Now that you are working from home, background noise during your online meetings can be a problem, but there ways to control anything from a dog barking to a washing machine spinning.

Working from Home has many benefits, but it brought some new unexpected problems, as people discovered when they started having meetings online. Suddenly, many of the noises that we live with on our daily life became a problem needing a solution. From your neighbour’s dog barking – or your own – to children that seem to know when a meeting is taking place, or the sound of your own keyboard while you type, there are a lot of sounds that you don’t want in your meeting or, if that’s the case, your Work From Home broadcast.

Meeting apps like Zoom have an option to control background noise – in the Advanced Settings – that will probably take care of many situations, but if you use software that does not offer built-in noise cancellation options, you need to look for alternatives.

If you’ve NVIDIA GeForce RTX or Quadro RTX graphics card, I’ve some good news for you: you already have a noise cancellation tool that is FREELY available, called RTX Voice. Two more things you need for the magic to happen: to be on the driver 410.18 or newer, and be on Windows 10. Follow the link to read more about the software and download it to use the extra options of your graphics card.

Noise cancelling… graphics cards

NVIDIA RTX Voice is a new plugin that leverages NVIDIA RTX GPUs and their AI capabilities to remove distracting background noise from your broadcasts, voice chats, and remote video conferencing meetings. This allows users to “go live” or join a meeting, says NVIDIA, “without having to worry about unwanted sounds like loud keyboard typing or other ambient noise in noisy environments. RTX Voice also suppresses background noise from players in loud environments, making incoming audio easier to understand.”

RTX Voice is able to remove the background noise from your conversations, eliminating distracting keypresses from mechanical keyboards, PC and fan noises, and other background noise to ensure your incoming and outgoing audio is crystal clear. It can be used as your microphone or to denoise incoming audio, like players in-game who forget to mute their mics.

Easy to install and setup, NVIDIA RTX Voice adds a virtual Microphone and Speakers within your system. They can then be selected in most popular live streaming, gaming, and video conferencing apps including, but not limited to:

• OBS Studio
• Streamlabs
• XSplit Broadcaster
• XSplit Gamecaster
• Twitch Studio
• Discord
• Google Chrome
• Battle.net Chat
• WebEx*
• Skype*
• Zoom*
• Slack*
• Steam Chat**

* RTX Voice speakers may exhibit issues in these apps.

**Turn off ‘Noise Cancellation’ for better quality.

Help to shape the future of streaming

Setup is easy. RTX Voice creates a virtual device on your system, says NVIDIA, “and it is this virtual device that we want to use in your voice chat apps to denoise background noise from chat only, and not from your general Windows audio (as it would denoise unwanted audio feeds, like YouTube videos, Spotify music, or game audio).”

RTX Voice is currently in beta and you can help NVIDIA as the feedback you provide helps the company make the software even better. You can help the developers train the AI network and help shape the future of streaming following the link from the download page to the RTX Broadcast Engine feedback page.

The second option is Krisp, presented as the “World’s Best Innovative Noise Cancellation Technology Powered by Deep Neural Network”. Krisp is an AI-powered noise cancelling app that removes background noise from your calls with one click. With a single button, helps you to have a productive and professional conferencing experience without background noise.

Krisp, an AI-powered noise cancelling app

It does not stop there, though. According to the developers, Krisp can block background noise on both ends of the call. You can cancel noise on your side with Krisp Microphone so that other call participants can only hear your voice. Conversely, if there is a lot of background noise coming from other participants, Krisp Speaker can help you don’t hear their noises.

Krisp is available for Windows, Mac, iOS and Chrome, support more than 800 communication apps and and was built to “Enable People to Work from Anywhere”. With the world shifting and remote work being the norm for many people, Krisp brings freedom and flexibility to people and empowers them to be more productive and professional when working remotely. It also allows us to be closer to family who is living away… without having to share with them the neighbour’s barking dog!

Krisp is not FREE! Well, it has a FREE version, which is  perfect for professionals who occasionally work remotely. It offers 120min/week. But if you need more time and options you need to check the Pro, Teams and Enterprise Plans, which have unlimited time and can be used in multiple devices. Visit Krisp’s website for more information and to download the app and try it.