Best Music Setup for Zoom: Audio Settings Explained

For a music lesson on Zoom, turn on Original Sound for Musicians (or set background noise suppression to Low), enable High-Fidelity Music Mode and stereo if your internet and computer can handle it, always keep echo cancellation on, and switch Original Sound on from the top-left of the meeting window.

Video lesson by Jason Zac · Beginner · 17 min

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This guide from Jason Zac of Nathaniel School of Music walks through how to set up Zoom so that a piano, guitar or voice sounds clear in an online class. It is meant for music students and teachers, and it also helps music producers sharing audio with clients and musicians who want to jam remotely. The settings described reflect Zoom as it was in late 2023, so menu names may shift slightly over time.

Step 1: Get the camera view right

A teacher needs to see your face and your hands at the same time: at least your fingers and wrist on the keyboard or guitar, and ideally your arm too. Showing only your face or only your fingers makes teaching much harder.

• Use a laptop or desktop with a reasonably large screen rather than a phone, so you can actually see the instrument being demonstrated.
• Use your phone as a second camera. Connect it to the computer (which also charges it) and use a free app such as DroidCam on Android or Camo on iPhone. Paid versions mainly remove a watermark or add features like 1080p video.
• Mount the phone with whatever suits your space and budget: a pole mount, suction or magnetic mount, a flexible clamp-style mount or a camera tripod.
• Combine your face camera and instrument camera in OBS, which is open source, and click Start Virtual Camera. Then choose that virtual camera in Zoom.

Step 2: Prepare your room

Good audio starts before you open Zoom. Turn down a noisy fan, close the door, ask family members to keep quiet during class time, and fix your lighting so there is no glare or bright window behind you.

Step 3: Basic audio checks

Open Zoom settings (on a Mac the shortcut is Command + comma) and go to Audio. These settings also exist on phones and tablets.

• Check your microphone level. If there is no signal, the problem is on your end, not Zoom's.
• Adjust the volume by trial and error, or tick Automatically adjust microphone volume, which is usually enough.
• Choose the correct speaker or headphones. Bluetooth earbuds often connect automatically without you noticing.
• If a device does not appear, install its drivers and make sure it is compatible with your computer.
• Use the microphone test to confirm everything works.

Step 4: The settings that make or break a music call

Zoom Optimised Audio

By default, background noise suppression is on Auto, which is built for speech. For a music class, set it to Low at the very least. Otherwise Zoom may treat your piano or guitar as noise and cut it out.

Original Sound for Musicians

This is the better option, but it is recommended for a studio environment, meaning a quiet room free from kitchen noise, street noise and household activity. If your room is not quiet, go back to Zoom Optimised Audio on Low. Under Original Sound there are three options:

1. High-Fidelity Music Mode: tick it if your internet connection is strong.
2. Stereo audio: sounds lovely for piano and guitar, but uses more CPU and bandwidth.
3. Echo cancellation: keep it on at all times. In advanced settings, start with Auto and move to Aggressive only if echo persists, since Aggressive can cut some audio.

If your computer struggles or your internet is weak, leave the first two unticked. To improve your connection, plug a Cat5 or Cat6 Ethernet cable straight from your router instead of using Wi-Fi; Jason found this made his connection several times faster.

Turn it on inside the meeting

This is the step people miss. After closing settings, look at the top left of the meeting window, next to the meeting information icon. You will see Original Sound for Musicians marked Off. Click it so it shows On. Zoom's noise suppression is then disabled.

Extra options for producers and jams

• Share computer audio: through the screen share menu you can send just your computer's sound, useful for playing a mix to a client or a YouTube clip to a student.
• Live Performance Mode (in beta at the time): found in Audio settings, it is meant for several musicians in different places. Sound quality drops, but latency is kept to roughly 40 to 50 milliseconds so you can play together in real time.

Quick checklist before every class

Quiet room, good lighting, phone mounted, Ethernet connected, Original Sound for Musicians enabled in settings, and the Off button switched to On in the meeting.

Questions about this lesson

Why does Zoom cut out my piano or guitar?

Zoom's default noise suppression is designed for speech and can treat instruments as noise. Set background noise suppression to Low or turn on Original Sound for Musicians.

I enabled Original Sound for Musicians but nothing changed. What did I miss?

Enabling it in settings is not enough. In the meeting, find the Original Sound for Musicians button at the top left next to the meeting information icon and switch it from Off to On.

Should I turn on High-Fidelity Music Mode and stereo audio?

Yes if you have a strong internet connection and a capable computer, since both use more bandwidth and CPU. If your computer struggles or your connection is weak, leave them off, but keep echo cancellation on.

Can I jam with other musicians over Zoom?

Zoom's Live Performance Mode, found in Audio settings, lowers sound quality to keep latency around 40 to 50 milliseconds so players in different places can perform together.

Practise it

• All free music apps40 practice tools for harmony, rhythm, ear training and more.

Related lessons

• How to Set Up OBS for Music Classes, Zoom and Live Streaming at Once (Part 3)To run a multi-camera music class, build scenes in the free OBS Studio from your camera, phone, iPad and audio sources, then press Start Virtual Camera and select OBS Virtual Camera as the video source in Zoom, with recording and YouTube streaming available from the same setup.
• MuseScore for Beginners: Free Music Notation AppMuseScore is a free, open-source notation app from musescore.org that lets you write notes with a mouse, a computer keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, add chords and instruments, play the score back and export it as PDF, MIDI, MusicXML or audio.
• The Top 10 Tools for All Musicians: Students, Performers and Recording ArtistsJason Zac's top 10 tools for musicians are a metronome, a tuner, drum loops, practice tracks, a recording app or DAW, notation software, a stem splitter, publishing tools, streaming services and a good listening environment, most of them free or usable on a trial.
• Urvasi Bass Lesson: Scale Positions You Need to KnowThe Urvasi bass line by A.R. Rahman sits in C minor and uses the root, major second, minor third, perfect fourth and perfect fifth (C, D, Eb, F, G), and you can play it from three positions by starting the riff with your index, middle or little finger.