Echo on a Zoom, Teams or Meet Recording: What Helps
Echo on a meeting recording is either a bare room or speakers leaking back into a mic. One can be shortened afterwards and the other mostly can't, so the real wins are headphones, one device per room and a separate file for each person.
By the fix.fm team · Published · Updated
The short answer
A Zoom, Teams or Google Meet recording that sounds echoey is usually one of two things. Either someone is in a big, bare room and their voice rings after each word, or someone's speakers are feeding the call back into their mic, so you hear a voice twice.
The ringing room can be shortened afterwards with an echo fix. The voice heard twice can't be removed well from the finished file, so the real fix is before you hit record: headphones for everyone, one device per room, and, in Zoom, a separate audio file for each person.
Which echo is on your recording
Play a minute of the recording on headphones and listen to who it happens to and what it sounds like.
| What you hear | What it usually is | Can repair help? |
|---|---|---|
| One person sounds far away, like a big empty room | A bare room and a mic far from their mouth | Yes, an echo fix can shorten it |
| A word comes back as a clear copy a moment later | Someone's speakers leaking into their mic | Not well. Prevent it next time |
| A faint copy only while two people talk at once | Echo cancellation letting a little through | Not well. Headphones prevent it |
| Everyone sounds the same slightly hollow way | The meeting app's own processing | A little, see below |
If you're not sure which you have, our side by side of room echo and call feedback has both built from the same reading so you can match them by ear.
Why meeting recordings pick up echo
Meeting apps record what the call sends, not what each microphone heard. That has two effects.
First, the room comes along. A laptop mic on a desk is often an arm's length or more from your mouth, so it hears the walls nearly as loudly as your voice. Zoom's echo cancellation is described as technology that removes audio echoes created by the microphone or room acoustics, but it's tuned for the live call, and a long room ring still gets through.
Second, speakers leak. When someone listens on laptop speakers, their mic hears the other people and sends them back. Echo cancellation tries to subtract that, and it works best when the speaker and the mic are on the same device. It can't help when a second laptop or phone in the same room is also on the call, which is the most common cause of a loud double voice.
Stop it before the next recording
- Put everyone on headphones. Wired or Bluetooth both stop speakers leaking into mics. (A Bluetooth headset's own mic is another story; our note on muffled Bluetooth mics explains why to use a different one.)
- One device per room. If two people share a room, only one device should have its mic and speakers on. Mute the other completely.
- Get closer to the mic. Half the distance makes the voice much louder than the room. Sit near a bookshelf, curtains or a sofa instead of a bare wall or window.
- In Zoom, record a separate file for each person. In the desktop app, click your profile picture, then Settings, then Recording, and turn on Record a separate audio file for each participant. Record to your computer, and the files land in an "Audio Record" folder named after each person. It works on free accounts too. Paid accounts can do the same with cloud recording. With one file per person, you can repair just the person in the echoey room.
- Leave echo cancellation on in Zoom unless everyone is on headphones. Zoom's audio settings have an "Original sound for musicians" mode that turns much of the processing off. It sounds more natural in a quiet room with headphones, and much worse when someone is on speakers.
- In Teams, check noise suppression. Open Settings and more, then Settings, then Devices. Microsoft's guide to Teams noise suppression lists Auto, High, Low and Off. Leave it on Auto unless the voice starts sounding watery.
- In Google Meet, check noise cancellation. Open More options, then Settings, then Audio. Google's noise cancellation page says the default depends on your account, so check it before an important call.
- Record a one minute test and listen on headphones. It's the only way to hear a leak before it's in the whole recording.
Teams and Meet save one mixed recording of the meeting, to OneDrive or SharePoint for Teams and to the organizer's Google Drive for Meet. Their help pages don't mention a file per person, so if you need separate tracks there, ask each person to record their own mic on their own computer at the same time.
What repair can and cannot fix
- A room ring: yes, partly. Remove echo measures how long the room rings after each word and turns that tail down, leaving the voice. It needs a few pauses to measure, and the result is drier, not studio dry. If only one person was in the bad room and you have their own file, fix only that file.
- A voice heard twice: no. A copy of a voice a moment later is still a voice, so a tool that removed it would remove words too. The echo fix is built to leave it alone rather than damage the speech. Cut the worst moments in the editor if there are only a few.
- Hiss under the room: do it first. Steady noise hides the room's tail. If the audio quality check finds both, take out the background noise gently, then run the echo fix.
- The call's own damage: very little. Warble, chop and a thin phone sound come from the call itself. Our note on why call recordings sound robotic covers what helps.