Audio quality issues

Hi @Fred-Steen 

There are a few things you will need to do:

1)  Set your Audio Settings like this:

2)  When you are in your Meeting, look for the Original Sound button (top left) and turn in ON:

3) Use a good quality external microphone. Try to avoid using your computer's built in microphone.

4)  Use headphones for Zoom - so that your microphone does not pick up the sound of other people talking or playing in the Meeting (this is essential for what you are trying to do). You can have your own music coming through speakers - but do not let audio from Zoom come out on speakers in the Zoom - certainly not when you are un-muted.

5)   Make sure everyone else in Zoom mutes themselves (with the Mute button in Zoom) when they are not talking or playing. This is also essential for good results.

6)  Stay muted yourself when YOU are NOT talking or playing - and encourage everyone else in the meeting to follow the same steps above if they are wanting to play into the meeting in a similar way.

7)  Try to be in an environment with dampening acoustics - try to have as many soft surfaces as possible.

😎  Do not let anyone dial-in into the Meeting with "Telephone Audio" using a Zoom dial-in telephone number. This inherently drops the audio quality of the entire meeting. 

Hope this helps.

Rupert   

Thank you Rupert, 

All the steps you mention are in place as recommended . However, the question takes it a step further.  In the settings "Suppress background noise", there is no option below "LOW", that is, no suppression at all. Is there a way to completely remove all suppression/ sound enhancement settings. The sound has to be "pure source". Among the devices that I use, I have specifically another one (DBX ASF2) to take care of unwanted echo and feedback in the setup. So there is no need to use software from Zoom in addition. The issue with Zoom is that even in the LOW noise suppression, it is still too agressive to let through the nuances and subtilities of music or pronunciation. Therefore, I need to turn off all the settings that tend to  modify the original sound. Is the a way to do exactly that ?

Thank you all for your reply and help.

@Fred-Steen were you able to make any progress with your problem?

Hi Fred,

I host and participate in a couple of musical open mics. We've had this recurring problem of certain instruments and musical styles creating distortion, sounding similar to a bad phase shifter. We started with the usual "Turn on Original Sound".  Open audio settings and shut off Echo cancellation. After much fooling around with the audio settings in Zoom, we discovered the culprit at least in Windows 10: the Windows audio drivers are conflicting with the Zoom settings. If you go to the bottom of the audio settings page, there's an "Advanced" link. Click. Then you'll  see "Signal processing by windows audio device drivers" with a pull down window that we be showing the default "Auto". Use the drop down menu and select the "Off/Raw" setting. That solved it for us. I don't know why Zoom's default isn't the "Raw" setting, since this conflict is affecting so many meetings. Since this same thing happens when Zooming with Apple products, I assume there's a similar culprit there.