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Writer's pictureCarol Andrus Wazlavek

Anyone having feedback problems in Zoom?

This was on facebook, a members only group that I belong to....The Art of Piano Pedagogy.  I thought y'all might want to explore some of these suggestions if you are experiencing feedback problems.......Carol · Q - Any techies out there? Hi everyone, since downloading the zoom update (c.10/10/20), my sound is all wonky. If I enable my original sound, the students hear major feedback of their own voices when they speak. If I don’t enable it, then the old issue of my piano breaking up occurs. I don’t understand all the new settings. *New Question*: also since the update, even though my students have enabled original sound, they’re still cutting out to me (only I did the update). Why would that be? Ps I’m on a Mac desktop and switching to a laptop soon. Help! ....‘Original sound’ means the mic faithfully gives the student whatever sound is happening in your room. So you need to use headphones, otherwise it sends the student’s own playing/voice back to them just as you hear it. If you prefer using speakers, just leave the audio options as default (not original sound), meaning that Zoom will apply echo cancellation etc as normal. ....A mic picks up whatever sound is there... If you don’t want it to do that, use the default settings that have built-in echo cancellation and suppression of sudden noises etc. The problem with the default settings is that piano playing sounds like ‘echo’ so the program, trying to be helpful, cuts out some of the sound. The solution to that problem is to tell the mic/program not to apply any automatic adjustments - ‘enable original sound’. That means your students will be given whatever sound your mic can ‘hear’. So you need to not have speakers sending the sound of your students’ voices and playing into your mic. Like how a telephone has a speaker into your ear and a mic next to your mouth. Using headphones is the simplest way to give your students the best quality of sound. ....This means the sound is bouncing back. Are you using a loopback via audio interface? First thing to try is uncheck echo cancellation. Without knowing all the tech specs, it’s impossible to dive further. ....Thanks everyone - I’ve I checked echo cancelation on my end but the students are still hearing huge feedback on their end of their own voices. They’ll have to uncheck echo cancelation too, although if they haven’t updated zoom, is this even an option for them? Isn’t that a new feature? And if so, and they haven’t updated, then why is there so much feedback for them? Also, even when they have original sound enabled now, it totally cuts out and sounds like they don’t. What is that all about? ....I found that not selecting the 'disable echo cancellation' while selecting high fidelity solved that problem immediately. My student didn't have to do anything and I don't normally use headphones.

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Utako Tanigawa
11 oct. 2020

Dear Carol, Thanks for keeping us informed to learn more about Zoom!

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