Noise Gator vs NoiseTorch-ng

Noise Gator processes microphone audio in real time to reduce noise, then sends the cleaned signal to a virtual audio device for other apps. It is free under the MIT license and runs on Windows and macOS. Discord, Teams, and Zoom are named as apps that can use the virtual device as a microphone input. DeepFilterNet is the default denoising engine, with dual-pass RNNoise as a lighter fallback. The audio pipeline also includes a highpass filter, suppression control, a voice-activity-driven noise gate, three-band EQ, and automatic gain normalization. Bluetooth headset audio is supported, and the device menu refreshes when devices connect or disconnect. The app can install VB-Cable on Windows or BlackHole on macOS automatically. Prebuilt binaries are available from GitHub Releases; the ZIP includes the executable and ONNX Runtime DLL. DeepFilterNet’s runtime and an approximately 8 MB model download on first use, with SHA256 verification. Settings are saved to a TOML file for the next launch, and headless mode supports scripted or server use. The latest listed release is v0.1.2. Building from source requires stable Rust 1.85 or later, plus MinGW-w64 or MSVC on Windows.

NoiseTorch-ng is a free, open-source Linux application that reduces microphone noise in real time. It uses RNNoise and works with PulseAudio or PipeWire, creating a virtual “Filtered Microphone” for applications such as OBS, Mumble, and Discord. The project describes setup as a two-click process and distributes the app as a small, statically linked binary. A Voice Activation Threshold can be set as high as 95%, or set to 0% to dampen noise without deactivating the microphone. Optional output filtering routes applications through a virtual “Filtered Headphones” device. Microphone filtering adds 10 ms of inherent latency; output filtering is approximately 100 ms with PulseAudio. The project reports a suspected update-server and repository breach, says no malicious code was found, and says updates are retrieved from GitHub releases. GitHub reports no SECURITY.md file or published security advisories. Troubleshooting guidance, including how to collect debug logs, is in the project wiki. The latest listed release is v0.12.2, released June 17.