Cleanfeed

Cleanfeed covers the recording step of an audio podcast. On Lite you get one mixed recording, which is fine for a simple two-person interview. If you edit each voice separately (levelling, removing crosstalk), Pro’s multitrack saves you work. Once the episode is edited, the long recording is also what your short clips come from.

Cleanfeed is the favorite hidden tool of radio producers, voice actors, and anyone who's been burned by Zoom one too many times. It runs entirely in the browser — your guest clicks a link, no downloads, no logins — but audio quality goes up to 320 kbit/s stereo, well past anything you'd get from a consumer video call.

Multitrack recording saves each participant as a separate file, and you can wire up to four local devices through a channel mixer and pull the session down as a zip. Recording time is unlimited on every plan, including the free one; Pro adds more guests (up to 32), multitrack, stereo from guests and production tools such as markers and audio repair.

Cinema supports video and full workflows for film and broadcast clients. The free Lite plan is properly useful — plenty of indie shows record entirely on it. The downsides come from the same place as the strengths: this is software built by audio engineers for audio engineers.

Interface feels stuck in 2010, onboarding is sparse, and you'll fight echo cancellation issues on certain hardware combos. Video is only in the Cinema plan, and there is no built-in editor.

Right tool for audio-only podcasts, radio remotes, voiceover work, and anyone for whom 320 kbit/s stereo over the public internet sounds like magic. Wrong tool for video podcasters or creators who want everything in one app.