Zoom rolls out high-fidelity mode for “professional grade” audio streaming

Zoom has announced that it’s rolling out a new high-fidelity audio option for Zoom users, making it more useful for musicians to stream music performances and for music tutors to teach instruments.

The company pitches it as a sort-of opposite to its background noise cancellation. Instead of cutting out anything other than your voice, it highlights the instrument you’re playing, making the music “the star of the show”.

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If you have Zoom for Mac or Windows installed and updated to the latest version you can find the option to switch it on within the Audio part of the settings menu.

Once switched on it disables the echo cancellation and post-processing, it also gets rid of audio compression and raises the quality of the audio codec being used, giving your listeners a clearer, more full and detailed sound.

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While the obvious use case for it is to allow musicians to perform to an audience over Zoom, it’s available to anyone who wants to use it and designed for use from one client to multiple listeners.

For instance, it could be used for those who do dance and fitness classes over Zoom, allowing the participants/clients to hear the music in the background more clearly. Or it could be used by songwriters to collaborate over the platform and be able to hear the tunes being played with greater detail.

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Zoom also uses medical examples where a doctor might need to hear a patient’s breathing more clearly, or – using digital stethoscope – hearing a patient’s heartbeat.

The feature was developed together with Yale’s school of music following a desire from similar music schools to have a better quality audio stream for music students, and it’s rolling out to desktop apps now. Pocket-Lint