How to reduce background noise on your microphone
Background noise — a fan, traffic, a keyboard, an echoey room — is one of the most common complaints on calls and recordings. The good news is most of it is fixable without buying anything.
1. Turn on your call app's built-in noise suppression
Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, and Discord all include background noise suppression settings, usually found under Audio settings, and they've gotten genuinely good in recent years. If you haven't checked, this is the fastest fix and costs nothing.
2. Move the microphone closer to your mouth
This is the single biggest factor in perceived background noise. The closer a microphone is to your mouth, the higher your voice registers relative to everything else in the room — which is why headset mics and close-talk USB mics sound so much cleaner than a laptop mic several feet away, even in the exact same room.
3. Address the room, not just the mic
- Reduce hard, flat surfaces. Bare walls, glass, and hardwood floors bounce sound around and create echo. A rug, curtains, or even a bookshelf with books absorbs sound and noticeably tightens up audio.
- Sit further from windows. Outside noise (traffic, construction) is picked up far more than most people expect, even with a window closed.
- Turn off nearby fans or AC units during important calls if possible — constant low hums are exactly what microphones struggle to filter out.
4. Use push-to-talk or mute-by-default habits
On calls with multiple people, muting yourself when not speaking eliminates your background noise from the conversation entirely — simple, but often overlooked.
5. Consider a directional (cardioid) microphone
If software fixes aren't enough, a cardioid USB microphone is built to pick up sound mainly from directly in front of it and reject sound from the sides and rear — which is exactly the pattern that reduces room noise without needing any software processing at all.
Check your progress
After making changes, use our Mic Tester tool to see the difference — speak normally and watch whether the level meter stays steady on your voice rather than spiking with background sounds when you pause.