Setting up your Zoom Audio for Music

Zoom is optimized SPEECH ONLY, and by default, will attempt to cut off anything that does not sound like normal speech, including any song or music! Before you sing or play any music in any Zoom Session, you MUST change the default settings for your audio.

Here’s a video showing how to make changes to the audio settings in Zoom for best sound for singing or playing music:

Most important are to disable these two settings under the Audio/Advanced settings:

Suppress Persistent Background Noise
Suppress Intermittent Background Noise

You also need to turn on ‘Use Original Sound’, using the toggle in the upper left hand corner of the screen when in the session:

If you’ve been on a Zoom session and people are telling you that your sound cuts off after a second or so when singing or playing your instrument, most likely these two settings are still enabled. Disable them and it should fix the problem.

Apple tablets and iPhones

For those of you on iOS or Android, here’s a video about best sound settings on those devices:

iOS versions of Zoom now support the ‘Use Original Sound’ option to improve sound for music. This turns off the background noise suppression that often causes instruments to get cut off on sustained notes.

You have to turn it on in both your meeting settings as well as when on a Zoom meeting.

In the meeting settings turn on ‘Use Original Sound’ and in the meeting itself, turn on ‘Enable Original Sound’