My mother is a piano teacher and during covid had to give lessons over zoom.
Zoom deliberately degrades audio quality to save bandwidth. There is discussion on this here: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360046244692-Configuring-professional-audio-settings-for-Zoom-Meetings Note that the Linux zoom client DOES NOT ALLOW the "enable original sound and high fidelity mode" Only the windows client does. I realize you are just concerned with intelligible voice. But I suspect the various voice filters that Zoom puts in automatically are screwing you over. There are numerous audio test MP3's out there on the Internet that are VOICE ONLY and NOT music that you can Google for. Download some of those and play them on a typical music player or car stereo to know what they sound like. Then use them on your Linux box. If they play well from the desktop then it's not your audio hardware or drivers. It's Zoom. Personally I prefer an MP3 of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir for audio testing... Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Rich Shepard Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2023 3:45 PM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Audio card for clear voice output => Internet apps voice quality On Sun, 16 Apr 2023, MC_Sequoia wrote: > So, to be clear, do you only have a problem with inbound voice audio > quality from the Internet? Mike, Yes. > Have you monitored resource, cpu/memory, usage when you're experiencing this > problem? I've watched gkrellm. > Maybe even shutdown and power back on your pc. Open up 1 browser > instance and only 1 tab for zoom or jitsi and test? I rebooted yesterday morning to make the drives in the MediaSonic Probox mount and be visible. > I suspect both Zoom & Jitsi are resource intensive web apps. Zoom seemed to be useing all 8 cores/16 threads Friday. I could see the other attendees, and all of them could hear me, but I could not hear them using the headphones and the speakers produces very unclear (garbled?) output. The new audio card is to be delivered tomorrow. I'll install it and test the voice output from 'Net videos. I've not found a Zoom test meeting that sends me audio. When I have the test meeting open the video, mic, and headphones work fine. I assume that when I hear myself speak it's all local and not out to Zoom and back again. Regards, Rich
