You’ve heard of noise cancelling headphones. Apple also offers noise cancelling iPhones
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Apple)
(Image credit: Apple)
If you have a fairly recentiPhoneoriPadthat supportsApple’s Spatial Audio feature – there’s a full list of supported modelshere– or a Mac running macOS Monterey there’s a semi-secret system setting that can make your voice sound much clearer in voice and video calls.
If you select Voice Isolation, youriPhoneoriPadwill start to process the audio to remove sounds that aren’t your voice. It can reduce or even silence ambient noise in much the same way thatnoise cancelling earbudsdo, making your voice much easier to hear. If you want the opposite and would like people to hear all the sounds around you as well as your voice, tap on Wide Spectrum instead.
FaceTime voice isolation: the pros and the cons
The benefit of voice isolation is pretty clear: you’re easier to hear, and there’s much less echo too. But there’s a downside to that, which is that your voice sounds more processed than it would otherwise be. That’s not going to be a big deal for making calls but if you’re using FaceTime for podcast recording or other applications where sound quality matters then the processing might be a little too much. We’re hardly talking T-Pain-style AutoTune here, but it is noticeable.
For me, I think the benefits outweigh the downsides: it’s really nice to hear people without also hearing them tapping away on keyboards. But while it’s a useful feature it could be implemented better: it’s available in some other apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat but not TikTok, it’s on Zoom mobile but not on Zoom for the Mac, and it isn’t available for normal phone calls. And if you find the feature useful, you’ll probably be irritated that you can’t set it as the default: you’ll need to enable it manually in every single conversation. Hopefully Apple has noticed the amount of attention this feature is getting and will improve it in future versions ofiOS.
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Today’s best Apple iPhone 13 deals
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