and is built especially for vocal production, but can be used for video or any other of your noise suppression needs.

Soundsoap has a learn button that automatically detects the noise in your recordings and then applies the right noise profile. It does this in real-time so there’s no need to process a signal, you just turn up the Noise Reduction knob to attenuate the noise.

Coupled with the preserve voice, and remove rumble buttons, you can remove the unwanted hiss, rumble & hum from any video or recording.

Preserve voice does exactly what you think it does… preserves the voice, and remove rumble… removes rumble.

There are also options like De-Clip in Soundsoap that aren’t found in any of the other plugins on this list. This can resuscitate overly distorted recordings, or video footage, saving your bacon on multiple occasions.

And, on top of that, there’s a boost option for recordings that are too quiet.

This boost option is great because often when you increase the gain of a noisy recording, it will increase the noise with it, boost doesn’t do this, and increases the volume while removing the noise.

There’s also a cool option that is similar to the Sonnox DeNoiser’s warmth button.

The enhance knob brings back the sparkle, and depth in your recordings/videos, that may be lost when applying noise removal VSTs to them. It does this by adding harmonic distortion to bring back those frequencies that could be lost.

And, when you thought it couldn’t get any better there’s also a dedicated de-hum slider, that focuses on removing hum.

Soundsoap is a fantastic noise suppression VST, that will give you studio-quality recordings, quickly and easily.

It is a little on the pricey end for noise reduction VST tools, but it’s worth it.

6. Accusonus ERA5 Noise Removal (Most Affordable Audio Noise Reduction)

Noise Remover is ideal for YouTubers & Podcasters who don’t understand mixing plugins well.

Accusonus ERA 5 Noise Remover, is a noise removal VST that comes bundled as part of the ERA 5 range of plugins.

It’s a simple and intuitive noise removal plugin, that focuses on getting a clean sound quick. Almost like the Waves NS1, but with more control and features.

ERA 5 is both a hiss removal tool and a hum reduction plugin.

It has a saw wave button you can press when working with buzz noises, to specifically target that.

Unlike the other noise removal VSTs on this list, ERA 5 doesn’t have an EQ to control your noise profile. It relies on focus buttons, that focus on specific areas of the frequency spectrum and applies a noise profile based on that.

Then there’s the processing knob. The higher this goes, the more noise reduction is applied to your signal.

The noise removal plugin in the ERA 5 bundle is fantastic, but it’s not the best pick if you want clean audio. You might want to go with one of the other options. However, the ERA 5 bundle has some truly amazing tools.

The Best Free Noise Reduction Plugins

The 5 best free noise reduction plugins for 2022:

1. Bitsonic Sound Recovery
2. Bertom Denoiser
3. Bluelab Denoiser
4. Noise Reduction Christian Budde
5. Voxengo Redunoise

1. Bitsonic Sound Recovery (Best Free Noise Reduction VST)

Sound Recovery is a plugin by Bitsonic that’s so good, it won the KVR developers challenge back in 2016. It’s a free noise reduction VST, that not only removes noise from audio but also works as an audio restoration tool.

The main objective of Sound Recovery is to repair difficult to understand dialogues or pieces of audio that have lost a lot of important information.

It does this using the two functions:

• Recovery – this sends your audio to an overdrive distortion unit that adds harmonics to recover lost frequency ranges, making the audio sound better.
• Enhancer – works on specific range that’s user defined, adding the same harmonics that Recovery does.

On top of this Bitsonic uses multi-band Denoiser that can remove both the low rumble and the high-end hiss-style noises. This automatically detects the noise profile needed for your audio and applies noise reduction based on that.

It’s primarily an audio restoration tool, but can be used for removing noise.

If you are only removing noise, you’ll want to make sure that you don’t enable recovery or enhancer, otherwise, it will apply the overdrive to your signal, adding harmonics you might not need.

There is also a Split Freq feature that allows you to be specific about which section of your audio needs the most restoration. Using this will give Sound Recovery the information it needs to be able to restore your audio well.

It’s a great free noise reduction plugin and should definitely be checked out!

2. Bertom Denoiser (Easiest Free Noise Reduction Plugin)

Bertom Denoiser is a free noise reduction plugin that freetousesounds uses to clean up his amazing collection of free foley samples from around the world. We’ve personally used this plugin to clean up our foley packs too, before we got Acon Digital’s DeNoise plugin.

Bertom is free denoiser plugin and does the job exceptionally well if you’re on a budget.

However, it requires a bit more input from you for it to work to its best ability. You can create great, clean sounding recordings, samples or even clean up videos using Denoiser.

There is a 5 Band noise profile EQ, with 2 filters included, giving you the same level of precision as Waves Z Noise in terms of noise profiling. But, unfortunately, there’s no automatic noise profiling, and it’s not dynamic to changes in noise, so you may have to do a bit of automation if your background noise isn’t consistent.

It’s an extremely easy-to-use plugin, with a super low CPU and works with zero latency. There are also some cool extras like stereo-link, no musical noise processing – keeping your audio clean, and preventing it from losing its sparkle.

3. Bluelab Free Denoiser Plugin (Best Free Audio Noise Reduction Software for CPU)

Bluelab Denoiser is a free noise reduction plugin that focuses on removing hiss and background noise.

It’s a fairly stripped-back, great-looking plugin, that offers quick noise reduction, with reduced control.

It has a learning feature that allows you to analyse your audio and, based on the information, will apply a noise profile to your recording.

The amount this noise profile is applied depends on the threshold and ratio settings that you choose.

It’s heavily CPU optimised, and also has 4 options to choose quality from, meaning if it’s a little taxing you can always dial it back a bit.

It doesn’t do anything else than reduce the noise in your audio, which is what you’d expect from a free noise reduction plugin.

Denoiser has a beautiful interface and a great frequency analyser that shows you exactly how it’s working on your recordings.

4. Noise Reduction (Best Free Noise Reduction Software for Simplicity)

Noise Reduction by Christian Budde is free noise cancelling software that can target specific frequency ranges and has a lot of accuracy + control. It’s a pretty simple interface, but has a lot of control for things like attack & release, knee and ratio, using multi-band compression to reduce the noise in your audio.

Noise Reduction stands out from the free noise reduction plugins on this list because it has greater control over the smaller things like FFT size and has offset control.

It works by using a “capture noise profile”, which listens to your audio and then decides what kind of noise profile to apply to it, giving you custom noise profiles depending on the sound you feed it.

Noise Reduction, unfortunately, doesn’t have any EQ band control, for more precise noise removal, and also doesn’t let you edit the noise profile in any way, which can be annoying if you like to tinker with your plugins more.

It’s a great, free noise removal VST and you should definitely give it a go!

5. Voxengo Redunoise (Best Free Noise Cancelling Software for Sound)

Redunoise is free noise reduction software by Voxengo. Voxengo makes some amazing free plugins, including their frequency analyser SPAN.

Redunoise is no different and is a high-resolution noise reduction plugin that uses the broadband noise reduction technique.

Unlike other broadband noise removal tools, Redunoise manages to process audio in a musical way, and sound great while doing so. This is rare with a broadband noise reduction tool because of how it works.

You have control over the attack, release, makeup, and amount of reduction. There’s also a dry/wet mix knob which isn’t present in most free reduction plugins and is useful for scenarios where you don’t want too much reduction.

Redunoise also has two filtering options:

• Analog Phase
• Linear Phase

It’s a fantastic plugin that can deal with a range of noises such as hiss, rumble & more. There’s also an option to learn from your audio and apply a noise profile that’s specific to it.

However, the look and feel is a little outdated, and it doesn’t support 64-bit. This could be an issue if you’re big on your interfaces like we are, and also if you use most modern DAWs, it won’t work without a wrapper.

Summary

A noise reduction plugin can save your bacon on a lot of occasions, especially when you’re working for a client and you can’t re-capture the video or audio you have to work with. This list covers the best noise reduction VST plugins (free & paid) and has been carefully researched and written to include options for everyone.

To recap, here is the complete list of best noise reduction plug ins:

1. Acon Digital De-Noise (Best Pick for Mixing Music & Film/TV)
2. Waves Z Noise (Best Pick for Control)
3. Oxford DeNoiser (Most Expensive & Feature Rich)
4. Waves NS1 (Best For Podcast/YouTube)
5. Antares Soundsoap (Best Result for Least Input)
6. Accusonus ERA 5 (Most Affordable)