Edits / Features / Music & audio
Bad audio loses viewers faster than bad video. Edits puts the fixes one tap away: voice enhancement that pulls your voice out of the noise, volume ducking that drops the music whenever you speak, loudness matching so every clip plays at the same level, Instagram's trending audio tagged on post, your own imported sounds, beat markers, voiceover and a few hundred sound effects. Here's every tool, a six-step mix that takes five minutes, and the fixes when audio goes wrong.
All in the Audio menu, all free. The first two are the "clearer sound in one tap" pair - everything else is about the mix and the music.
Noise reduction and voice lift in one tap, per clip or project-wide.
Brings every clip to the same volume automatically.
Trending, recommended, original; search by vibe; tagged on post.
Reusable library for intros, stings, licensed tracks.
Music drops under speech and returns in the gaps.
Shows beats on the music track so cuts land on them.
Record onto the timeline; retake a line without re-recording the rest.
A few hundred, searchable, on their own track; trim like a clip.
About five minutes on a 30-second Reel. Do them in this order - enhancement first, music last - and the mix mostly takes care of itself.
Step 01 · 1 min
Select a clip, open Audio and tap Enhance. Background hum, room echo and traffic drop; the voice comes forward. It's the single biggest quality jump for anything recorded on a phone, and it's one tap.
Step 02 · 30 s
Clips shot in different places land at different volumes - one whisper, one shout. Turn on loudness matching and every clip is brought to the same level automatically, so nobody reaches for the volume button mid-Reel.
Step 03 · 1 min
Audio → pick a trending, recommended or original sound, or filter by vibe. Library sounds are Instagram's, so the Reel is tagged with them when you post from Edits - that's how trending audio lifts discovery. Your own files import into a reusable library too.
Step 04 · 10 s
With speech in the clip, switch on ducking. The music drops automatically whenever you talk and swells back in the gaps - the mix you'd otherwise spend ten minutes keyframing. Set the music's base level around 20–30%; ducking handles the rest.
Step 05 · 2 min
Turn on beat markers and white lines appear on the music track where the beats land - cut your clips on them and the edit feels locked to the sound. Add sound effects (a few hundred, searchable) on their own track, and record voiceover straight onto the timeline, retaking a single line without touching the rest.
Step 06 · 30 s
Most viewers hear Reels through a phone speaker, not earbuds. Play it once that way at normal volume: is the voice clear, is the music under it, does nothing peak? Then export at 1080p - audio goes out as AAC stereo, no watermark.
Starting points for the three most common Reel types. Set these, turn on ducking, then trust your ears on the phone speaker.
Enhance on, ducking on, music at 20–30% so it never competes. Captions carry the rest.
Music leads; keep clip audio low for texture; cut on beat markers; SFX on transitions.
Record voiceover after the cut; ducking under it; original clip audio low unless it's the point.
Rule of thumb: if discovery matters, use a library sound so the Reel is tagged and sits in that audio's feed. If brand consistency matters, import your own and accept no tag. Many creators do both - a trending track at low volume under their own voice. Trending audio, in depth.
Loudness matching was off and one clip set the level, or a clip's volume slider was down. Instagram also normalises loud audio downward.
Variable-frame-rate source clips (screen recordings, some Android cameras) confuse the timeline.
The track isn't licensed for your account type (business) or region, or imported audio was flagged.
Aggressive noise reduction on a very noisy clip, or applied twice.
Enhance, duck, match, tag - Edits does the mix so you can make the Reel.