It's always nice when companies listen to criticism.
You may remember a few months back when we went into our first lockdown that I did a roundup of what was available to us drummers who wanted to either teach online or be taught online.
At the time, I said that Zoom was the 'new boy on the block' but didn't have the best audio quality, due to some serious audio compression (both data and level) which we weren't able to turn down or off.
Well, it appears that Zoom were listening (or, of course , it could be completely coincidental) and we now have the option to seriously improve Zoom as an audio carrier. The change actually happened a good few weeks ago, but as I had been seriously unimpressed with Zoom at the time of testing, I hadn't reexamined it – my bad. They did it, I missed it, but it is good, and I've used it very successfully for some live streaming events over the past few weeks. Of course, you may well already know about this, but I'm guessing there are many others who don't know.
So now, when we use Zoom, before we make a call, or instigate a lesson, we need to click on the cog wheel/gear symbol in the top right hand corner of the Zoom screen.
Then we need to click on the Audio tab and then click on Advanced at the bottom right of the screen.
Then we need to click the box next to “Show in-meeting option to “Enable Original Sound” from Microphone”.
This allows up to turn off the compression so we get a more accurate reinterpretation of the audio signal coming into Zoom. If the instigator of the call ticks the 'Enable Original Sound” box hen all other people on the call also get the chance to tick the box, which improves the sound from and to them too.
Of course, you'll still need to disable the “Suppress Persistent Background Noise” and “Suppress Intermittent Background Noise” options, and turn the “Echo Cancellation” to Auto, but overall it now works really well, so well done to Zoom, for helping us online teachers.
If you are lucky enough to use an EAD-10 to do your teaching with, then Zoom now becomes a good option to use, but also there is another bonus.
If you switch on “Enable Original Sound” on your desktop version of Zoom, then you also get the option to use it on the iOS version of Zoom, which means you can now just plug in your EAD-10 into your iPad and teach from that with full access to better sound. I haven't used it yet, and I haven't tested it to see if it works on Android (as I don't have any Android gear I'm afraid), but its definitely a step in the right direction.