Working from home or a busy cafe often means dealing with unpredictable background noise. Barking dogs, whirring blender motors, or the hum of a loud air conditioner can be incredibly distracting to your colleagues during a video call. Rather than constantly muting and unmuting your microphone every time you need to speak, you can leverage the AI-powered background noise suppression built directly into Microsoft Teams. This feature analyses the audio captured by your microphone in real-time, identifies the frequencies of human speech, and actively filters out almost all other ambient sounds before transmitting your audio to the meeting.
Understanding the Suppression Levels
Microsoft Teams offers three different levels of noise suppression, allowing you to choose how aggressively the software filters your audio.
- Auto (Default): The app automatically adjusts the suppression level based on your environment. If it detects a quiet room, it applies minimal filtering to preserve voice quality. If a lawnmower starts outside, it increases the filtering.
- High: This is the most aggressive setting. It uses advanced AI to strip out everything except speech. It is highly effective against loud, persistent noises like vacuums or crying babies, but it can occasionally clip the ends of your words or make your voice sound slightly robotic as the processor works overtime.
- Low: This setting suppresses only continuous background noise, like the hum of a computer fan or an air conditioner. It allows intermittent sounds (like music playing in the background or typing on a keyboard) to pass through.
- Off: Disables all software suppression. You should only use this if you are using a high-end external microphone with its own hardware noise cancellation, or if you are in a completely silent studio environment.
How to Change Noise Suppression Settings During a Call
If a sudden noise begins while you are already in a meeting, you can instantly ramp up the suppression without leaving the call.
- Click the More button (the three horizontal dots) in the main meeting toolbar at the top of the screen.
- Select Device settings from the dropdown menu. A side panel will open on the right.
- Scroll down to the Noise suppression section.
- Click the dropdown menu and change the setting from “Auto” to High.
The changes take effect immediately. You do not need to restart the application or rejoin the meeting.
How to Set Your Default Noise Suppression Level
If you consistently work in a noisy environment, you should change your global default setting so that “High” suppression is automatically applied to every future meeting you join.
- From the main Microsoft Teams window (not inside a meeting), click on your Profile picture or initials in the top-right corner.
- Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the Settings window, click on the Devices tab in the left-hand navigation pane.
- Scroll down to the Noise suppression section.
- Select your preferred default level (e.g., High) from the dropdown list.
Limitations of the High Setting
While the “High” setting is remarkably effective, it requires significant processing power. If you are running Microsoft Teams on an older laptop with a weak CPU, enabling High noise suppression may cause the application to lag or increase your battery consumption. Additionally, because the AI is specifically trained to isolate human speech, it will ruthlessly cut out any music. If your meeting involves playing an instrument or sharing audio through your microphone, you must lower the suppression level to “Low” or “Off”.