How To Stop My Mic From Picking Up Background Noise

An audio headset with a built-in microphone, which can reduce background noise. — Micolas/Shutterstock.com

Whether y'all're video conferencing with colleagues, chatting with friends, or recording content for public consumption, audio recording quality is always of import. Hither'due south how to become a crisp, clear, sound recording and minimize background noise on a Windows PC.

Basic Tips for Clear Sound Recording

Earlier you lot dig into software features, y'all should follow some basic best practices for clearer audio recording. Hither are a few quick tips:

Wearable Headphones: If your microphone is picking up noise from your speakers, put on headphones to eliminate the repeat.
Use a Defended Microphone or Headset: Many laptops have pretty depression-quality built-in microphones. Certain, they work, but that's most all that can be said for them. Try plugging a dedicated microphone or headset into your PC.
Eliminate or Move Away From Groundwork Noise: Close windows, move away from air vents, go to less noisy rooms, shut applications that are causing your laptop'south fans to whirr, move your microphone further away from your rima oris and then other people tin't hear your breathing, and more often than not recollect about how you can avoid noises. Consider trading out that noisy mechanical keyboard for something quieter while on calls. Consider muting yourself on the telephone call while you're not speaking, also.

How to Enable Racket Reduction in Windows

Like Windows 7 before it, Windows ten offers some integrated microphone options that will help with microphone groundwork noise. The exact options bachelor volition depend on the audio hardware in your PC and your manufacturer'due south audio drivers.

These options are constitute in the traditional Control Panel. They aren't available in the new Settings app. To discover them, open the Control Panel from the Outset card and caput to Hardware and Sound > Sound.

Opening Sound options in Windows 10's Control Panel

Click the "Recording" tab in the Sound window, select your microphone device, and click "Properties."

Launching a microphone device's properties window

Click the "Levels" tab. If you're dealing with background racket, endeavor lowering the Microphone Boost selection—perhaps to +10.0 dB instead of +20.dB. This makes the microphone more sensitive, which ways it volition have an easier time hearing you, but it will likewise pick up more groundwork noises.

Later on reducing the microphone heave choice, effort setting microphone book all the way to 100. If y'all lower the heave setting and the microphone is quieter, increasing the volume hither will brand information technology easier for people to hear yous.

After changing some settings, click "Apply" and exam your microphone once more to meet if information technology helped things.

Microphone volume level and boost options that affect background noise

Finally, click over to the "Enhancements" tab. This tab may not exist available—it depends on your PC'southward audio hardware and drivers.

If there's a "Noise Suppression" or "Noise Cancellation" option, enable it. Other options here may too help reduce background noise—for example, on the PC nosotros tested this on, in that location was an "Acoustic Echo Cancellation" selection that would help reduce echo caused past speakers if you're not wearing headphones.

Click "OK" to salvage your changes and shut the window.

Enabling Noise Suppression on Windows 10

RELATED: How to Set Up and Test Microphones in Windows ten

Apply Racket-Cancelling Software or Features

Popular communications tools are gaining increasingly sophisticated dissonance-canceling features that work on calls. Some software programs hope to remove groundwork noise while recording any application on your PC. Here are some tools you can use:

Google Meet: Google added noise cancellation to Google Meet on Apr 22, 2020. Google Meet will automatically filter out groundwork racket.
Zoom: Zoom has built-in background noise suppression that's enabled by default. To check these options, open Zoom's settings window from its menu, select "Sound" in the sidebar, and click the "Advanced" push button. Y'all'll run into the "Suppress Persistent Background Noise," "Suppress Intermittent Background Noise," and "Repeat cancellation" features. These audio-processing features are all set to "Auto" by default, but yous can disable them or tune them to exist more or less aggressive.

Zoom's background noise options in its Settings window.

NVIDIA RTX Vocalization: With the NVIDIA RTX Voice application installed, you tin can activate a "Remove Background Racket" characteristic that uses machine learning and the power of an NVIDIA GPU to remove background noise from your microphone in any application on your system. Co-ordinate to NVIDIA, this software only works on systems with NVIDIA RTX GPUs. All the same, Ars Technica reports that information technology tin can work on PCs with older NVIDIA graphics hardware as well.
Discord: Discord at present has a built-in noise suppression feature powers by Krisp.ai. To enable it while voice chatting, click the Noise Suppression push at the bottom left of Discord's sidebar and activate "Racket Suppression."

Noise Suppression in Discord

Krisp.ai, available in Discord for free, likewise offers a software product that can enable noise cancellation in any awarding—like NVIDIA'due south RTX Voice software, but for PCs without any. It has a complimentary tier that offers 120 minutes of noise cancellation for costless every week, but you'll have to pay $3.33 per month afterward that.

Many other video-conferencing applications have congenital-in noise cancellation features, likewise. You lot may exist able to configure them from the awarding'due south settings window. If you lot're using an aboriginal video-conferencing tool that doesn't take built-in noise cancellation, your organisation may be better off switching to a mod solution that does.

Consider a Noise-Canceling Microphone

If nothing else works well, yous may need a improve microphone. Some microphones are designed to filter out or reduce ambient dissonance. For example, they may have two microphones built in—a primary mic to record your voice and a secondary mic to record ambient noise. They can then filter out the ambience dissonance. They're often marketed every bit "noise-canceling microphones."

Even if you don't pick up a microphone designed specifically for that, a better-quality microphone may be a big improvement in audio quality over a born laptop microphone or an old headset you had lying around.

RELATED: The 6 Best Free Video Conferencing Apps