If you're presenting a music or a game over Zoom or a similar video conferencing application, you often want to mix your 'PC audio' with your microphone. However, you normally end up just sending the audio from your microphone, and others can't hear your PC audio. You can turn your PC up really loud, so your microphone picks it up, but that doesn't work well.
Here's how to mix your PC audio and microphone better on Windows 10...
- Enable 'Stereo Mix'
- 'Stereo Mix' basically allows you to use your 'PC audio output' as a 'microphone' for others to listen to.
- Right click the speaker icon near the clock
- Select 'Open Sound Settings'
- Under 'Input', click 'Manage Sound Devices'
- Look for 'Stereo Mix', and if it's disabled, enable it
- In Zoom, you will choose 'Stereo Mix' as your 'Microphone'
- This means that the sound you send out over Zoom is the 'stereo mix' that your PC is putting out - i.e. what comes out of your PC speakers
- Enable 'Listen to this device'
- If you were to use Zoom now, and played music from your PC, the viewers would just hear your music, but wouldn't hear you speaking. What we need to do is tell Windows to output your mic to your PC speakers too, mixed together with the music.
- Right click the speaker icon near the clock
- Select 'Open Sound Settings'
- Under 'Input', make sure your head mic is selected.
- Click 'Device Properties'
- Click 'Additional Device Properties'
- Click on the 'Listen' tab
- Check the 'Listen to this device' box
- Click Apply
- You should now hear an 'echo' from your PC speakers when you speak.
- Advanced Zoom Settings
- By default, Zoom does echo cancellation and background audio removal. These are great for avoiding some common problems with audio conferencing, but they can also introduce problems. I've found that turning on 'Original Audio' (i.e. turning off these features) improves the quality of music.
- Bring up the Zoom Audio Settings
- Click the Advanced button in the bottom right corner (I didn't see it at first)
- Check 'Show in-meeting option to "Enable Original Sound" from microphone'
- (You could also play with the other settings in here)
- Close settings
- Now, back in the main window there's a button to turn 'original sound' on or off. Try both settings and see if there's a difference.
- Tuning the volume
- Viewers on Zoom should now hear high quality music, mixed with your voice from your mic
- One might be too loud. Changing the Windows volume would change both your music and your mic output together, which won't help. You probably want your Windows volume on high.
- Instead you need to individually control how loud your music and your microphone are.
- Right click the speaker icon near the clock
- Select 'Open Volume Mixer'
- Find your music program and your microphone, and use the sliders to adjust the volume of each, while asking your viewers which one needs to be louder/quieter
- If you have your PC speakers too loud, you might get feedback and echo noises. I recommend having them just loud enough for you to hear, and also try wearing headphones to prevent the noise from going back into the mic.
When your broadcast is over, you'll want to go through the 'Listen to this device' steps again, but turn off the 'Listen to this device' checkbox.
