Cannot get stereo audio no matter what

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
March 4, 2024
3 replies
19 views

I've enabled original sound for musicians (and yes, clicked the button at the top to actually turn it on), enabled Stereo in the audio settings. Even went to my account settings to enable and force stereo audio for clients. I've recorded the meeting onto the computer. And sound is mixed down to mono... The music I'm playing is stereo, the microphone device is sending stereo, but Zoom is outputting and recording a mixed down to mono version which sounds hollow because the L and R channels of the source are out of phase and when they're simply added they cancel each other out. How do I get Zoom to actually record and send stereo audio?

Audio

bstrelko

Community Champion | Customer

Which audio device (please include both hardware and driver details + OS info) is being used as the desired stereo microphone/input?

Is this the only source of stereo audio, or is stereo audio also coming in via content-sharing, far-end participants, etc?

This info will help to inform next steps for troubleshooting.

K

kmcwAuthor

Newcomer

Thank you for replying. I'm running Windows 11 and the microphone device is Yamaha AG06 USB audio mixer. This is the only source

storyhub

Community Super Champion | Customer

Unfortunately, I can see that Zoom does NOT RECORD STEREO for local or cloud for either the mic or the screen shared audio. The recorded audio is a mono m4a file. The stereo selections are only for the streamed audio during the meeting. However, there is a work around. You will need to install OBS Studio and NDI. You can route your audio (and your video) thru OBS Studio, output the audio (and video) using NDI. Zoom supports NDI and it can be selected in the audio and video settings. Then make 2 separate recordings using OBS Studio and Zoom. Then combine and sync the 2 in a non-linear editing application such as Premiere Pro. Although this sounds a bit complicated it is doable.

K

kmcwAuthor

Newcomer

Hi and thank you for this. However what I'm observing is that I'm not getting stereo audio even during the meeting. I have my headphones plugged into my phone in order to check and the sound is still mono (the two channels merged together and played through both sides). I can tell because there's a huge difference in how it sounds due to the phase cancellation I mentioned.

storyhub

Community Super Champion | Customer

Thank you for the message. I connect my Yamaha AG06 via its own USB cable and it definitely transmits stereo sound (which I can confirm in OBS). I select the Yamaha input device as the Zoom microphone. In Zoom settings, I set Audio to Original Sound with Stereo ticked. I start a meeting and turn on the Original sound (from the top left button). I join the meeting from my phone and put on my Beyerdynamic headphones. I play music through the Yamaha mixer and on my phone I can hear the audio distorted in the exact same way that happens when I merge the L and R channels of the music (e.g. by opening the file in Adobe Audacity and converting to Mono). This happens because L and R are out of phase with each other. It's not coming from the mixer, because as I said OBS is picking up proper stereo when using the exact same input device as Zoom. Zoom seems to be merging the channels even when Stereo is enabled.

Perhaps it's the Zoom client on my phone that's the issue. I don't see an option to enable stereo on my phone that's joining the meeting, even though I enabled it in the host account's settings as per Enabling stereo audio - Zoom Support

So one of the reason I asked for a diagram is that you have missed describing a critical connection which would be obvious in a diagram - the connection between OBS Studio and Zoom. There are a number of ways to do this and some have a mono selection. So please describe in detail how you connected audio out from OBS to Mic in on Zoom or did you connect AG06 audio directly to Zoom using just Windows. There is obviously a mono configuration in this area.

R

razzkazz

Newcomer

when you are sharing the screen, and selecting "share sound" there is dropdown menu there that you can change the default mono audio to "Stereo (high fidelity)"

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