Strange voice distortion with external microphone

[peterpur]

Hello, 

I'm having a strange problem with an external microphone from Røde and Zoom (Meetings and Webinars).  My voice gets a somewhat robotic effect, it sounds a bit like i'm running it through a flange effect. This only happens when I use the Røde Mic, and it only happens on my M1 MacBook Pro.

I've tried »everything«:

- the microphone works well with other software, no distortion there

- the microphone works well with other computer, even with an iPad

- when i use the computer's built-in microphone, it sounds ok. 

- it only started this year; i've been using this microphone since 2022, and old recordings sound fine. 

- i've reset zoom, uninstalled and reinstalled zoom, tried different adapters (the microphone is USB-A, my computer has only USB-C)

- i've played around with the audio settings in Zoom, eg. using original sound, turned off automatic volume, fiddled with echo cancellation, etc. 

- i've used different audio outputs (usually headphones, but also no headphones) 

nothing helped. it feels as if there is some hidden setting or misconfiguration which i don't find, but since only Zoom is affected, it has to be something in or around Zoom. i've contacted our university's zoom-support, but they are at their wit's end. any ideas?

My configuration is a MacBook Pro M1, Røde NT-USB microphone, and AirPods Pro as headphones. 

[peterpur · Accepted solution]

so, it seems i found the problem myself after even more fiddling around, and i'm leaving the solution here for other people who might have the same problem. 

the incriminating setting can be found in a menu bar item that is a little orange microphone (or a green camera). there is a setting for »voice isolation« that seems to not really get along with the røde mic and zoom. it is only applied when used in communiation software (so the mic worked well in other software). turning off voice isolation fixed my problem, and it will probably fix your problem too 🙂