Riverside

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

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Do not build this. Takes that survive a bad connection is the product, and it is the whole engineering problem.

Everybody records locally at full quality while the call runs over whatever the network manages, then the local files are uploaded and synchronised afterwards. That means capturing on each participant's machine, uploading in chunks during the call, surviving a browser crash, and aligning several tracks that started at slightly different moments on unsynchronised clocks. Getting the alignment wrong by a hundred milliseconds is audible.

WHEN TO KEEP PAYING
- You record interviews with guests you cannot ask to install anything
- Anything published, where a guest's audio dropping out is unrecoverable

WHEN TO BUILD
- Solo recording, or a co-host who will run their own recorder. Then the answer is much simpler and much better: **everybody records locally with their own software and sends you the file.** Free, higher quality than any platform, and it is what professional podcasts do

THE FREE VERSION THAT WORKS
- Each participant records their own audio locally while the conversation happens on any meeting service
- A clap or a countdown at the start gives you an alignment point that costs nothing
- You assemble the tracks afterwards in an editor
- The only real risk is somebody forgetting to press record, which a checklist solves

IF YOU BUILD THE SYNCHRONISED VERSION
- Record locally with MediaRecorder into chunks written out as they arrive, so a crash loses seconds rather than everything
- Upload chunks during the call, with resume, and reconcile at the end by hash
- Align on a shared timestamp exchanged at the start and refined against the drift you measure, not on wall clocks, which disagree
- A visible per-participant indicator that recording is actually happening and uploading is keeping up. That indicator is where trust lives
- Loudness normalisation per track to a broadcast target afterwards, which does more for the result than any editing

AND THE THING THAT IMPROVES A RECORDING MOST
Three ffmpeg filters — loudness normalisation, a high-pass to remove rumble, and gentle noise reduction — improve a recording more than any platform feature. That is an afternoon.

THE ONE-LINE VERSION
Buy it for guests. For yourself, record locally and send the files — it is free and it sounds better.