- Hello, and welcome back.
This is an updated version
of my ultra popular Zoom in Music Mode video
that I made earlier this year.
That video explained how to adjust
the audio settings in Zoom
to make sure your music sounded as good as possible
for your online music lessons,
your online fitness classes, virtual choirs, and so on.
Zoom is an excellent tool
for running online events and teaching,
but the default audio settings
will play havoc with any music streaming.
The noise suppression algorithms in Zoom
will make your audio choppy and cut in and out,
and so, your students will not have a good experience.
Fortunately, you can do something about this,
and just recently, Zoom added high fidelity music mode,
so now you can get even better quality audio.
Plus, I have addressed
some of your frequently asked questions, too.
This video is divided into a few sections.
Firstly, how to optimize all the audio settings
for music in Zoom,
including all the advanced tweaks
and that new high fidelity music mode.
How to share audio files from your computer.
How to stream in stereo.
How to access the settings on a mobile device.
And finally, a quick look at the issue of latency in Zoom.
Many people want to use Zoom
for live jamming and collaboration,
unfortunately, this is not possible due to sync issues,
but I do discuss a couple of resources and strategies
you could use instead.
I hope this will be a useful update for you.
I post regular videos on home studio recording made easy,
so if that is of interest to you,
please subscribe, give the video a thumbs up
if you find it helpful,
and if you have any comments or questions,
the do post them below.
I love to read them, and it helps me decide
what content to produce next to help you out.
Finally, I have written an in depth
step-by-step guide to Zoom in music mode on my website,
so do check that out for further details.
Okay, let's crack on and optimize that audio.
Now remember that Zoom out of the box
with the default settings
is optimized for conferencing in noisy office environments,
so it has lots of built-in algorithms
to suppress fan noise and air conditioning noise,
scraping of chairs, and to smooth out your voice
as you speak in a conference environment,
which is great if that's what you want to do,
but if you want to use Zoom for a fitness class,
or for a music lesson, or for any music application,
then it will play havoc with your music stream
and you'll find that it chops in and out.
So, we need to do some modification to the settings
to get back control of our audio.
Here's how we do it.
So, when you open up the Zoom desktop client,
make sure you're on the Home screen,
and then you can access the settings here.
Go down to Audio here,
and the first thing you'll do is set up
your speakers and microphone,
test them out, and so on.
Now, I would, first of all,
uncheck this box here,
automatically adjust microphone volume,
so that I can get control of the microphone volume myself.
Now here, with the mic I have got selected,
I can hand adjust the levels here.
If you have an audio interface,
then you adjust the settings on the device itself.
So, turn that off, get back control of your own levels.
Don't worry about this suppress background noise thing here,
we're about to override it
by going into the advanced settings.
Now, you'll see the default
is that Echo Cancellation is set on auto.
Just leave that because this is the crucial thing.
This show in-meeting option
to "Enable Original Sound" from microphone,
if you hover here, this option automatically disables
Zoom noise suppression, removes high pass filtering,
removes automatic gain control.
It is recommended for playing music
and for studio-life environments.
Perfect, this is exactly what we want to do.
And we check this box here.
Now, just by checking this box
and enabling original sound within the meeting,
you will significantly improve your audio stream
because you will remove
all the choppiness that you get if you don't do this.
So, that is going to be good enough for most people,
especially if you have a pupil who is playing to you.
Just make sure that they have done that,
and then their audio stream won't be interrupted.
But if you want to go further,
then there are two more options.
Let's have a look first at this one.
This is a new one.
High fidelity music mode.
Okay, so if we check that.
Now, I recommend that you check this
if you are using good quality audio hardware,
for example, an audio interface or an external microphone.
You can use it with your built-in microphone,
but it's probably not worth it.
Although, again, you can experiment with this yourself.
Now, if we hover over here,
you'll see that this optimizes Zoom audio
for the highest quality music.
So, you'll get the highest quality setting
by ticking this box here,
but your audio will be transmitting at 48 kilohertz,
and if it's stereo, it'll be 192 kilobits per second.
So, it is going to significantly improve the quality,
especially if you've got the hardware to go with it.
But it will increase your CPU utilization,
so you will just have to be aware of that
and be careful that you're not running software
with too many plugins
and really maxing out on your CPU.
Keep an eye on that.
The other thing is, that it does consume greater bandwidth.
The best situation is going to be
if you have an ethernet connection.
If you are on wifi, you might find this will struggle more
unless you've got very high quality wifi
and you're quite near the router.
The other thing you can do,
is you can disable echo cancellation.
And again, I recommend you do that
because it is fiddling with the sound again.
The echo it's talking about
is when you hear your voice echoing back at yourself
when you're speaking.
Generally, if you're hearing an echo,
it means there is a device out there
in your lesson, or choir, or whatever,
that is channeling your audio back to you,
and so you will need to ask your users
to look at their settings.
It will work best, and if you look on this
and hover over it,
it says about a headset.
What it means, is it'll work best
if people are wearing headphones
rather than having speakers
because it's having a speaker
that is playing back your audio
that is then picked up by their microphone
that is going to be doing the echoing.
So, a good quality set of headphones will improve that.
But I would tick the box
so that you've got full control of your audio.
Okay, now then, let's start a meeting up.
You'll see that every time you start a meeting
you will need to turn on original sound, like that.
And by turning on original sound,
you will then benefit from those settings
you have made in the audio settings.
So, you can access them any time in the meeting
by clicking the arrow here and going to audio settings
and just checking what you've got set here.
Okay.
But by turning on original sound,
you're accessing the high fidelity audio,
the echo cancellation,
the noise suppression, all those things.
That now is you optimized for your audio stream.
Right, while we're here I'll mention something else.
If you have audio files that you want to play,
music tracks that you want to play within your meeting,
then the way you can do that
is by using this Share Screen option here.
When you click that button,
you'll end up on this Basic mode here.
And if you had a piece of software running
that had got audio running as well that you wanted to share,
then you could just simple choose share computer sound here.
You'd be sharing your screen and your sound.
But if we go to the Advanced setting here,
it could be that you just have
a music file that you want to play,
and you can do that by clicking this icon here.
Now, by doing that you will be sharing your computer audio,
and what your participants will then experience
is you speaking like this into a microphone,
but when you press play
they will hear the computer sound,
the track that you want to share.
So, that's how you share audio within Zoom.
So, let's stop the meeting there
because we have covered all the aspects
that we need to do there.
Right.
I want to show you something else.
If you want to enable stereo audio,
then this is how you go about it.
You need to go to the zoom.us website and sign in.
So, we're in the website now,
you can't do this in the desktop client.
You do this on the website.
So, I've signed in, and I go to Account Management here,
and Account Settings.
Now, when I am there,
I get various options for how my meetings are going to run,
and you'll see that if you scroll down,
one of the options is to allow users
to select stereo audio in their client settings.
So, what this actually does,
is allows you to select stereo audio within your desktop,
which we'll have a look at in a minute.
So, turn that on if you want to use stereo audio.
Now, the other thing you can do,
is you can allow users to select original sound
in their client settings.
So, you may want to do that if you have pupils
who you would like to be able to direct
to turn on original sound
if they're going to play back to you.
Okay, so now having done that,
I'm actually going to restart Zoom.
And so, I'm starting up the desktop client there.
Now, if I go to the settings here
and go to the Audio settings,
and go to the Advanced,
you'll see that a new option has appeared here
under the show in-meeting option to "Enable Original Sound".
I can now use stereo audio if I want to.
Now remember, this increases CPU utilization
and consumes more bandwidth.
A stereo file is twice the size of a mono file,
and likewise, the stereo stream is double
what a mono stream is.
But it does allow you to transmit in stereo,
which you may wish to do.
And so, that is how you do it.
First of all, you sign in to the Zoom web portal
and enable it there,
and then it becomes an option
within the client software here on the desktop.
If you're using Zoom on a mobile device,
then you will need to access the settings
and make sure that you have enabled the option
to Use Original Sound.
You'll find that every time you start a meeting
you will need to enable original sound each time.
Unfortunately on the mobile device
you don't have all the extra bells and whistles
that you have in the desktop client,
but it does enable you to at least get rid
of all the choppy audio
if you're using your iPad for a fitness class, or something,
or if it is your pupil who is using an iPad to play to you.
One of the questions I get asked a lot
is how to use Zoom for live performance and collaborations.
You see videos like this one all over the internet
and want to do something similar.
For instance, run a virtual choir or orchestra,
play duets with your pupils,
jam with your bandmates, et cetera.
Unfortunately, you cannot do this in Zoom.
Videos like this one look like Zoom,
but they have been created by all the performers
playing individually in advance
along with a click track.
Then the videos have been put together in a montage.
In Zoom, there is too much latency,
so if you try to perform alongside other people
you will be out of sync.
This really disappoints people,
but there are other strategies you can use
to create a good experience in Zoom.
In the description below, I've linked to a couple of videos
which I think are excellent.
"Get ready for online music lessons"
is by a saxophone teacher with a lot of experience
describing strategies he uses.
For example, sending a backing track in advance
that a pupil can play along to.
The "Zoom tutorial for choral conductors" is quite lengthy,
but covers a lot of strategies you could use.
Now, my own experience of participating
in a virtual choir via Zoom
is with the Nottingham Voice Collective run by Abi Moore.
She is a brilliant arranger
of acapella versions of popular songs,
which you an see in action on her YouTube channel.
Once a month she's running virtual acapella
choir workshops at the moment,
which are great fun to participate in.
Her strategy is to create recordings of each part,
the soprano, alto, tenor,
and bass with the other parts partially muted,
and then a recording of the entire arrangement.
During the workshop, she mutes all participants,
then teaches each part using the sound files.
At the end, you perform the finished arrangement
by singing along.
You get all the experience of singing alongside other parts,
and because you can see
all the other participants joining in,
you have a great social experience, too.
And this works really well as a singing experience.
If in doubt, then do consider signing up
and giving it a try.
You'll find a link to her website below.
It is a strategy that works well on Zoom,
but obviously takes quite a bit of advanced prep.
So, the upshot is, you can't do live collaboration in Zoom,
but you can use other strategies.
Well, I hope you have found that helpful
and you're raring to go
with your online teaching and music making.
If you liked it, please do give it a thumbs up.
Do post any comments or questions below.
Please subscribe if you want to get more
of my home recording studio tips and tricks.
Thank you for watching,
and hopefully I will see you again soon.