One of the reasons that we chose Zoom as our primary method of video conferring with all of you, our wonderful students and families, during this period of social distancing and distance learning, is that Zoom has better audio features than any of the other popular video conferencing programs or apps.  And because what we do as string musicians has so much to do with the quality of our sound, being able to hear each other as well as possible is really, really important to make the most of our online lessons together!

One of the concrete, tangible ways that we can achieve the highest quality of sound is by adjusting a few settings within Zoom.  Here’s what the following video explains:

1. Open Zoom on your computer (it has to be on a computer – you won’t be able to adjust these settings and achieve this quality on a phone or tablet)
2. Click on the the settings “gear” in the top right corner of your Zoom home screen
3. Go to “audio” settings
4. Switch off the feature “Automatically adjust microphone volume”
5. Then go down to the bottom right of your screen and click “Advanced”
6. Within “Advanced” options, click on the feature “Show in-meeting option to ‘Enable Original Sound’ from microphone

Following these steps allows you to get rid of “speech codex” that Zoom defaults to, which will allow the long, sustained tones of your instrument to come through at a much higher quality for me and Ms. Kirby to hear.  Let us know if you have any questions.  We want this period of distance learning to be of the highest quality that it can be for you!