Fix duplicate transcripts or mic bleed

If you're hearing echo or delayed audio, or if your transcript looks fragmented or duplicated, you might be experiencing mic bleed. This happens when one speaker’s voice is picked up by multiple microphones—usually when a speaker isn’t wearing headphones and their voice is captured by their own mic and another participant’s.

This article walks through how to resolve mic bleed using both automatic and manual methods, along with best practices to avoid it in future recordings.

Arrows demonstrating duplicate text / mic bleed.

Automatically fix duplicate transcriptions

If Descript detects mic bleed when a sequence is created, a message appears in the bottom-right corner of the editor: “Sections of (your_filename) have duplicate transcription, perhaps caused by mic bleed.” Click Fix to automatically remove duplicated text in the script.

Descript editor message with Fix button: Sections have duplicate transcription, perhaps caused by mic bleed

Mic bleed detection works best when each sequence track contains a single audio clip. If untranscribed tracks are present, Descript can still detect mic bleed—but alignment accuracy may be affected if those tracks are later removed.

Removes text, not audio

The Fix duplicate transcripts feature does not delete or mute audio—it only removes duplicated text from the script. You may still want to clean up the underlying audio manually in the Sequence Editor.

Manually initiate Fix Duplicate Transcripts

If Descript doesn’t automatically detect mic bleed, you can run the tool manually from the project files menu:

  1. Open the Project panel and make sure you're in the Files section.
  2. Click the More menu icon button to the right of the sequence.
  3. Select Advanced > Fix duplicate transcripts.

Revert the fix if needed

On rare occasions, Descript may incorrectly classify audio as mic bleed. If needed, you can revert the changes:

  1. Open the Project panel and make sure you're in the Files section.
  2. Click the More menu icon button to the right of the sequence.
  3. Select Advanced > Revert duplicate transcripts fix.

Select sequence tracks to include in your script

You can also control which tracks are included in your script using the Sequence Editor. This is especially useful when your sequence contains multiple audio tracks with overlapping content, such as mic bleed or duplicate recordings.

Excluding redundant tracks helps improve transcription accuracy and speaker labeling. We recommend isolating the cleanest track per speaker when working in multitrack sequences.

How to include or exclude sequence tracks

  1. Open the Sequence Editor.
  2. Click the ¡¡¡ icon on the track you want to modify.
  3. Select Include in script or Remove from script.