5 Easy-to-Use Plugins That Will Speed Up Editing and Improve Your Delivery

A lot has changed in recent years when it comes to plugins—especially restoration tools for removing noise, room reflections, and other unwanted sounds. Neural networks and machine learning now handle these tasks exceptionally well.

At Voicemachine, we also offer a built-in complementary mastering service that provides perfect dynamic loudness mastering at any LUFS. During this process, we remove mouth clicks, noise, and disturbing room ambience. With our advanced export features, plosives, breaths, and many other parameters can also be controlled.

As a voice talent on Voicemachine, this means you only need to focus on basic editing and delivering a clean, professional sound. No need to remove any mouth clicks, noise or for extensive dynamic processing.

However, if you need to deliver recordings outside of Voicemachine, here are my 5 go-to plugins for editing voice-over recordings. They’re easy to use and, if bought on sale, affordable.

5 go-to plugins for voice-over editing

1. Noise/Room Removal Tools

Voxium – Real-time Dialogue Noise Reduction Plugin

This is a simple, one-knob noise remover that handles almost any noise problem at a very modest cost. Just increase the value until the issue disappears.

For a more advanced (but still easy-to-use) tool that also handles room reflections better, try Accentize dxSplit. Remember not to over-process—working in a silent, dry room is always better, as heavy processing can create artifacts.

2. Clicks and Pops

iZotope RX – Mouth De-click and De-plosive

These plugins are part of the RX bundles. Mouth De-click combines a de-clicker and de-crackler, specifically fine-tuned for speech. Moderately applied, it sounds natural and saves hours of manual editing. Use the “output clicks only” function to avoid removing important audio.

De-plosive does exactly what it says—reduces plosives—but even with this plugin, a pop filter is still recommended.

3. Esses (Sibilance)

Waves Sibilance De-esser

Sharp “esses” can be unpleasant, especially on high-quality monitors or earphones. Most voices, particularly female voices, benefit from some de-essing. While EQ can help, sibilance is dynamic—so a de-esser or dynamic EQ/multiband compressor works better as it only affects the sound when necessary.

This plugin makes de-essing easy: it displays detected esses graphically, and you can monitor the signal to dial in a natural sound. In my experience, it’s a natural-sounding de-esser for voice-over work.

4. Compression

Waves Renaissance Vox Compressor and Gate

This classic plugin is incredibly simple to use. The one-slider compressor works great on voice recordings, and the gate is a standout feature.

Set the gate threshold to around -32 dB for healthy recording levels but check what works on your recording. The gate is transparent, and combined with some noise reduction, it produces true silence between words, making editing really easy as no crossfading is necessary in silent parts to avoid clicks. The compressor is easy to use and almost foolproof—ideal, since compressors can be tricky to understand.

Tip: Set the output to -1 dB for safe exports.

Notes

There are many plugins available, and most audio editors already include usable built-in options. Use the tools that work best for your workflow. Additionally, online services are becoming increasingly effective at mastering audio automatically. If you have tried any tools you like to share feel free to contact me at peo.drangert@voicemahine.com