Battling background sound in meetings
If you work with a computer, I can pretty much guarantee that you're involved in a lot of online meetings, whether that's Zoom, Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or any other app you're meeting with others virtually.
But even if you have a great camera, even if you've invested in good audio, what about all of those things that are out of your control?
And yes, I'm talking about background noise. I'm talking about noisy neighbors.
I'm talking about a spouse or a roommate or a pet or maybe even construction that is going on outside.
Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at Krisp, a simple but very easy-to-use technology which is going to remove all of that background noise.
No matter how noisy it is in your environment, you're going to sound clean and professional to everyone that you're meeting with.
Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
At first glance, you may think that your home office or your home environment is the only application for Krisp.
But I think there's two other areas that we need to keep in mind.
Number one, what if you happen to be working from a different remote location, such as a coffee shop or maybe a noisy airport?
A location where you need to take that call but you have very little control, if no control, over those background noises.
Krisp is fantastic for those situations.
Lastly, even if you work in a traditional closed-door office, that doesn't make it immune from an awful lot of noise.
More and more of us work from an open office concept, and that means a lot of noise from your coworkers, from people walking by, from maybe other meetings or other phone calls within the vicinity, and you can't control that noise either.
So whether you're at home, at a remote location, or even in the office, Krisp might be the best solution for you.
How to setup Krisp on your computer
So how does it work?
And maybe more importantly, does it really do what it promises when it comes to removing background noise?
In order to install Krisp, all you need to do is go to krisp.ai.
The great thing is that they have a free forever plan, so you don't have to pay for anything if you don't want to.
Krisp is available for both Mac and Windows.
Once you've installed it, you can open up the app.
Here I am within my Windows machine, and I'm opening up the taskbar and selecting the Krisp icon.
It's just a small application that sits on your computer with a very, very simple interface.
The idea is that you're going to run or choose which microphone is going to go through the Krisp software.
So, for example, here within the Krisp dialog, I've got a microphone section here and I've got a speaker section down below.
Here I can choose which microphone I want to be using.
I want to keep it with my Yeti.
I actually do want to keep it as my default here for my speakers as well, but you can choose whatever you have connected with your system.
It'll even give you a little helpful idea here as to what is currently being used with that microphone.
In my case, because I'm recording this video, it's using Camtasia to record what's going through my microphone at the moment.
Below you can see there is a very simple toggle switch where we can remove the noise.
We can turn this on or we can toggle it off, so you don't always have to be using Krisp if you don't want to.
But I think what you're gonna find out is you're probably going to want to leave this on, especially when you're in meetings.
Now, the Krisp interface does give us the ability to test out its noise cancellation ability in advance.
This is probably a good choice before you use Krisp for the first time just to see how effective it is going to be within your environment.
But why don't we take Krisp through a real task?
I wanna use the actual toggle here and not just the test functionality.
Testing how effective Krisp is with noise
What I've decided to do is to pull up a video on YouTube.
It's something that is called 10 hours of busy coffee shop background noise.
No, we're not gonna use 10 hours to do so, but something to recreate that background noise.
When I turn this on, I'm gonna put this just a few inches, like literally maybe 9 to 12 inches from the microphone just to see how effective this can be.
I'm gonna press play and I'm sure you can see what or you can hear what's going on at the moment.
You can hear that there's some dishes clanging in the background.
There's some muffled conversations that are happening there as well.
Now remember, remove noise is toggled off.
This is basically just my live microphone with this noise going on in the background.
Now with that background noise continuing to go, let's hit our remove noise toggle and hear the difference.
Is it gone?
It's almost gone completely.
I can't hear it at all.
Can you hear it on your end?
You may notice that my voice sounds slightly different than it did before or earlier in the video.
There's a reason for that because Krisp is having to use that technology to remove that background noise.
But now you can focus on me and what I'm saying and what I have to share within the video conference.
Let's stick with this and I'm gonna hit the remove noise toggle again, so now that background noise has returned, right?
It's back in the picture.
You can hear it.
It's probably distracting you in addition to distracting me as well.
If I turn it on, once again, instantaneously, it's removed all of that background noise even though this video is still playing just a few inches from the microphone.
How Krisp removes participant noise
Not only will Krisp help you to sound and look more professional, but you can actually remove background noise from other people that you're meeting with.
You're probably curious as to why under the speaker section there is also a remove noise option.
What this is going to do when you toggle is going to remove the background noise from the people that you're meeting with.
Perhaps your colleague just can't keep their dog quiet.
Or perhaps someone else is working in an area where there's a lot of construction going on outside.
You can hit this switch and remove their background noise as well.
Keep in mind, this is not going to have any effect on anyone else in the meeting.
This is just for your speakers or for your earbuds.
But it's gonna help you to focus on the conversation at hand.
You won't have to go searching for the mute button or asking someone to mute themselves constantly despite their noisy background.
Krisp plans and pricing
Taking a quick look at pricing, great news!
You can use Krisp absolutely free and free for forever.
Their personal plan costs you absolutely nothing and gives you 240 minutes a week of noise removal.
That's four hours each week for either microphone or speaker noise removal.
If you're needing more than that, more than four hours per week, you can upgrade to their Personal Pro plan, which is just $5 per month billed yearly.
You can see that their Teams option is the exact same price as the Personal Pro option.
It's just easier to manage and gives you a few more team management features.
So if you'd like to stop worrying about all that background noise and also stop getting angry at your kids and pets, you can download Krisp for free and start using it right away.
Be sure to click the link in the description below for more details.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
