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Background:

I have a 2021 Acer Swift 5 running Windows 11 Home. I've been doing some remote tutoring using Facebook Messenger with screen sharing. Sometimes I need to play a video from my computer that the student can hear. The speakers on the computer are not super loud, but they are about as loud as my speaking voice. However, when I play the video, the student can see it but they can't hear it. I can even talk in a very quiet voice while the video is playing, and they can hear my quiet voice but none of the video sound.

However, there was a period where the student COULD hear the video sound. I thought somehow the problem had cleared up, but now after a computer restart it's back.

Question: I think the computer must be doing some magic to cancel the "noise" coming from my speakers so that it doesn't go into the microphone. If that's right, how can I make it stop doing that? As I say, it did stop doing that for a while, but I don't remember changing any settings. I tried turning off the "Intel Smart Sound Technology driver", but that caused the microphone to not work at all.

Blind Spots
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M Katz
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    Instead of relying on your microphone for feeding the computers internal sound into your software, you could use something like a [virtual audio cable](https://alternativeto.net/software/virtual-audio-cable/), which would fix the root cause. I think your students also would be happy to enjoy better audio quality, especially considering the even worse mic quality if you decide to disable the filtering. [OBS Studio](https://obsproject.com/) would also be a very good solution for that. – mashuptwice Oct 26 '22 at 02:55
  • @mashuptwice, thanks. Yes, I know I could set things up. I only tutor this one student, and we only need to watch short videos once in a while, where the sound quality really doesn't matter much. She had no trouble understanding the videos during that phase when it was working. Plus, I'm just annoyed/curious that the computer is doing this "smart" thing and how to make it stop. – M Katz Oct 26 '22 at 03:38
  • My favorite thing about stack exchange is getting downvoted without an explanation. – M Katz Oct 26 '22 at 03:59
  • Well, I recommended you multiple applications which are easily capable to resolve the root cause of the issue and could be set up in less than 15 minutes and you still decide to instead go the way of trying to remove perfectly working [advanced functionality](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/devices-systems/laptops/laptop-innovation-program/distracting-background-noise-is-the-past.html) from your hardware. The downvote is so that others with the same problem are warned to also go that route. My least favorite thing here are the [XY problems](https://xyproblem.info/) – mashuptwice Oct 26 '22 at 04:04
  • You answered a different questions from the one I asked. I asked how to turn that feature off. You answered that I can avoid having to turn that feature off if I used one of these tools. Your answer was basically, "You're asking the wrong question. Here is a way to bypass your question." If I had asked "Does anyone know how to turn this feature off or some other way to make it so my student can hear the sound of the video?", then you would have been answering my question. But that wasn't my question. Also, the fact that you answered the question I didn't ask quickly is not relevant. – M Katz Oct 26 '22 at 04:41
  • As I've said, typical XY problem. Good luck. – mashuptwice Oct 26 '22 at 04:48
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    @MKatz - “My favorite thing about stack exchange is getting downvoted without an explanation.” - There is one. You haven’t told us how you are broadcasting video, most teleconferencing applications, have features to tune out background noise. Perhaps [edit] your question so adequate research can be performed. – Ramhound Oct 26 '22 at 05:06

2 Answers2

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Turning off the Laptop Speaker to Mic noise cancellation (workaround)

I agree with M Katz in that windows 11 should give an option to turn off the "Laptop Speaker to Mic noise cancellation" feature, since there are situations to use your mic to capture your speaker sound (like to share on zoom), but you still want to hear the sound from your speakers too.

That said I have a workaround that kind of works (see issues below). This uses an application VoiceMeeter Banana which I will call a virtual sound hub. The idea of the solution goes like this

Ideal solution

Windows 11 sounds -> Laptop Speakers -> Your ears
                                     -> laptop mic (noise cancellation OFF)

Workaround solution

Windows 11 sounds -> Virtual sound hub -> Laptop Speakers -> Your ears 
                                       -> Virtual sound output -> laptop virtual mic

Workaround Instructions

  1. Download the virtual sound hub Voicemeeter Banana. Open Voicemeeter Banana and see if the window opens
  2. Go to Control Panel > Sound > Playback. Set Voicemeeter Input VAIO as default playback see here
  3. Now your Windows 11 system sounds should be going to the virtual sound hub. Play some sounds and you can see the sound meeter go up and down (red arrow in pic).
  4. Make sure buttons A1 and B1 are pressed.

Remember the workaround solution? Here is what we're doing now after adding in the steps (Voicemeeter, A1, B1) we did:

Windows 11 sounds -> Virtual sound hub (Voicemeeter) -> A1 -> Laptop Speakers -> Your ears 
                                                     -> B1 -> laptop virtual mic
  1. All we have to do is now, is to connect A1 to your speaker and B1 to your mic
  2. On the top right of Voicemeeter, click A1 and set to your speaker (e.g. Realtek Speakers). See here
  3. Go to Control Panel > Sound > Recording. Set "VoiceMeeter Output" to default (see here). There are a few new options after installing Voicemeeter. B1 corresponds to Voicemeeter Output, B2 is the one with Aux in the name (why do they not just name it Output 1 and 2, I do not know).

What you get

So now when using voice recording, zoom call etc, Windows 11 will use your system sounds as a mic. (If you want to change it to your laptop mic, you need to go to step 7 and change the default recording back to 'Microphone')

As mentioned above, I've tried this and it works, with a few caveats

I DO NOT recommend it as

  • it made my speaker sound have static/noise when the virtual mic is being used by zoom etc. You can hear the audio quality drop when the virtual mic is being used
  • You will not be able to use your mic at the same time since you turned it off and put it on B1 (like in OP's eg, they cannot speak to teach the student online while they both listen to the video). Sure, you can add more virtual cables as a bigger workaround, but why would you do that since
  • this is a workaround for a problem windows 11 introduced and should provide an option to turn this new smart cancellation off (if there is one please let me know)

Hope the workaround works for you; I could not stand the audio quality drop. I repeat that windows 11 should give an option to turn this speaker-to-mic cancellation off

AciesE
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Just found the solution in my case, but I don't know if it'll work for you too, since it appears you had been able to play audio just fine a few times before, while on a video call with the same laptop and operating system you have now. My problem was a bit different than yours, in that any time my mic was on, all audio coming from my speakers was inaudible, except really loud noises that would be muffled anyway, and basically only voices in videos or music could be (barely) heard. Still, you should try it, since it's a pretty obscure setting.

I also have an Acer laptop running Windows 11, so I thought the problem might be either the OS or the Realtek audio driver. But no, turns out there was another audio driver that was causing all my audio to be horribly filtered, basically only letting human voices through anytime any program was using the built-in microphone. I found it entirely by accident while trying to download an older version of the Realtek driver. It is called Acer Purified Voice Console and you might have it installed on your laptop too. Open it, and either lower the "Microphone AI Noise Reduction Level" to an acceptable level, or just select "All Off" under "Microphone Effect". (And if you also experience muffled audio on your end while an app is using your mic, like me, there should be an option called "Speaker AI Noise Reduction Level" (in the Speaker section, below Microphone settings) that is probably all the way up to 100% too. Just turn that down to 0% and the annoying audio filter should be gone.)

If you don't have this driver, then it might be some other driver installed on your computer. Another Acer user in this Windows Community thread reported that their problem was being caused by Realtek Audio Console, but my version of that driver doesn't have those settings. Whether any of these two programs are causing your issue or not, it's almost definitely a driver with really strong noise reduction technology that's causing it, you just have to find it among your installed drivers. Otherwise, it's also possible that the noise filter is in the app or website you're using for video calls; in that case, simply check the audio configuration there and turn off any noise reduction settings.

CitlalC
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