sustained loud noise disables some participants microphones

[Thetomb]

Two days in a row, I played a loud 25 second horn blast to a meeting of about 10 participants.  After the sound finishes, some of the participants were unable to speak via their microphones, eventhough they were unmuted.  This even happened to me as the host.  The first day it was live.  The second day it was a recording of the same sound.  When I went to the Zoom Meeting Audio test for speakers and microphones, the speakers worked but not the microphone, but when I got back to the meeting, people could hear me.  Others were still unable to be heard.  Fortunately it was at the end of the meeting.  Is there a quick in-meeting way to restore microphones of those paticipants that were affected?

[Ray_Harwood]

Zoom does noise control at several stages of audio processing.  If you had an extremely loud ongoing sound, my guess is that Zoom's noise limiters acted to suppress the loudness of the sound being sent by your computer (and possibly also from the Zoom server), and once that noise limiter reached the fullest suppression point, it takes a few seconds to "recover" as it measures the new "reasonable" sound level and begins the process of easing the limit off.

Not sure if your meeting depends on the loudness of an actual airhorn... but you might consider recording the horn with your recording volume level adjusted pretty low and editing the sound file so that the loudness level meets your needs, then play the sound through your desktop audio or something.  There are a number of techniques if you're willing to work at it a bit to make it work better overall.

Consider opening a meeting with a couple of attendees, turn on the recording, talk, sound the horn, ask others to speak a few seconds, then turn off the recording... then upload just the audio file (or post a link to it on DropBox, etc.), and I'll take a look at it with a couple of audio tools I've got.

[Thetomb]

Thank you for your reply Ray.  I can drop the recorded sound into Audacity and quiet it down to realistic limits for future use.  I may have set the Original Sound to On, which probably didn't help matters during the original live performance (I had no idea it was going to be that loud!!).  If I can't get it under control, I'll send you a copy.

[Ray_Harwood]

Original Sound  on could make a big difference. The expectation by the Zoom client is that you will condition the audio input to the appropriate level. Let me know what you find!