Auto-leveling

Auto-leveling helps keep your audio consistent throughout the composition without needing to manually adjust volume for each clip. When enabled, Descript automatically adjusts the loudness of individual audio clips to a standard level (around -16 dB), so everything sounds more balanced across your project.

Enable or disable auto-leveling

Toggle auto-leveling on or off in your App settings or for individual projects in the Project settings menu.

  • To change the setting across all projects:
    1. From the Drive View, click your profile icon in the top-right corner.
    2. Select Settings.
    3. Under App settings, toggle Automatic volume levels.

App settings with automatic volume levels toggle

  • To enable or disable auto-leveling for a specific project:
    1. Open the project in the editor.
    2. Click the File menu in the top left corner.
    3. Select Project settings.
    4. Toggle Perform automatic leveling on clips.

Project settings with automatic leveling toggle

Why isn’t this clip leveling?

If auto-leveling doesn’t boost a clip you know is too quiet, check for peaks in volume across the clip—such as loud sneezes or unexpected background noise. These spikes can throw off the leveling algorithm.

To resolve this, use the Blade tool to split the clip before and after the volume spike, then re-run auto-leveling on the quieter portion.

Clip split around volume spike before re-running auto-leveling