Forum Discussion
Allow muting a person only for me
Sometimes I am in a meeting where one of the persons in the meeting is actually near me in the world outside the screen. In this case the sound is a bit maddening since there is a small delay between the sound from the person and the sound through the teams interface. In these cases, I would like to mute the person only for me since I am sitting near and can hear the person fine without headphones. Right now I need to takeoff headphones when the person is talking and putting it back as the person finishes talking.
152 Replies
er008 Four years after the pandemic, it's puzzling that a feature widely available in "Discord" and other meeting style software hasn't been implemented in MS Teams, despite this being one of the most widely used "meeting" platforms. Discord offers the ability to adjust audio settings individually for different users, allowing for personalized volume control. Eg, if a participant in a call has overly sensitive microphone settings, you can specifically lower their volume for yourself. This customization enhances the user experience, yet it remains missing from in MS Teams. This can't be difficult to implement.
Issue
It appears that audio stream sent to the Teams client is mixed in the cloud and sent to individual users as a single merged stream.
Benefits
- This reduces the amount of network traffic sent to individual users.
- This typically creates a low-effort solution that covers most use cases.
Disadvantages
- As listed here, sitting next to someone who is also on the call, you must deal with echo.
- There is another issue not mentioned - you cannot change the volume for individual users - there is one person on many of my calls who constantly shouts. I cannot reduce her volume.
Conclusion
Contrary to some of the suggestions here, many products ARE implementing this feature.
Microsoft should send individual voice streams to the client and give customers the option to mute or change the volume on individual users.
Tony_Platts This should be submitted to the Teams feedback portal and everyone here on this thread should vote for it. ;^) Microsoft looks there rather than here in the community threads for what they are going to implement next.
- Just gave it my like, for whatever that's worth....
- I also wish this feature
- Just implement this.
We have a ducking Teamspeak (sic!) server running on premise to hold voice meetings because it is unbearable for the people sitting in one office.
Teamspeak figured out the tech in 2002, I guess you can, too.
I am actually curious, are you mixing the sound in the cloud and just sending the mixed stream to everyone or why is this so hard to implement? It's been years ffs.- "are you mixing the sound in the cloud and just sending the mixed stream to everyone[?]"
Yes, reportedly this is exactly what's happening. All audio streams get mixed together into one which is distributed to every participant. Presumably this helps conserve bandwidth or improves reliability, but at the cost of usability in cases like this.AdamZovits ok, then wouldn't a compromise be cool?
<= 10 people per call: mixing client side;
>10: mixing server side;
Maybe there's even a sweet spot where the removal of extra calculation server side is worth adding the bandwidth.
Also, Microsoft could make the mixing client side optional - with its opt-in buried in some sub menu - then only people annoyed by it will use it and it'll hopefully barely scratch the performance...
- I only signed up to promote this proposal, like so many others.
I travel a lot and see many different companies. Hardly any company has the possibilities to offer enough employees a private room or cabin. This is a problem that cannot be solved in the "real world". It needs a software solution.
It's werid that the only good solution is using other software. Writing here do not bring anything, since it will never be implemented (we do not event get senseless replies "thank you for your replies we will take it into account").
It is probably kept open to give a place where to spit our frustration out.
For those interested, in our case we found a pretty cool workaround. It is one of the solutions listed below (even in a company using teams, we use that aside):
DISCLAIMER: I did not check the mute only option on all of these solutions
https://slack.com/get-started#/createnew
https://nextcloud.com/talk/
https://element.io/
https://zoom.us/fr/signup#/signup
https://discord.com/
https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/
https://jami.net/
https://bigbluebutton.org/
https://tox.chat/
I disable the notifications since it is useless only to be informed others are as frustrated than I am. It does only renew my anger.It is entirely in character for me to, from time to time, refuel my anger at Microsoft not having fixed this issue.
BILLION dollar company.
Cant be bothered to fix their meeting software to the modern work place.
270 million users in 2022. Can't make it so you can hear it in an open office floor plan.
Disgrace! !!
- Don't understand. Aer you saying the workaround is to use other software?
It says yours is not available! Not sure if it was archived or what happened. This one should work: https://aka.ms/AAwc7bh
Or search Feedback Hub for: "Teams Meeting - Allow muting a person only for me"
dpamment Yes, A feature like this would be great! I would like to stay in a study group chat for work but I would also like to be able to listen to the audio from the e-learning i'm currently working on. Whenever I try muting the person's audio in the teams study group it end's up muting their microphone for everyone else too so I am forced to exit the chat.
Yes this would solve a problem in our office.
- Agreed that this would be a major plus for Teams. One of my clients REALLY needs this feature.
They lack sufficient meeting rooms & often keep meetings from their separated desks (but all in the same, open room). So unfortunately a speakerphone is not an option.
It's been the biggest complain about Teams there, I sincerely hope I get to announce the feature's arrival one day. Signed up specifically to indicate that we need this feature as well. My colleagues and I regularly move over to Discord when we have to work alongside each other for a longer time, because Teams becomes unbearable if 2 people are in the same room or one person has a jackhammer in the background and keeps forgetting to mute themselves when they are not speaking.
I understand that the audiostream is mixed server-side and this is messier to implement than it seems at first glance, but MS should probably know that the lack of this feature is driving at least some people to other platforms on a regular basis. None of these alternative platforms can offer some of the other functionalities that Teams offers, but that just means that usage keeps being fragmented and it really is just this single feature being responsible for that.- i SORELY need this feature!
It is downright neglible that I am not able to mute individual persons on a call.
There are not always enough meeting rooms available at the office, and it is ridiculous I have to hold the headphones out in the air away from my ears when I am on a call with and a colleague in the office space is on the same call and speaking.
FIX THIS PLEASE. - 100% agree - I very commonly will join a meeting with someone who is in the same room as me (we are both in the same meeting) and it would be incredibly useful if I could mute the person in the room with me because I can hear them (and hearing them through Teams is just an obnoxious echo).
