How to Set Up Zoom's Audio for Music Lessons

All technological breakthroughs come with their own quirks, and remote lessons are no exception. Let's look at the issue of noise reduction in Zoom, and how it can make or break the ability to learn music remotely.

The Hidden Hassles of Noise Reduction

"Noise reduction" means that Zoom takes the sound from your microphone, and tries to remove any background noise in your environment, while keeping your voice clearly heard. By itself, this isn't a problem.

But Zoom's default settings can accidentally cut out the sound of musical instruments, so they can't be heard on the other end of a call! Needless to say, that's a big issue when it comes to music lessons.

To fix this, we need to disable Zoom's built-in noise reduction.

Accessing Zoom's Settings

First, we need to bring up Zoom's global "Settings" page. This lets us change the way that Zoom's various functions behave. The easiest way to do this is by clicking the cog wheel icon in the upper right-hand corner, underneath your profile icon.

Once the Zoom Settings window is open, you'll see a list of sub-section in the left column. From this, we want to select the "Audio Settings" page.

The first section of audio settings is for the speaker. We can ignore that.

Below that is a section for the microphone. We can ignore that, too. Beneath that is the third section, "Audio profile," which is the one we'll use here

Turning Off Noise Reduction

By default, the audio profile is set to "Zoom background noise removal." What we're going to do is select a different option, listed below it, called "Original Sound for Musicians."

This will (eventually)* let us to turn off Zoom's noise reduction, so everything in your space - including musical instruments - can be heard clearly.

Original Sound for Musicians has a few sub-options. "High-fidelity music mode" and "stereo audio" can be turned off. "Echo cancellation" is useful if your audio is being repeated, but it that's not happening, it can be off, too.

So, once we've clicked that option, we're all set, right? Actually, no. There's one more, very important step to take...

Turning Original Sound for Musicians On and Off

Choosing the "Original Sound for Musicians" setting doesn't actually turn noise reduction off, by itself. Rather, it gives us the option to turn noise reduction off when we start a session.

With the Original Sound option selected, the chat screen will now have a green icon in the upper right-hand (sometimes left-hand) corner of the screen. Next to that is text which describes the current setting.

If it says "Original Sound for Musicians: Off," that means noise reduction is still happening. To turn it off, we need to click on that text.

Once we've done that, the text will read "Original Sound for Musicians: On." That means that noise reduction is disabled, and everything in our environment will be clearly heard.

One more important detail: every time you start a new chat, noise reduction is on by default. That means that we need to get used to clicking the Original Sound text/icon every time we launch a lesson, to make sure everything comes through clearly on the other side.

Getting Used to Original Sound for Musicians

Every form of modern communication come with its own set of rules to learn. Whether it's sending an email, finding a contact in our phone, sending a text with attachments, tagging someone in a photo, or clicking through a website, every new way to connect with people comes with its own learning curve.

If you're new to the concepts of noise reduction and audio settings, this article might seem like a lot. But once you get the hang of it - and, especially, once Zoom's audio settings are configured for Original Sound for Musicians - it becomes second nature. Before long, you'll be adjusting noise reduction without even thinking about it!

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Maestro Music is an online music academy specifically designed for homeschooled students. We will match students with top-notch instructors who will help pupils achieve their musical goals. All of our instructors are vetted professional musicians with a passion for helping the next generation of musicians.