Zoom Audio Cleanup

Your Zoom recordings have background noise, room echo, or the flat compressed sound characteristic of VoIP audio, and you need them to sound professional for publishing or transcription.

Zoom audio has three distinct problems that each require different approaches: background noise from participants' environments, room echo from participants without acoustic treatment, and VoIP codec compression artifacts built into the recording itself. **Understanding Zoom's audio processing:** Zoom applies automatic gain control, echo cancellation, and noise suppression during live calls, then compresses the audio into the recording using its internal codec. The saved recording already reflects this processing — which means the audio you're cleaning has already been modified from raw microphone input. **Zoom settings to improve starting quality (before recording):** - Settings → Audio → Suppress background noise: set to 'High' for noisy environments - Settings → Audio → Enable Original Sound for Musicians: ON if you have professional audio gear (bypasses Zoom's processing and gives you raw audio) - Settings → Recording → Record a separate audio file for each participant: ON — individual tracks are dramatically easier to clean than a mixed recording **Post-recording cleanup workflow:** 1. **Locate the recording:** Local recordings save to Documents/Zoom/[date-meeting-name]/. Cloud recordings download from your Zoom web portal. Audio-only files are typically audio_only.m4a. 2. **Upload to AI cleanup:** Voice Isolate processes Zoom recordings directly — upload the M4A or MP4 file. The AI removes HVAC, hiss, and ambient noise while preserving speech. 3. **For multi-participant recordings:** If you recorded with separate participant tracks, process each track individually for best results. Different participants have different noise profiles. 4. **Address Zoom compression artifacts:** Zoom's codec creates a characteristic 'nasal' or 'telephone' quality. A presence boost at 3-5kHz (+2-3dB) and a slight high-shelf lift at 8kHz (+1-2dB) restores perceived clarity. 5. **Normalize:** Zoom recordings are often recorded at inconsistent levels. Normalize to -16 LUFS for podcast, -14 LUFS for YouTube. 6. **Re-embed if video:** `ffmpeg -i zoom_0.mp4 -i cleaned.wav -c:v copy -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 output.mp4`

What You Get:

• Remove HVAC, room echo, and background noise from saved Zoom recordings
• Per-participant track cleanup for consistent multi-guest episode quality
• Zoom settings that improve starting audio quality before recording begins
• EQ fixes for Zoom's characteristic VoIP compression coloration