Home Recording Cleanup

Great take. Rough room.

You recorded a vocal at your own desk, not in a treated booth — so there's hiss between phrases, a few esses that spit, and a boxy thickness that was never in your voice to begin with. GhostInTheMachine hears all three and fixes them without you learning what a de-esser is.

One-time purchase. No subscription. Or try every feature free for 14 days — no account, no card.

GhostMode panel analyzing a captured vocal take and prescribing a cleanup chain

Common Home-Recording Problems

Every one of these is a solved problem.

Real, shipped modules — not a marketing promise.

“There's hiss, hum or room tone between phrases”

Noise Gate cleans the gaps

A detector fusing peak, RMS and transient-flux opens the instant a word starts and closes cleanly after it ends, with hysteresis and hold so it never chatters or clips a word's tail. See Noise Gate →

“My esses and 'ch' sounds spit and hurt to hear”

De-Esser tames sibilance

A vowel-rejecting guard finds true sibilance and leaves vowels and cymbal wash alone — Relative mode rides your own level, so one setting fits a whisper and a belt alike. See De-Esser →

“It sounds boxy, like it was recorded in a closet”

Dynamic EQ clears the mud

The Mud and Box controls watch their own frequency region and cut only when the buildup actually happens, so the tone stays alive the rest of the time. See Dynamic EQ →

“I don't know how to set any of this up”

GhostMode does it in one pass

Capture or import the take, hit Analyze, and the ghost prescribes a complete chain — cleanup included — tuned to what it actually hears in your recording.

“I'm not always in tune too”

Pitch is a different guide

This page is about noise, sibilance and mud. Need pitch correction as well? See the singer-songwriter guide →

“I already recorded it somewhere else”

Import and analyze any file

Drop in a take you tracked on your phone or in another DAW — the Import pill reads up to six minutes and analyzes it exactly like a live capture.

Two Modules, Built For This

A gate that knows the difference between silence and a whisper.

Most gates use one detector and one threshold, so they either chatter or swallow quiet passages. Noise Gate fuses three detectors instead of trusting one.

  • Three fused detectors: peak, RMS and transient-flux, blended per Style — Classic, Vocal or Drum.
  • True hysteresis plus Hold: separate open and close thresholds and a five-state machine end the chatter single-threshold gates produce.
  • Auto Floor: a rolling-minimum estimator tracks a drifting noise bed, so the threshold always rides just above the hiss.

Open Noise Gate's deep dive

The Noise Gate module editor plotting the fused detector key against live thresholds

Sibilance Without The Lisp

It tells a real “ess” from a cymbal before it touches your vowels.

A vowel-rejecting guard compares the sibilant band against the low-mid body of the sound, so true esses get caught and everything else rides through untouched.

  • Relative mode rides the program level itself — one setting fits a whisper take and a hot take alike.
  • Split or Wide: cut only the sibilant band, or duck the whole signal for a smoother, radio-style ride.
  • Up to 10 ms of Lookahead catches the leading edge of an ess before it spits.

Open De-Esser's deep dive

The De-Esser module editor with the sibilant band and gain-reduction meter visible

The Loop

Capture. Analyze. Clean.

  1. Record or import

    Capture a take live, or drop in a file you already recorded. The Import pill reads up to six minutes.

  2. Hit Analyze

    The ghost hears the noise floor, the esses and the mud, and prescribes a chain that addresses each one.

  3. Turn one knob

    Intensity scales the whole prescription from a light touch to fully cleaned up.

  4. Bounce it

    A vocal that sounds like it was tracked somewhere quieter than it actually was.

No Studio Budget Required

Cleanup tools are part of every license, free forever.

Noise Gate, De-Esser and Dynamic EQ are three of the 38 modules in the base rack — no add-on, no separate purchase. GhostMode's offline analysis is free forever too.

  • Offline analysis is free forever — no AI, no credits, no account.
  • 14-day free trial: every feature unlocked, no account or card needed.
  • One-time purchase: no subscription, ever.
Try before you buy

14 days. Everything unlocked.

3 AI credits included so you can hear what the AI layer does with your own recording before you decide.

Stop fighting the noise floor. Start finishing the take.

Download GhostInTheMachine for macOS and let the ghost clean it up.

No account, no card. 14 days, 3 AI credits. Activates inside the plugin.