The COVID-19 health crisis has greatly promoted teleworking , and with teleworking many people have become unavoidable having to participate in remote meetings through videoconferences or Internet calls. In these, many times the noise of the microphone is quite annoying for our interlocutors, so in this article we are going to tell you how you can reduce the noise of your microphone easily and without spending more money.
Go ahead that this is not an advanced tutorial to be able to have the highest quality in your transmissions with a high-end microphone, but is intended for those people who are forced to make video conferences from their home computers, well with the integrated microphone on laptops, either with the integrated in a webcam, or with headphones with a microphone.
Wear headphones with a microphone
If you are video conferencing using the built-in webcam and microphone on your laptop, it is quite likely that you are getting huge noise in the transmissions because as a general rule these built in microphones are bad, very bad, and also quite prone to interference caused by the rest of laptop hardware.
In this case there is not much you can do to improve the quality (where there is not, you cannot get it), so the best solution will be to use headphones with a microphone because they will not only have (no matter how bad) a better microphone. than that of the laptop, but also prevent the sound from the laptop speakers from being coupled, since the sound will be received through the headphones themselves.
Reducing background noise always helps
There are obvious things, such as reducing the background noise you may have in the room. Close the door and the window, do not point the fan (which now with the heat you will surely have one pointing directly at your face) directly where the microphone is, and try to move the microphone away from your mouth a little so that your breathing in conversation (this is especially annoying during meetings).
The ideal is to have a room where you can “lock yourself up” without being disturbed by anyone and there are no background noises, although working from home we understand that this is not always possible, so we will move on to the next point to see what other things you can do.
Reduce microphone noise using software
The best thing you can do to reduce microphone noise during your video conferences or calls is to understand how it occurs, so the best thing to do in these cases is to run a test. To do this, you can go from Windows to the Control Panel -> Sound -> “Record” tab. Make sure you access it from the “old” Windows control panel, and not from the new options.
Here select your microphone and click on “Configure”. Select “Set up microphone”, select the type of microphone you are using (integrated into headphones, individual desktop or others) and follow the wizard.
This simple assistant will ask you to read some texts aloud, and it will show you the level of pick-up of the microphone so that you can modify it and thus reduce the background noise it puts in.
Noise reduction in Windows
Windows 10 has an integrated tool that will allow us to slightly reduce the background noise from the microphone. To access this option, enter the Control Panel (Start -> Run -> control) and access the Hardware and Sound -> Sound option (same as in the previous step). Select your microphone again but now instead of clicking “Configure”, click on “Properties” and go to the “Levels” tab.
Here you can modify the level or volume of the microphone pickup, and if you lower it, you can slightly reduce the background noise it picks up. In this tab you can find another option called “Audio enhancements”, but whether it appears or not depends on the manufacturer of the microphone and the drivers you have installed (proof of this is that it does not appear in our screenshot). Here you will find two options:
- Noise reduction : If you enable it, you will reduce the background noise captured by software. In many cases it helps a lot, but in others it causes your voice to be distorted, so we recommend you do the test before leaving it activated.
- Acoustic Echo Cancellation : This option will eliminate reverberation and sound coupling, especially useful if you use the microphone and speakers of the same laptop.