Krisp Noise Cancellation App Review

3 February 2022

Noise Cancellation on Video Calls

Many people’s home working environments are far from ideal with background noise from kids playing, dogs barking, TVs in adjoining rooms or maybe building work going on.   What most people don’t appreciate is that it’s relatively easy to remove this noise.

What do Video Conferencing Apps Offer?

The three leading commercial video conferencing apps, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet all provide system settings that allow you to suppress noise.  They try to identify the speech component and filter everything else out.  They’re all reasonably effective at this and other than in a nuanced way it’s hard to separate any one from the pack.  What they won’t cover of course is where someone uses conventional telephony to dial into a meeting, as noise cancellation is only available if you’re using their PC or mobile apps.

Krisp Review

Crystal Clear calls

So you might be interested in Krisp.  Krisp is a stand-alone AI based noise cancelling app and is very efficient at suppressing background noise.  Krisp produces crystal-clear calls.   It works well on video conferences and also for call centres where operators can use it to supress the noise around them or do the same for someone calling in from a noisy location. Call centres can be noisy work environments and are increasingly moving to remote work where of course the background noise levels are harder to predict and control.

Krisp works in both directions

Krisp is unique in that it works both directions.  You can set it up to cancel noise on both incoming and outgoing audio, so it can be used to cancel background noise from your microphone going out and from your speakers or headphones coming in.  This can really make a difference where you’re working with someone who calls into a video conference using conventional telephony from a noisy office, train or station.  Krisp also blocks all acoustic and room echoes which makes it ideal for audio recordings as well.

Krisp can be tuned to be specific to your voice only

One of the issues with Hybrid work is that people will find themselves coming into work only to find themselves on video conference calls with others who are working from home that day.  This can result in a cacophony of noise in an open plan office with large numbers of video conferences going on from people’s desks.  Call centres often present the same situation.  To remedy this, Krisp’s AI engine can be trained to be specific to your voice and cut out all of the other voices around you.  This can be toggled on and off given you don’t always want to cut everyone around you out of a call.

Krisp are noise cancellation experts

Krisp are noise cancellation experts – it’s all they do and the evidence is that while noise cancellation in the three leading video conferencing apps works reasonably well, we think Krisp does a better job.   This is a specialist field which probably explains why Krisp has little or no competition as a stand-alone noise cancellation app.

It works on Windows and Mac and you can try it for free

Krisp runs on Windows or Mac and on my Core-i5 Windows-10 computer seems to use about 10% of processor power when it’s working, although they say they’re working on reducing that.   Krisp’s pricing isn’t going to break the bank.  It’s free for up to 120 minutes of noise cancellation per week and $5 per user per month for unlimited use, with better deals available for large teams.  It supports SSO and VDI and security isn’t an issue given the app processes all voice data on the client PC, it never gets out on to the web.  24/7 support is provided even for the free version.

Virtual backgrounds

Already there on the Mac version and coming shortly on the Windows version are virtual backgrounds for video conferencing, which works in a different way to most virtual backgrounds in that it’s not exclusive to one video conferencing app.  It’s set once and used everywhere.

So overall we really like Krisp, check it out and try it for free.  If you enjoyed our Krisp review then take a look at our other remote and hybrid work product reviews.

If you want to see it in action, here’s a nice review of it by BBC Click

Gren Gale is a consultant in Remote Work and Project Management and has been named as one of the top 19 Key Opinion Leaders globally in remote work in Who’s Who in Remote Working?  He is author of the Remote Project Manager and Remote Work The New Normal.

Articles and reviews on this site are written from an unbiased viewpoint. We only review products which are relevant to Remote Work or Project Management and ones we believe in. Once this Krisp Review was written we looked to see if some of the links could generate affiliate income. It won’t make us rich but it helps pay the rent!