Before you begin

Why is it important?

Zoom audio is by default set for voice conferencing. But these settings are disastrous for music playing. With background noise cancellation and echo cancellation turned on, which is the default, your piano sound will be cancelled as well. Resulting in the piano sound being cut partially or even completely.

So it is must to change these settings. So take a little time to set it up before the first lesson. When once set, you only need to check it 5 minutes in advance for each lesson if everything is still set correctly.

Setup guide

Steps to set up Zoom Audio for Music

Follow these steps in this order to ensure a correct set up.

Video walkthrough

Watch Video Full Instructions:

Step-by-step

Read All the Steps:

Go to Zoom Audio Settings

There are two ways on a Macbook to go to audio settings. When you haven’t opened a meeting yet, only the first way is available. On a PC or tablet, the audio settings may be on a different place. Check that on Google if you can’t find it.

The topbar of your screen, open Zoom Workplace, then click settings. A window pops up and choose Audio.
When you are in a meeting you can go to the bottom, and click the little arrow next to the Audio icon. This will bring you directly to Audio settings.

Check Settings and Test Audio

I always check my audio settings before any meeting. I quickly look the options that are checked and which microphone source is choses. Then I run two quick tests clicking “Test mic”.

First I test my voice
Second I test my piano sound

These two tests take around 20 seconds.

See picture and make sure it is the same.

This is the Most Important Step !!

If you skip this step, your piano sound will be cut by Zoom. So it is VERY IMPORTANT to do this step before continuing.

Make sure that Automatically adjust microphone volume is TURNED OFF.
In Audio Profile, click Zoom background noise removal, and set it to Low.

Improve the Sound Quality for Music in Zoom

Now we select Original sound for musicians: this will unselect the Zoom background noise removal selected in the previous step. However it doesn’t undo it, this is not clear and it took me a while to figure it out why sometimes the piano sound was cut.

After selecting Original sound for musicians you can optional select both:

High-fidelity music mode
Stereo Audio

These make sense if you use an external mic (very much recommended for sound quality) connected to your computer. Live performance audio is also fine, particularly if you want to play together.

Use of Headphones

If your sound output through the speakers feeds directly back into the mic, we get a loopback of sound, resulting in ‘echo.’ This is extremely unpleasant for the other participants. The best way to avoid that is to use headphones.

Use open headphones so you can still hear yourself playing and talking.
If no headphones are available, ensure that Echo cancellation is set to High in the advanced settings.

Setting the Echo Cancellation

Make sure to set this setting as follows if no headphones are used.

Go to Advanced at the bottom of the window.
Select in the Echo cancellation tab High.

Test Your Audio Before Each Lesson !!

Now that we have set all the settings correctly from the previous steps it is time to test your audio. So first you test the speaker by clicking Test speaker – a sound will play and you should be able to hear it through the chosen speaker device. If it is loud or too soft, you can adjust Audio output volume.

Then you click Test mic and speak something, it will record you for like 5 seconds and plays it back to you. If it is too soft, you can increase Input volume until it sounds good.

Click Test mic one more time and play something fast on the piano and listen the playback. If all is well, you should be able to hear all the played notes without cutting sound.

If you hear cracking sound, it is likely that the Input volume is too high. If it is too soft you must increase the Input volume. If the sound is cracking while Input volume is set low and won’t be audible when even lower, then consider a better microphone.