How to reduce background noise during Microsoft Teams or Zoom meetings

In this tutorial, we present how to reduce external noise from your microphone during Microsoft Teams and Zoom sessions. We can suppress background noise or sound that is not speech during virtual meetings. With noise suppression feature activated, noise from shuffling papers, pen taps, slamming doors, barking dogs, computer fan, air conditioner, people gossiping nearby, and other similar unwanted noise can be checked and filtered from your Zoom or Teams calls.

Noise suppression in Microsoft Teams

1. Click your profile menu and go to Settings.
2. On the Settings wizard, select Devices and go to Noise suppression.
3. Select either Auto (the Teams app decides on the best level of noise suppression based on local noise) or High (suppresses all background sound that is not speech and uses more computer resources.)

Please note: This setting is universal and applies to individual meetings unless overwritten individually. If your device is using too much of its resources during a call, the setting may fall back to Low. Details: https://aka.ms/noisesuppression

Noise suppression in Zoom

1. During a Zoom session, click the caret sign ^ on the microphone tab and go to Audio Settings.
   (If you have a personal Zoom account, click your profile picture, and go to Settings.)
   

   

2. On the Settings wizard, select Audio and go to Suppress background noise.
3. Select the level of noise suppression you prefer from Auto to High (with Auto, the desktop Zoom app automatically decides the best level of noise suppression.)

In Zoom, under the Suppress background noise section, select the level of suppression you wish to use differ for each of 4 options – these are the similar options as with the Microsoft Teams ones:

• Auto: This is the default setting and will apply moderate background noise reduction when needed. It will auto adjust the aggressiveness for blocking background noise based on what it detects in the background. If music is detected, it will not treat the music as background noise.
• Low: Noise reduction will be minimal. It will block low levels of persistent background noise. This setting is best for casually playing music, as it will preserve as much of the original sound as possible. For highest fidelity when playing music, consider using the Enable Original Audio setting in your advanced audio settings.
• Medium: Best for reducing and eliminating background noise in standard environments, including fans, pen tapping, etc.
• High: Noise reduction will be at its most aggressive, and eliminate noise such as crunching of paper or wrappers, keyboard typing, etc.

Always be careful while setting higher values in noise reduction or suppression as enabling the High option may increase CPU utilization and result in computer sluggishness or PC heating. 

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