disabling computer sounds

[mindovina]

Is there any way to set up Zoom so that your audience can't hear your computer's audio?

I work with audio engineers who are looking for feedback on their music. To get around Zoom's overly compressed audio, we use third-party apps that allow my audience to stream songs from their computers and I can hear it in a web browser completely lossless.

The issue is that when I listen to it, Zoom seems to feed the audio from my computer back to my audience, causing it to sound doubled up. I should also add that my audience members are almost always sharing their screen when this happens too (not sure if that makes a difference).

Any ideas on how to fix that?

[storyhub]

I am an audio engineer and understand how complex audio can be to properly configure. FYI, you can turn off audio compression by using "original audio for musicians" and the audio can then be set to mono or stereo. Also, keep in mind that Zoom prefers audio sampling to be 48K instead of 44.1K. Personally I use OBS studio and NDI to feed audio to Zoom from various sources. I also use NDI to deliver broadcast quality audio and video simultaneously to multiple sites for large screen presentations of musical events. My system also has 6 sound cards that can be used to route audio.

If you are sharing audio in Zoom you will be feeding back the audio stream from the browser. If participants are sharing their screen they may be sharing audio which will feed a separate stream from the browser app to the audience. You may want to consider using NDI or Dante to share audio. Although the configuration is a bit complicated NDI can create a professional 48K audio stream separate from a local sound card and does not use HTTP or RTSP protocols and it can be routed. Dante is more complicated but also more versatile with respect to sampling rate, audio routing, and maintaining low latency. Since you did not mention the specific technology being used I can only guess that it is not Dante or NDI and I can't know if a high sample rate such as 96K is being used or what codec is being used (PCM, FLAC, AAC, etc.). So this is just a best guess. If you still can't resolve your issue send me a private message.

[mindovina]

Thanks for your reply. I already had "original sound for musicians" turned on.

In my situation, my clients are sharing their audio from their DAW using Sessionwire or Waves Stream (both use browsers).

My clients are also sharing their screen in Zoom, since it gives me the ability to request control of their screen to assist them with some stuff in their DAW.

My clients always complain that doing it this way is causing them to hear a doubled sound, yet on my side it sounds fine.

Normally I'd just try to do it all in Sessionwire, but the ability to have remote control of my client's screen is massive.