Aedon: a privacy-first Mac app that cleans and styles your voice for calls
Two months ago I posted here about a free weekend prototype called Voice Enhancer. The idea was simple: how can I make cheap microphones sound better? That first version was rough: Homebrew install, no notarization, no proper installer, and mostly a DSP chain. Since then, I rebuilt it properly with a university colleague who also works with audio/DJ setups. The result is Aedon — named after the Greek word for nightingale. Aedon shows up as a virtual microphone on your Mac. In your call you select aedon as your mic, and it processes your voice before it reaches the call. Problem Raw mic audio on calls often sounds thin, muddy, noisy, or harsh. Built-in Mac mics, Bluetooth earbuds, and cheap headsets are convenient, but they usually do not sound polished. macOS also does not give you a proper real-time voice chain for calls. I wanted something that could make everyday microphones sound clearer, fuller, and easier to listen to. What It Does learns your voice from a short local tuning step removes background noise with a trained AI denoising model adapts your voice to four presets: Clear, Broadcast, Podcast, Warm improves low-sample-rate mics, including Bluetooth earbuds, with an AI upsampler runs voice processing locally on your Mac, optimized for Apple Silicon Privacy Voice processing runs locally on your Mac. Aedon does not upload your voice for processing. Comparison Compared with Krisp, Aedon focuses less on cloud noise cancellation and more on local voice enhancement with one-time licensing. Compared with basic mic processing, Aedon also lets you change the tone of your voice in real time with different presets. Demos There are before/after audio demos here: https://aedon.app The demos show the same source audio before and after Aedon processing. Pricing Aedon is currently in beta. Standard: $39 one-time payment, includes 1 year of updates Update renewal: $19/year if you want future updates after that Lifetime: $79 one-time payment, includes lifetime updates 7-day free trial, no card required Each license covers up to 2 Macs Any money from the beta will go into training better and more optimized audio models. Right now we are limited by the GPUs we have access to. About Me My name is Tarlan Ahadli. I am a PhD candidate at ELTE in Budapest, working mainly on acoustic machine learning technologies. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarlanahad/ Github: https://github.com/tarlanahad/ Feedback I would really appreciate feedback from Mac users. Especially: Does the installer work smoothly? Does the virtual mic appear in your call apps? Is the pricing clear? What feels confusing or unfinished? I am the developer, so if something breaks, tell me directly and I will fix it.
已收集讨论
looks very vibe coded, is it? genuinely curious, no hate.
Clearly
I have been coding around 10 years now. I don't use stackoverflow anymore. Of course AI helps with small things boilerplate, debugging, trying ideas faster. But I would not call this project vibe coded. For simple apps maybe you can just tell an agent what to do and ship it. For something like this, it becomes messy very fast. Aedon got two AI models we trained and integrated ourselves. I need to understand the code because I am the one who will debug audio bugs, model problems, and user reports later. If I let an agent write something I don’t understand, I will just suffer later. So yes, AI helped in some parts, but the main architecture, audio/model work, and shipping decisions are mine and is based on lots of hard R&D work.
I didn't download the app, but I listened to the demo and a couple points of honest feedback: your VA does not sound pleasant. I'd highly recommend asking a friend with a pleasant voice or even hiring a VA to read some sample clips. related to the first point, I found the "before" speech unpleasant to listen to and the "after" speech also unpleasant to listen to. It wasn't immediately obvious how much was the VA vs the software, but the net effect is it made me uninterested in trying it out for myself.
Thanks so much for the feedback. I will work in those points.
nit but would have loved to see an mp4 instead of a gif here so i could hear the product in effect : ))
you can actually visit the website aedon.app, see some demos and you can download and try it for free. Would really appreciate any constructive feedback.
The local processing angle is the strongest part for me, especially compared with subscription-heavy noise-cancellation tools. A short MP4 with before/after audio would probably make the value much clearer than a GIF. I’d also be curious how reliable the virtual mic is in Zoom and Teams, since that integration is usually where these tools either become daily-use apps or get dropped.
Got it. Thanks so much for the feedback. I will make mp4 as a demo ASAP.
the local processing angle is what makes this worth trying over Krisp. Krisp's noise cancellation is good but the subscription model for something that's basically running a model on your CPU never sat right with me. the voice tuning step is interesting too. curious how well the Broadcast preset holds up on a MacBook Air mic vs an actual condenser. also, does the virtual mic show up reliably in Zoom and Teams or are there any quirks there?
I will share a video clip where user can see app working on different platforms and hear the difference.
The local processing and privacy-first approach are probably the most interesting parts for me. Out of curiosity, what's the average CPU usage during a Zoom or Teams call on Apple Silicon Macs?
It's negligible. I can't really have luxury of using bigger AI models as I want the processing to be real time.
I am the developer, so if something breaks, tell me directly and I will fix it. There are currently 2 PR in your existing app - which you have as open sourced - but haven't updated. In fact, you haven't updated it since it was released on r/macapps I'm concerned And I hate the idea that you open sourced a solution…to release a private, profit version 6 weeks later.
Short: I wanted to publish something genuinely polished and useful, and that required real R&D, design, and infrastructure costs. Long: the free Voice Enhancer repo is not being taken down or made private. I shared it because I thought people here might find it useful. Aedon came as a natural extension of that project, but it became much larger than the prototype. I worked with someone who has better voice/podcast setup experience, paid for frontend/design help, bought a second-hand GPU for model training, paid for the Apple Developer account, and spent a lot of time on the installer, notarization, virtual mic reliability, local tuning, and licensing/trial system. You are right about the open PRs though. I should not have left them sitting there, and I will review them.
I feel a video demo of the actual app and how it works will help you get some users possibly.
This is in a category where “does it sound better in practice” matters more than almost anything else, because voice enhancement tools live or die on artifacts and latency rather than feature lists. The interesting technical question here is where the enhancement chain is actually running. Real-time denoise + voice adaptation + upsampling on Apple Silicon is non-trivial if you’re targeting sub-10ms perceived latency for calls. Are you using CoreAudio Audio Units, or a custom virtual audio driver layer?
I want to try but it requries installation than drag and drop
u/armolik is it possible to have your app as drag and drop?
How to clear uninstall the app after trial? I still see Aedon from setting > sound > input > aedon virtual. Please give instructions how to clear uninstall it. thanksb
...or buy a platform agnostic mic and digital adapter for your Mac and/or PC.
The on-your-Mac and no-subscription part is exactly right, that's the stuff people here actually care about. One honest thought since privacy is your whole pitch -> an app like this can hear everything you say on a call, so people are trusting it with a lot. Anything that proves it really stays on your computer and nothing ever leaves would win people over. Even just saying that plainly somewhere obvious would help. That's what this crowd rewards.
Agreed. Privacy is key
这条评论已在来源处删除。
Thanks so much for your nice words. I really appreciate it.