These tools enter at different points in the episode. Descript helps you decide what stays in the conversation. Auphonic helps make the finished audio even and ready for delivery.
Auphonic is the finishing pass
Auphonic’s feature list combines noise and reverb reduction with adaptive leveling. You can set a loudness target and a true-peak limit. Its multitrack processing can balance speakers and music into one mix.
The free plan includes two hours of processed audio each month. Auphonic adds a jingle to free productions. Paid credits remove that constraint and add more processing time. Auphonic is a good fit once you have decided what the episode says and need a consistent final file.
Descript is for shaping the episode
Descript puts Studio Sound inside an audio and video editor. Its transcript workflow lets you cut spoken content by editing words. That is a different job from setting a delivery loudness target on a finished mix.
The free plan lets you try the workflow, with limits on media and AI use. Paid plans increase those allowances. Descript is the better pick when the conversation still needs cuts, reordering or video work.
Where Gleam Audio fits
Gleam Audio runs Remove noise and Enhance over a whole session of files on your computer. Enhance has presets for podcasts, audiobooks, streaming and broadcast. It doesn’t mix several speaker tracks into one episode or edit words from a transcript. See its 1.0 release notes.
Use Auphonic for automated leveling and a final loudness target. Use Descript to edit the content. Use Gleam Audio when you have local speech files to clean and level in batches. Some workflows may use more than one of these tools.
The podcast cleanup list also covers REAPER, Audacity and Adobe Podcast.