Many of you are doing online lessons and virtual concerts like our upcoming “Fall Social/Just Us Recital,” and many of you are noticing that the sound quality is less than ideal. Don’t despair! You can optimize your connection, which is a fancy way of saying that there are tweaks that can be made to improve the sound. Ideally, both sides of the connection must be optimized-- on your end as well as the other guy’s.
Tip #1: A wired internet connection with an Ethernet cable is often better than wi-fi, especially if you have slow internet. Ethernet should give more stability and faster speed resulting in better sound and image quality. If you ARE using wi-fi however, you can improve your connection by positioning yourself in the same room as the router.
Tip #2: An external microphone is better than a built-in microphone since it has a wider frequency and dynamic range. Position the mic in front of you around 3 feet away, very slightly to the right (since the flute goes to your right). If you do not have an external mic, a newer cell phone is generally better than a laptop or desktop computer since phones are engineered with sound quality in mind. By the way, when there was a run on electronics at the beginning of the pandemic and I couldn’t find a USB microphone in stock anywhere, I was able to plug a microphone that came with an old mini-disc player into the headphone jack in my laptop. Of course, this meant that I couldn’t use ear buds… which was okay since I didn’t have feedback issues. But often when people experience feedback, they can remedy this by wearing headphones or ear buds. So, experiment with your old equipment before running out and buying more stuff! Try starting a Zoom meeting with just yourself, and record different configurations to hear the difference in sound quality.
If you do use an external microphone, you will need to change a few settings in Zoom buy clicking on that gear icon that represents “Settings.” Select “Audio” and then select the name of your microphone. Then uncheck the box for “Automatically adjust microphone volume” which is a dynamic compressor that you don’t want. And if you choose to use an external speaker, select the corresponding “Speaker” in that first Audio settings window.
Tip #3: There are a few settings in the Zoom presets that are worth tweaking in order to make a musical instrument sound decent. Click on the button below for the Tip Sheet PDF
I would add just one thing to step 4 on the tip sheet:
Under “Audio Processing,”
Suppress Persistent Background Noise: click “Disable,”
since the background noise suppression options act as unwanted “noise gates.”
