Resound and Podcastle are two online audio editors that offer AI-powered tools for creators. One claims to be the “one-stop-shop” and the other claims to be the most advanced AI editor.
In this blog, we’ll dive into what both tools have to offer so you can make your own decision.
We’ll cover:
Resound is the AI podcast editor for creators. Built by the same team of Professional audio engineers that produced Culpable and 15 other #1 shows on Apple podcasts. Resound automates tedious editing tasks like finding and removing filler sounds, long silences, mixing and mastering your podcast, and much more coming soon.
Resound officially launched in June 2022 but started as an internal project at Resonate Recordings in 2019.
Podcastle.ai is a web-based “One-Stop Shop for Broadcast Storytelling.” They offer unlimited remote recording, audio editing, and podcast hosting in one easy-to-use app. They’ve done a good job of solving a set of high-level problems in a way that is especially good for hobbyists.
Now let’s dive into what these two products have to offer.
Resound and Podcastle have a lot in common. But there are a few things that make Resound different.
In summary, Podcastle is building an all-in-one creator tool. Resound is building the most advanced AI audio editor. If you’re looking for a tool to automate your post-production then Resound is for you. But if you’re not yet convinced, please read on!
We’ve been building and fine-tuning our own machine learning models since 2019 to specifically identify ums and ahs in your audio. Some might call it obsessive, but we believe in this problem and have the highest standards for solving it with accuracy and fidelity (and trust us, we’re still not done yet, but we’ve come a LONG way).
We didn’t outsource this problem to a third-party speech to text tool, like some tools do. Instead we trained our own machine learning models while collaborating with audio engineers. That means we have greater accuracy of the start and end time of each edit, sound smoother and more professional, and can pass along the additional control of our models to you.
We’re also just getting started. We’ve been hyper-focused on filler sounds (ums, ahs, ers) but will soon build on top of our work to expand to additional problems like filler words (like, so, right, you know), and much more.
Both Resound and Podcastle can detect filler sounds and silences in your audio automatically, which is great for speeding up your workflow. However, Resound takes a unique approach to editing that takes you through the process step-by-step so you can undo specific edits you don’t like, adjust the boundaries, and stay in control. This process is designed to balance the tension between both saving you time AND making sure you have a professional-sounding edit.
We believe AI should be used to automate tedious work, but never at the expense of replacing your creative work entirely. Practically speaking, this means that every feature we build in Resound has two audiences in mind: The hobbyist creator and the paid professional audio engineer. Resound started as a project to help empower our internal team at Resonate Recordings work faster, and do less tedious work, but our goal was never to replace those individuals. Rest assured that everything we build will consider both the hobbyist and the professional.
Resound is being built by the same team of professional audio engineers behind Culpable and 15 other #1 shows on Apple Podcasts. The original Resound team was spun out from Resonate Recordings in 2022, led by Jacob Bozarth, and we continue to work closely with other Audio Engineers at Resonate to get oversight and feedback on new features. We also have a unique data agreement between our companies that gives us ethical access to see how professional audio engineers make editing decisions.
Resound is the most advanced AI audio editor. Our mission is to automate post-production for podcasters and creators so they can save time. We’re not interested in building an all-in-one platform. Trust the best remote recorder for capturing your voice, trust the best hosting platform for distributing your show, and trust Resound for the fastest and most accurate podcast editing. We’ve spent the past eight years editing podcasts, and the past five building the machine-learning models that power Resound.
The Resound Editor has gone through many improvements in 2023, but it’s still lacking a few key features that are expected from other Audio Editors. You can’t (yet) see multiple tracks at the same time, arrange tracks on the timeline by dragging them around, or add fade-ins and outs to the end of clips in the editor.
Alternatively, Podcastle takes the lead in offering more features in their Editor.
Because Resound has been laser-focused on solving the problem of detecting ums and ahs with our own machine-learning models we have not yet expanded to detecting other types of mistakes (like, right, you know). But in the near future, we plan to add this.
Resound is hyper-focused on automating post-production, which means we don’t offer remote recording, hosting, text-to-speech, or voice cloning services. If you’re looking for a tool that offers these in one place, then Podcastle wins in this category.
Podcastle offers unlimited remote recording of both audio and video. Their remote recording includes 48khz WAV audio quality, up to 4K video quality, multitrack recording so you can edit separate tracks, cloud storage of your files, and even screen sharing (a feature not all the other remote recording tools offer yet).
Podcastle offers transcriptions and a text-based editor following in the footsteps of Descript, which makes it easy to remember what you said in an episode during the editing process. They offer 1 hour of transcription for free so you can test out the tool to get started.
In addition to generating transcripts, you can also edit your audio file based on the transcript as well, which leads us to our next item: the Audio Editor.
One of the central parts of Podcastle’s app interface is the Audio Editor. They’ve built an easy-to-use timeline editor that also offers text-to-audio editing. In the timeline, you can import multiple tracks, arrange clips, split and delete waveforms, and add fade-ins and outs. In addition to these standard editor features, you can use several of their assistant tools like Silence Removal, Filler Word Detection, and Magic Dust to improve your sound.
Silence Removal automatically removes long pauses in your show and trims them out for you. Filler Word Detection automatically finds distractions such as um, so, you know, and other common fillers in your audio. Lastly, Magic Dust automatically removes background noise, equalizes, and compresses your audio files to make them sound more professional.
Podcastle also offers a built-in library of royalty-free music and sound effects. They don’t explicitly mention where they get their audio files, but our assumption is that they use a third-party service for this feature.
Podcastle offers two different text-to-speech features. First, you can use one of their pre-built AI voices by simply typing in text to the app. Second, you can generate an AI replica of your own voice which you can then use by typing in words into their app as well. This feature is good for testing our ideas or refining a script before recording.
More recently in 2023, Podcastle launched a new Hosting feature that generates an RSS feed for you so you can host your audio in their tool and share it on podcast apps like Apple and Spotify. Their hosting offering is a bit basic but gives you what you need to host your show across all platforms.
In August 2023 Podcastle announced Teams, a new feature that lets you collaborate with other editors in real time within Podcastle, just like working in Google Docs. This feature lets you invite other producers and hosts to create an account and access your workspace, manage permissions, and drop comments to streamline your review process.
During our testing, we found that the silence feature detected silences perfectly well, but one critical flaw was that it did not keep multitrack episodes in sync. That means if you detect silences on track 1 in a 2-track episode you throw off the flow of the entire episode, making this feature unusable on multitrack shows. Additionally, Podcastle doesn’t show you where they cut the silence, so you can’t undo a specific silence you didn’t like. You can either accept 100% of the silences they cut out or 0%.
Alternatively, Resound’s Silence Detection keeps all tracks in sync and lets you cut all in a single click OR review silences one-by-one, for maximum control.
Their Filler Word Detection is a nice offering to quickly clean up your audio, but it’s only available on their paid plans. They give you 3 attempts at testing the feature, but after those 3 tries it goes away.
Alternatively, Resound offers 1 hour of free editing with filler sound detection that renews every month.
Podcastle appears to be building an “all-in-one” podcast solution that offers all the features you need to create a podcast in one place. In theory, this is an excellent idea. It would be amazing to solve all our problems as podcasters in just one app. Our conviction at Resound, however, is a bit different.
They’ve built a solid tool. But from our experience, we believe that an unbundled solution is often a higher-quality one. The best hosting platform might not be the best editing tool, it might not be the best remote recorder.
The last pain point we found when testing Podcastle was the speed and responsiveness. The app was very slow at importing files, Magic Mastering took so long we never actually got a chance to test it out. This is a bit more subjective since web apps have so many factors that impact their performance, but it felt worth mentioning since it stood out during our tests.
Alternatively, Resound has built an Editor that is able to handle large file formats with a much smoother experience.
As we mentioned above, Resound has some weaknesses like everyone else. But we’re working hard to fix them as quickly as possible. Here are a few things you can expect in Resound soon…
Are we missing something? Request a feature in Resound here.
Resound and Podcastle are two excellent products that offer AI-powered audio editing.
If you’re looking for a more general editor tool that bundles recording and hosting into one place, then Podcastle is worth checking out. But if you’re looking for a faster way to edit your podcast that doesn’t sacrifice quality and lets you stay in control, we believe Resound is the best fit for you.
Still on the fence? Try Resound for free.
Resound's team is building the future of podcast editing: An AI podcast editing app for creators. Here at Resound we're writing about the creative process to help content creators thrive. Picture is Ernst Chladni, the inspiration for our brand. Hear his story at resound.fm/about
