How to Balance Podcast Audio in Premiere Pro

Balance audio levels in Premiere Pro when two people were recorded on separate mics, so both voices sit at the same volume and the final export hits a steady podcast loudness.

By Petrus Sheya

October 3, 2026 · 5 min read

Two mics almost never record at the same level, so one person ends up louder than the other. The fix is to match their loudness in the Essential Sound panel, clean each track, then send both through one submix with a dynamics effect that keeps the voices level.

These steps are for Premiere Pro on desktop (Windows or Mac). They assume each person is on their own audio track.

How to balance two mic tracks in Premiere Pro

  1. Tag the mic clips as Dialogue. Open Window > Essential Sound, select every clip on both mic tracks and click Dialogue.
  2. Auto-match the loudness. With the clips still selected, open the Loudness section and click Auto-Match. Premiere brings both speakers to the same average volume.
  3. Open the Audio Track Mixer. Go to Window > Audio Track Mixer. Click the small arrow at the top left of the panel to show the effect slots above each track.
  4. Add DeNoise to each mic track. Click an empty effect slot on the first mic track and pick Noise Reduction/Restoration > DeNoise. Do the same on the second mic track. Adding it here applies it to the whole track, so you don't have to drop it on every clip.
  5. Add an EQ to each mic track. In the next empty slot on each mic track, add Filter and EQ > Parametric Equalizer. Cut the low rumble and any boomy or harsh frequencies so both voices sound clear.
  6. Add a submix track. Go to Sequence > Add Tracks, set Audio Submix Tracks to 1 and click OK.
  7. Route both mic tracks to the submix. At the bottom of each mic track in the Audio Track Mixer, click the output menu (it says Mix by default) and choose the new submix.
  8. Add Dynamics Processing to the submix. Click an empty effect slot on the submix track and pick Amplitude and Compression > Dynamics Processing. This evens out the loud and quiet moments of both speakers at once, so nobody jumps out of the mix.
  9. Export with Loudness Normalization. Go to File > Export > Media. In the Effects section, turn on Loudness Normalization and set the target loudness to -15 LUFS and the true peak to -1 dB.

Play back a section where both people talk over each other before you export. If one voice still sits higher, nudge that track's fader in the Audio Track Mixer.

Clean up crosstalk with Adobe Podcast

When both mics pick up both voices, you hear an echo of each person on the other track. An extra pass through Adobe Podcast's Enhance Speech cleans most of that up.

  1. Export the audio only, as AAC mono.
  2. Upload the file to Adobe Podcast and run Enhance Speech at about 35% for voice and 30% for sound and music. Try other values if your source audio is noisier or cleaner.
  3. Download the enhanced file and import it into your project.
  4. Mute the original mic tracks and the submix.
  5. Drop the enhanced audio on a new track, lined up with the start of the video.
  6. Export the final video with the same Loudness Normalization settings as step 9.

Use Auto Ducking as a quick first try

If you want a fast result, Auto Ducking can lower one track while the other person talks. Ducking lives under the Music type in Essential Sound, so this is a workaround.

  1. Leave the louder speaker's clips tagged as Dialogue.
  2. Select the other speaker's clips and click Clear Audio Type, then click Music.
  3. Turn on Ducking, set Duck Against to the Dialogue icon and click Generate Keyframes.

Check the result by ear. It works best when one person does most of the talking.

Keyframe the levels by hand

If you have time, you get the cleanest result by turning each track down whenever its speaker is quiet. That cuts out the other person's voice bleeding into that mic.

  1. Double-click the empty space in a mic track's header to make the track taller and show the volume line.
  2. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) and click the volume line to add a keyframe just before and just after a section where that speaker is quiet.
  3. Drag the line between those keyframes down.
  4. Repeat for every quiet section on both tracks.

It's slow on a long episode, so save it for shows where you aren't working to a deadline.

Once the audio is done, you can cut the episode into short clips. How to Find the Best Clip-Worthy Moments in Long Footage Fast shows how to pick them, and How to Turn One Long Video Into a Week of Content shows how to schedule them.

FAQ

Can I use Premiere's built-in DeNoise instead of iZotope RX? Yes. Premiere's own DeNoise effect works in the same spot in the workflow. iZotope RX does a cleaner job, and even its cheaper Elements version includes the de-noise plugin, so it's worth buying if you find it on sale.

What loudness should I export a podcast at? A -15 LUFS target with a -1 dB true peak works well for podcast video. Set both in the Loudness Normalization effect when you export.

Caption Your Videos in Minutes

and keep people watching

Try Sycamore