How Enable Multiple USB Microphones as Input into Zoom on macOS?

[planewryter]

On a Mac machine running macOS Ventura and Zoom v5.13.7 (or later): How can Zoom be coerced to accept simultaneous, mixed input from multiple USB microphones (e.g., at an HOA Board Meeting with multiple people presenting, discussing, et cetera)?

It is amazing (not in a good way) that Zoom does not seem to support multiple, mixed, audio inputs. How can someone on the Basic (Free) plan submit a Feature Request to Zoom's Product Management/Developers regarding such an obvious omission?

Many thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer on this egregious limitation of an otherwise excellent service.

[planewryter]

@marilynereiche,

Thank you for replying.

Several times (before & after receiving your kind note), I looked in macOS | Zoom | Preferences | Audio.

In my Zoom client (v5.13.7) there is no "Multiple" option I can find.

Is "Multiple" an MS-Windows feature? Or, perhaps, it requires a paid Zoom plan?

Your thoughts? 

[Gauranga]

I have a paid Zoom plan but still cannot use multiple USB microphones. It just doesn't work. I have to manually switch from one mic to the other. if there would be a shortcut key to switch that might help. But there isn't. People have to wait when they want to speak until I have switched the microphone. There must be another way of doing this!

I recently read once Zoom detects a minimum of 3 microphones a setting will be available to use them. But I don't get this audio setting. It is very frustrating. I grapple with this for almost a year. Any help would be appreciated. I don't want to go down the route of buying a XLR audio interface such as the Focusright as well as two new microphones. This very costly option would definitely solve the issue. There must be a way to do this with my existing Yeti X and my wireless Behringer microphone. 

[Ray_Harwood]

Greetings, all,

The Zoom Platform can’t be “all things to all people,” especially where there are other avenues to accomplish configurations needed by only a few. 

The common solution to multiple simultaneous audio inputs on both Windows and Mac is to use an audio mixer – either external hardware or internal software – and use the single output of that mixer as your input to Zoom.

This can be relatively easily done on both Mac and Windows at no cost by installing OBS Studio software. Configure audio inputs in OBS to grab each of your desired mics, and set OBS’s output up to include the mixed audio. Then in Zoom, select the OBS output in the Mic input. 

[Zoom_Hobbyist]

The use of multiple USB microphones, simultaneously, as one device, is possible; Zoom does, in fact, support this.

To some extent, one's operating system may lend more or less support to this.

For example, MacOS allows one to create what Apple describes as an Aggregate Audio Device (multiple USB microphones combined together to be one sound source):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102171 

A Windows PC can make use of special applications to achieve this as described by MXL Microphones on this support page:

https://support.mxlmics.com/support/solutions/articles/66000492476-can-i-connect-multiple-usb-microp... 

Linux will likely support this in the future, at some point, if not already.

MXL Microphones offer special USB microphones for Zoom Rooms that a Zoom Room can natively combine together as one as described on this Zoom technical support page:

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0069696 

I hope this is helpful.

[Zoom_Hobbyist]

By the way, the built-in software audio processing in Zoom Rooms software is quite advanced. Zoom Rooms achieves acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) and other processing without need for external hardware digital signal processors (DSPs) that were formerly and traditionally used in many types of conferencing rooms of various sizes. Today, in many cases, an auditorium or smaller room properly-configured with Zoom Rooms software no longer requires an expensive hardware DSP!

(But, of course, AV integration companies will still want to sell them to you!)

[Zoom_Hobbyist]

One more bit of information that might be of interest to those wanting to learn more about this topic: It is also quite possible to plug multiple analog microphones into a USB interface device such as those from Focusrite as described here:

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360012979100-Setting-up-your-interface-in-Zoom-for-W... 

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0069725 

This is one way to avoid the high cost of an external hardware digital signal processor (DSP) as one can simply turn ON -- in one's Zoom Rooms administrator portal -- the option to use the Zoom Room software acoustic echo cancellation (AEC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VeHHiFOkGo 

In addition, Dante-enabled (Audio-over-IP) microphones can be connected to a Zoom Room:

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0063143 

Zoom Rooms can obviously be a videoconferencing system.

But I tend to see Zoom Rooms as also being a very nice PRESENTATION system.

I've had the opportunity to configure an entire auditorium to be a giant Zoom Room.