Tips and Tricks for Using VoiceMeeter to Add Music to Your Virtual Workshops, Lessons, and Meetings
Six powerful things to know before you use VoiceMeeter to add music to your next virtual session!
Ready to take your music playback to the next level in your virtual sessions? Read ahead for key tips and tricks that will help you optimize your flow and ensure incredibly successful sessions every time!
Note: If you have not yet configured your setup with VoiceMeeter, check out my step-by-step guide here:
Tips and Tricks
Tip 1. Controlling Virtual vs. Main Audio output
Tip 2. Toggle Noise Suppression for best results
Tip 3. Enable Teams’ High Fidelity music mode to really make your audio sing
Tip 4. Use royalty free music to avoid any copyright issues — especially in recorded or commercial sessions
Tip 5. Ensure VoiceMeeter is set to the highest quality audio possible
Tip 6. Fade in/out music
Tip 1. Controlling Virtual vs. Main Audio output
In VoiceMeeter, you’ll notice that each input section has buttons with “A” and “B” enclosed in circles. These buttons control whether that audio source is heard on the Main Out (A) and/or Virtual Out (B).
A is the Main Out and will feed audio to the device you selected for A1.
B is the Virtual Out and will feed audio to a device selected for A2 or, in our case, the virtual output that we feed into Teams. (So no need to set any device for A2 in this instance.)
This is super handy as you can deeply control what audio source is heard where!
For instance, you might want to have Spotify playing both on your speakers and for your virtual attendees but have your microphone muted. To do so, you’d have A and B on for Spotify but both off for your Microphone input.
Another example, you might want to have your microphone on along with Spotify playing, but not want to hear Spotify on your end while speaking. To do so, simply enable your microphone for virtual out (turning on B, but ensuring not to turn on A to avoid any feedback!) and similarly enable just B (and turn off A) for Spotify.
Snazzy, right!?
Tip 2. Toggle Noise Suppression for best results
As mentioned earlier, noise suppression in Teams is too good! I highly recommend keeping the following settings in mind to yield the best results:
Turn ON Noise Suppression For Just Voice
When you intend to speak regularly without music playing, turn ON Noise Suppression in Teams’ Device Settings to eliminate any background noises (like fans, mouse clicks, typing, etc.).
Turn OFF Noise Suppression for Voice + Music or Just Music
When you want to play music (either by itself or under your voice), be sure to turn OFF Noise Suppression in Teams’ Device Settings so that the music is able to play at full quality without any distortion.
Tip 3. Enable Teams’ High Fidelity music mode to really make your audio sing
Microsoft Teams has a truly remarkable way of allowing you to boost the fidelity of audio in meetings, but you first have to know how to turn it on before you can use this great feature.
Enabling Teams’ High Fidelity music mode is easy: navigate to your Teams Settings menu and select Devices.
Locate the option for High fidelity music mode and toggle the feature on.
By enabling, we are now able to increasing the fidelity of music up to a sample rate of 32kHz at 128kbps when network bandwidth allows.
You can easily enable and disable High fidelity music mode right from a meeting simply by selecting the music note icon now added to your top bar.
With the improved audio sample rate in Teams along with the right settings for VoiceMeeter and System (see Tip 5), your participants will be humming along in no time.
Tip 4. Use royalty free music to avoid any copyright issues — especially in recorded or commercial sessions
We all have that one major pump-up song we use to psyche ourselves up before a session — but for the purposes of playing music during virtual workshops, lessons, and meetings, be sure to stick to only royalty free music to avoid any copyright issues.
You can find plenty of great royalty free tracks across dedicated Spotify playlists as well as resources such as Adobe Stock and others. Be sure to check if your organization has an established resource of approved music that you can use! You can always change the music input for your meeting by adjusting which applications send audio to VoiceMeeter in your Windows Advanced Sound Options (see Step 2).
Tip 5. Ensure VoiceMeeter is set to the highest quality audio possible
This tip is a long one but worth following. Although it may not make a noticeable difference over a virtual session, you may find it useful to ensure you have the highest quality audio playing and recording when using VoiceMeeter.
In VoiceMeeter, click Menu and then select System settings / Options… from the dropdown.
Take note of the Preferred Main SampleRate item at the very bottom of the popup. Select the item to change your sample rate from the default to the highest possible, in this case 192000 Hz.
Next, we need to ensure the device playback and recording sample rate is equally high on our system.
Open (or return to) your Windows Sound Settings by going to:
Start > Settings > System > Sound
Beneath the option for Advanced sound options, select Sound Control Panel from Related Settings.
In the Sound Control Panel under the Playback tab, locate VoiceMeeter Input and right click on the item. Select Properties from the option menu.
Open the Advanced tab and change the Default Format to be 24 bit, 19200 Hz (Studio Quality) from the dropdown list.
Click OK and return to the Sound Control Panel, switching over now to the Recordings tab at the top. Repeat the step above to set the VoiceMeeter Output to 24 bit, 192000 Hz (Studio Quality) as well.
With this set, you have now configured your input and output for VoiceMeeter to the highest quality audio playback and recording quality!
Tip 6. Fade in/out music
Want to feel like a DJ? Use the volume sliders in VoiceMeeter for your Virtual Input (Spotify) to gradually lower and raise the volume of the music when bringing back focus to a presenter or making an announcement.
Give it a try and do your best to resist adding a few record scratch sound effects while you’re at it!
You’ve got the power!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive on powerful tips and tricks to really make the most out of your virtual sessions while using VoiceMeeter to add high quality music playback to your meetings, workshops, and lessons.
I’d love to know any tips or tricks you’ve stumbled across! Feel free to send them my way and I’ll add them to this post.
As always, thank you for reading and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
