Clean up an interview recording on iPhone

The interview problem

Field interviews collect more than answers: café rooms, street noise, HVAC in a quiet office. When you edit later, the guest’s voice competes with that bed. You want cleaning that respects speech and does not ship the raw tape to a server you do not control.

How to clean the take in ARP

1. Get a file ARP can open. Share/export into Files first — ARP does not open Voice Memos’ private store.
2. Add the interview. Recordings → Add Recording, and pick it from Files.
3. Run ARP. Speech-heavy material gets RNNoise and clarity on-device. Compare before and after.
4. Export for edit. M4A free; Premium unlocks 24-bit WAV and AIFF at the source sample rate.

A practical journalist workflow

• Record with the phone as close as is polite — cleaning is not a substitute for gain and placement.
• Keep the original file; ARP’s cleaned export is a new take you can archive beside the raw.
• Use in-app metrics when you need to show an editor what changed. Same methodology as the Listen demos.

Honest limits

ARP will not fix a mic that was too far away, clipped peaks, or two people talking over each other.