Important guidance for noise suppression in Microsoft Teams (and when you may want to turn it off)
Microsoft Teams is designed, by default, to focus on one main speaker. To do this, it uses active noise suppression to remove background noise, such as music, dogs barking or colleagues talking in the office behind you.
This is a great feature and one that's worth playing with, as you can see in this video by Microsoft's Mike Tholfsen:
Reduce background noise in Microsoft Teams meetings with Noise Suppression - YouTube
When you would want to turn it off
As helpful as it is in most instances, there may be times when you want to turn noise suppression off.
For example:
- You're a music teacher and you want those on the call/recording to be able to hear the instruments. Noise suppression will try to edit it out
- You're using Teams to record a lecture and want it to pick up the conversations and student questions in the room.
- You're running a hybrid meeting with some people in the room and some people online. Noise suppression will only focus on the loudest voice, making other people harder to hear or cutting them out altogether.
To switch noise suppression off, or to turn it back on again, follow these steps
- Click on the "..." icon in the top-right of the Teams window
- Select Settings > Devices
- Scroll down to find your Noise suppression settings