Resound and Alitu are two online audio editors built by podcasters, for podcasters. But which one is better for you?
In this blog, we’ll show you 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.
Alitu is a podcast editing app built by podcasters, for podcasters. Alitu was birthed out of ThePodcastHost.com, which is a leading blog about podcasting read around the world. They built and ran ThePodcast Host from 2011 to 2018 before finally launching their own audio editing app that was meant to strip away the confusion from traditional DAWs to give podcasters the simplest possible interface for podcasting.
Alitu was birthed out of The Podcast Host (founded in 2011) and launched in March of 2018.
Both Resound and Alitu are online audio editing apps built by podcasters, for podcasters. Similarly to Alitu, Resound was birthed out of another company in the podcast industry: Resonate Recordings. Resonate is a leading podcast production company that’s been in the space since 2017, and worked with leading brands like Honda, Colgate-Palmolive, Schneider Electric, and over 3500 podcasters.
But there are also a few key differences. Alitu began as a tool that wanted to replace the complicated interfaces used by Audio Engineers for everyday creators. But Resound was created by Audio Engineers who wanted to automate their own work AND open up a simpler solution for creators as well. Alitu is building a simplified editor for podcasters, Resound is automating the post-production process to empower professional audio engineers and creators.
Here are a few more specific ways that Resound is different than Alitu:
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), repeats, stutters, and much more.
Review each edit one by one, finely adjusting the boundaries as needed. Our unique review process gives you total control over your edits while maintaining the promise of a faster editing experience.
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, Alitu 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 or hosting services. If you’re looking for a tool that offers these in one place, then Alitu wins in this category.
The main selling point for Alitu is that it offers an all-in-one place to record your show (locally by yourself or remotely with friends), edit, and host it all in the same place. They’ve done a great job of building a tool that strips away unnecessary features and focuses on the core problems that podcasters face.
Alitu lets you quickly cleanup your audio with automated noise reduction, equalization, and normalization. You can also get a transcript of your episode to use in your marketing or place it on your podcast website (which they can also help you build).
Alitu’s promise is to keep the podcast creation process as simple as possible. It’s a tool by podcasters, for podcasters, and they are holding true to that promise from everything we can see. Their interface is easy to understand, they have in-depth help articles that are a click away at all times, and do a nice job onboarding you into the process.
Alitu was born out of thepodcasthost.com, one of the leading blogs for all things podcasting in the world. Because of this, they have a very deep collection of articles and courses that help podcasters answer questions across the podcasting lifecycle.
One critical feature that is missing in Alitu is multitrack editing. Unfortunately, if you record a 2-track interview or a 4-track panel discussion you will have to merge all those files together before uploading them into Alitu. As Audio Engineers, we believe it’s critical to edit and mix your show with individual tracks, and wait to mix it down to a single track at the very end of the process.
Alternatively, Resound offers multitrack editing with support up to 4-tracks (and potential expansion in the future).
It’s great to be able to record a long-distance interview in Alitu and immediately start editing your tracks. But their remote recorder has two critical limitations. First, it does not record multitrack but instead merges all tracks into a single file. As we mentioned above, editing separate tracks is critical, especially when you are doing equalization and mixing the voices. Secondly, they record all tracks in the cloud, not locally on your browser (except for single-track recordings). That means if your internet connection goes out for a second the recording will glitch out, and your recording quality will likely be much lower than it could be if it was recorded locally.
Resound does not offer any remote recording or recording features. So Alitu wins in that category. But because of their remote recording limitations, we recommend using a tool like Riverside, Zencastr, or Descript (formerly SquadCast) to record high-quality separated tracks of all speakers for the best results.
Alitu has built an incredibly simple app, and that should not be understated. However, the experience of arranging tracks as audio blocks feels a bit strange compared to what other tools are available on the market. Because of the way their audio blocks feature works, you have to adjust numbers like how many seconds of transition you want between music and audio.
Alternatively, most editors like Descript and Podcastle let you simply move audio files around a timeline. Resound doesn’t currently let you arrange files in the Editor, so Alitu wins in this category for now. But this experience feels smoother in other tools like Descript and Podcastle.
When it comes to automated features, Alitu is a bit behind Resound, Descript, and Podcastle. They offer automated transcripts and audio cleanup which are great, but do not detect filler sounds, silences, or repeats.
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 Alitu are two excellent products that offer AI-powered audio editing.
If you’re looking for a simple editor that bundles recording and hosting into one place, then Alitu 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
