Why Truncate Silence is the wrong tool for um
Truncate Silence (and similar gates) delete stretches below a dB threshold. A quiet sentence can get eaten. An um that is as loud as the rest of the take stays. Remove Filler Words transcribes first. Ums, uhs, and hedge phrases are tokens. Gaps with no words are what the silence slider targets. Soft speech that was recognized stays unless you cut it.
When Audacity is still the right alternative — to everything else
Stay in Audacity for long episodes, plugins, noise reduction chains, and sample-accurate editing. It has no 10-minute browser ceiling. It runs offline on the whole file. If you live in a DAW, keep living there. Use this tab for a short voiceover or a video soundtrack you do not want to wrap in a project.
Audio and video, without installing Audacity
Drop an MP3 or an MP4. Save writes M4A for audio-only or MP4 when there is picture. You do not install a DAW or learn a track panel. That is the trade: less power, less setup, fillers as words.
Truncate Silence vs a transcript
Truncate Silence is a volume gate. You set a dB floor and a duration. Quiet speech can vanish. A loud um stays. A transcript pass treats um as a word and a pause as a gap with no tokens.
If you live in Audacity for noise reduction and mixing, keep doing that. Run a short voiceover through this tab when you want fillers gone without drawing a selection around each one.
- Volume tools do not know the word um
- This tab does; you can still restore any mark
- Audacity still wins on hour-long mixdowns