Newcomer

Question

Original Sound by Default

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
November 2, 2022
68 replies
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Hello - just updated zoom today (11.02.22) and it seems like Original Sound needs to be turned on manually every time now.

For the last few months it was already always on once I did it initially ... and this was so amazing. No more messing up meetings where I share audio or workshops where we're working on music things and I just know its going to sound amazing from the beginning without the extra awkward "wait let me turn on original sound".

Is there a way for me to turn original sound on and let it be that way forever on the newest version? If not...can this become a thing please?

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K

kareebee

Newcomer

Also remembering to turn it back on once the meeting has started and you reconnect a cable or get kicked out and it defaults to OFF. SO frustrating! People screaming at you because they can't hear the music. UGH. So unprofessional.

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Rayco

Newcomer

Still no fix and not response from ZOOM, typical shoddy customer service.

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doremiteacher

Newcomer

NONE OF US (the people complaining) use headphones.

Here's why I can't:

I am a GROUP music teacher. Most of my students are in person - with a few online. The online student's keep themselves muted UNTIL I ask them to unmute to play for us. If I was using headphones, the rest of the class would not be able to hear them.

I have to push the "original sound" button for every class so that the RECORDING of the class is useable.

The online students have to push the "original sound" button so that we can hear them play when they are unmuted.

Other people have very similar situations to me.

You can not teach an IN PERSON GROUP with headphones on. If people choose to join online, that is their choice.

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Rayco

Newcomer

It seems very obvious now the ZOOM are IGNORING the thousands of customers who are asking for a serious omission from the later versions to be fixed. Despite repeated explanations of why it would no affect anyone else.

Like many others I have decided to try WEBEX for music meetings.

https://pricing.webex.com/us/en/hybrid-work/calling/?utm_medium=website&utm_source=wdc&utm_campaign=n/a&utm_content=hero&team=wdc

Give it a look, download and try FREE version, if you don't like it it cost you nothing.

Maybe if the customer base drops they might start listening......

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dbshin

Newcomer

Dear Zoom team,

This is definitely a UX issue. The green logo with the checkmark next to "Original Sound: ..." makes it seem like it's associated with OS, and the green checkmark makes it look like it's on. Only after toggling things here and there one realizes that the green checkmark has nothing to do with OS. The words "On" and "Off" are easily lost when people toggle the option for "Original Sound" in the audio setting and assume it's ON. Heck, even have a little note that says "Please toggle Original Sound ON in the meeting as it is OFF by default." The version update that turned it off by default created massive issues for musicians everywhere.

There has to be a better visual cue/toggle for original sound. Make the wording RED or something to better indicate it's off. Put it away from the green checkmark logo. Put it as a clear text-based option toggle along with where all the rest of the audio settings are (lower left icon with the microphone).

I have discussed this with the support team and they are now aware that many users are frustrated thinking that their original sound is not working although it is due to the fact that they are unaware that it is OFF by default. Perhaps it's a financial decision to make it OFF by default because OS creates higher overhead for Zoom's servers. I get that. But for others, the interface is not intuitive enough (took me a while to figure out what the issue was, even though I consider myself technologically adept).

Please try to understand the user base as many are relying on this as part of their livelihood, especially musicians who teach remotely and may not be tech savvy. Even if it is OFF by default, make it a bit more obvious that it is off. Make design decisions that accommodate these users. It will go a long way to foster good will.

Khirschmann

Newcomer

"Perhaps it's a financial decision to make it OFF by default because OS creates higher overhead for Zoom's servers." This statement does not make sense since original sound is sending through unfiltered sound. Original Sound should have less overhead on Zoom's servers since the noise filtering is not needed (unless this is being processed on the client end).

This is just my feeling, but it doesn't seem like this was a financial decision, but rather a UX decision. Based on what they have said here, it seems they were receiving too many complaints from users that were turning this feature on by accident. I'm not sure I believe that either since it involves several steps. But even if it were true, the fact that they made this decision based on a series of assumptions without opportunity to comment is problematic at best.

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dbshin

Newcomer

That of course was speculation on my part. It’s possible that original sound uses higher bandwidth with higher audio fidelity, and regular audio uses higher compression? Regardless, the current setup severely lessens the user experience.

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bpmusic

Newcomer

Just want to add my voice to the chorus as a paying customer who is baffled at the complete disregard for their customers that Zoom is showing here. Jennife's dismissive response that Zoom does not care what music teachers require is mind-blowingly bad customer service.

Anyone found a good alternative? My plan still has several months left on it but I'd like to start trying the alternatives and see what works best. WebEx looks pretty good but I'm curious about some of the options geared towards musicians.

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Rayco

Newcomer

Hi BP,

I've been trying out WEBEX and it seems to be more suited, less bells and whistles but that will all save Processing overheads.

Can see more people especially tutors changing over to Webex.

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bpmusic

Newcomer

Thanks, Rayco. I'm going to trial it with a couple students and see how it goes.

Any comments on how it deals with sharing sheet music, audio recordings etc?

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

Hello, All in this thread,

I have submitted a feature request to allow the account admin to choose how Original Sound is used on your accounts. So, I am asking the devs of Zoom to add a switch in the account settings for Original Sound to be toggled off or on. I am still determining how the UI will look or work on this, but I will follow this case and the ticket that I submitted to the Engineering team for Zoom and let you all know of the progress as often as possible.

Please know that I volunteer my time to the Community, so I cannot always check every day, but I promise to check on progress as often as possible.

Thank you to all of the folks in this thread for your understanding and patience while we work to deliver happiness.

Regards,

Brandon

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bpmusic

Newcomer

Thanks, Brandon. You seem to get it and I'm sure we all appreciate your efforts here. Honestly, I'd rather not switch but this feature makes it particularly difficult since not every student is very technically savvy and the current unchangeable default means that their instrument sound is suppressed. Just for clarity for the devs, I'd like to reiterate exactly what the problem is from my perspective (since there is potentially more than one way to solve the problem), and some possible solutions. Please share this with the development team, perhaps one of these solutions will be acceptable or spur a solution I haven't thought of.

• The current noise suppression algorithm blocks the sound from a musical instrument if "original sound" is not on.

• The teacher can set their own sound for every session easily enough. It's a pain to do repeatedly, multiple times a day, but if this was the only issue it would be a mere annoyance and not a deal-breaker.

• The teacher has no way to address (or even see) the settings of a student's sound, and the current default every meeting is that the student's settings are entirely unusable due to the the student's instrument being inaudible. Many students (particularly children and older adults) are not particularly tech savvy and have difficulty with this. Since students are paying for a teacher's time, time spent troubleshooting the platform is a deal-breaker.

• If the student is using a phone or ipad to access the service, the correct options are difficult to access, if they can be accessed at all.

From my perspective, there are a number of possible solutions here.

1. Just change it back to how things were before, so that meetings start by default with the same settings used in the previous meeting (i.e., default = previous meeting)

2. Give the meeting host an option to "enable original sound" for all or selected participants (i.e., default is set by host)

3. If a user has "original sound for musicians" selected in their audio profile, require they choose to enable/disable original sound for each new meeting (i.e., there is no "default" at all if this radio button is selected in the audio profile - a choice must be made to enter a meeting).

4. Add an additional option in the audio profile to "start all meetings with original sound" (default behavior is set by the user in their own settings).

I can see how there would be difficulties or trade-offs with all of these, but it seems like one of these solutions should be acceptable to the development team.

Obviously #1 is easy to implement since the program already behaved this way previously and they changed it - but it's understandable that for some other users this might be an undesirable outcome. So pros are quick/easy implementation, cons are that it might annoy a different subset of users.

#2 seems potentially challenging to implement (not knowing your software architecture), assuming that settings are controlled locally I expect it is a substantial change to allow it to be set remotely. Also might be regarded as a security concern.

#3 seems like possibly the best compromise in implementation. It wouldn't affect users at all if they don't first choose "original sound" in their audio profile; it would only affect users that are interested in that functionality and would be a helpful reminder and make it easier (users don't have to figure out how to change the setting since they are prompted)

#4 would be good for people who mostly use original sound, but possibly less so for people who use zoom a lot for different reasons and only want original sound sometimes. It would be a nice option to have for those that use original sound most of the time, and is presumably not a huge implementation task (since the settings options are frequently changed and this indeed was possible before).

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

Hello @bpmusic,

Thank you for your feedback. First, let me say that the developers do not monitor this channel because obviously we want them writing code and not monitoring a community channel. That said, I have linked this thread to the submission so that they can see the frustrations that folks on this thread are having with the change for this component.

As far as going back to the way things were in the past, I believe that that ship has sailed. As I have stated previously, a majority of our customer base has asked for the setting to be the way that it is today.

What I am asking the development team for is a way that an Admin of the account can choose in the account settings to determine if the original sound should be off or on by default for every meeting. The reason why I think that this is the best bet for this enhancement is because:

An admin can go into the account setting and turn this off or on for everyone on the account.
An admin can choose a group level setting that would allow a subset of users to have this on by default for every meeting on their account.
If this is toggled on by default, users without technical savvy will not have the ability to turn this off (if locked in the settings) or have the ability to determine how they want this setting on their personal settings (if unlocked).
A single user can choose on or off by default in the account settings which would mimic their personal settings.

IMO this is the only possible way to make everyone happy. If you or someone else can think of another way "other than going back to the way it was" I am all ears.

I have been working with admins for four + years, so I do consider myself an SME when it comes to this product. That said, I do not know everything and I am completely open to more suggestions.

Again, the Engineers do have the link to this thread in the submission ticket and I have pointed out the urgency for a quick solution to this issue for the music community.

Thank you so much for your suggestions and feedback, we do not take that for granted. I hope that you all know that. We (Zoom) has a lot of building to do on this platform and we have to put priorities based on customer needs. Of course we would like to make all of you priority number one, but you should all know that this is not a feasible action in the software world. We try to build and change and fix as fast as we can, and some things just take time to be resolved.

I hope that you all understand and can be patient while I wait for feedback from the Developers.

I have set up a method for me to check on the ticket everyday, so I do promise that as soon as I hear something. I will pass that information on to you.

My hope is that the team will see the concern for this component and develop a switch that will allow "original sound" to be toggled on or off by default. I do not write code, I just support it, so I do not know how difficult or how "heavy of a lift" this is for my team. But, I will know in the coming weeks.

Thanks,

Brandon

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doremiteacher

Newcomer

Thank you, Brandon!

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

Hello All,

I spoke to the Zoom team on Friday, and we have a feature being developed now that should be ready in the fall; we believe this feature will resolve the Original Sound concerns you have spoken so passionately about. I cannot divulge the information about the component yet, but I will point everyone to the public documentation once it is published. Until that time, please be patient with us while our developers work to deliver happiness to all Zoom Communities.

Kind regards,

Brandon

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doremiteacher

Newcomer

Thank you, Brandon. I anxiously await the solution!

YaBoiB

Community Champion | Employee

Hello All,

Could you disregard the previous steps posted in this thread? Zoom is working on an advanced way to configure the setting for Original Sound and will post it here soon.

Regards,

Brandon