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.
148 Replies
This is serious issue in our office. It's impossible to mute and unmute personal headphones physically since then you will miss some of the conversation from remote people.
The main issue is that on the meetings, where whole team is present(as well as remote people), the person that is talking is hearing multiple echoes with delay of it's own voice in the headphones all around.
This makes it impossible for the person to speak.
I don't imagine everyone muting and unmuting their systems sound every half a second as a viable workaround.
This feature would save hundreds of people a lot of headache if you only care about this.
So please, start caring.- "This makes it impossible for the person to speak." Actually not. I do it all the time.
The example that you are using is the exact reason why everyone should be using headsets. Let's take it to a little more extreme, and that's having all the same people in one conference room, everyone with their speakers and microphone on. It honestly just won't work. That's why there are room meeting systems, to handle the situation.
Having noise cancelling microphones also helps the situation, by reducing the audio feedback from other speakers.
Yes, someone mentioned that "this is the way that we used to do it" and they are absolutely correct, that's why call centers mandate the use of headphones, for that exact reason.
And when you were using the old telephones, you used a handset (basically same as a headset) as opposed to a speakerphone. Using Speakerphones in a cubicle area is generally considered to be rude.
If use on the ear headphones, then others won't hear your speaker and feedback and echo is greatly reduced. If you use noise cancelling microphones, then this helps that even more.
If you use over the ear headphones and/or noise cancelling headphones, this will reduce you hearing the other people and mitigate the delay issue.
These are well know and expected issues and that's one of the reasons why Microsoft has created the Teams compatibility program for headsets, to make sure that they work best for users.
You could even switch back to Teams phones and go back to using handsets if you want to.
There are a number of solutions out there, using your PCs microphone and speakers don't fall in line with Best Practices. I'm in an office by myself and I know how much better I sound on a headset than on the computer's mic and speaker, that's why I NEVER use them. I always use a headset. Even cheap ones are generally much better then the computer mic/speaker.
And so many folks have earbuds that are paired with their phone and can also pair with their PC.David is right. It takes a very good set of headphones to completely cancel out the voices of other people in the room and I can assure you that call centers and companies in general are not in the business of giving those headsets to employees.
Most call centers are running on £10 Plantronics or Jabra headsets with a single boom mic and packaging foam as an ear cup.
And, even if what you suggested were accurate, it does not account for those people who speak very softly, whose voices we cannot turn up, and those that shout who we very much need to be able to turn down.
- +1 for this feature
I agree! This is an important feature for my office environment, and it is technically feasible ... sort of.
Instead of muting a single speaker, the speaker identification function (the one that puts a colored ring around the active speaker) could be used to mute all audio on the local machine every time all of the currently active speakers have been "muted." This way there is no need to send multiple audio streams to each attendee, and the local machine does not need to mix audio.
There may be some software development effort required to make the speaker identification function more responsive and keep it synchronized with the audio stream, and muting won't work when there are both muted and unmuted speakers at the same time, but I think it would serve the purpose well.Kent_Austin But how would that work when multiple people are speaking at the same time with one being remote along one in the office ? You would then not be able to hear the remote person's conversation because the whole audio stream has been muted just to block out the person speaking in the office.
KLeDematicAU, it isn't a perfect solution, but, I would propose that the audio should never be muted when multiple people are talking simultaneously. Otherwise as you point out, all information is lost. So the echo problem still exists, but it is suppressed in cases where people are behaving politely and taking turns speaking.
er008; peterrrattew ; KLeDematicAU ; Mad-Duke ; JacobtheAdmin ; brianelete ; Nathan892855 ; pebersbach :
We must save a link to this page in a text file on our notebooks and every time someone complains about it in our meetings, we can post in the meeting chat this ticket and tell them we must make our request visible and that they should come here to vote.
If some of your correspondents are linux users, remember them to EXPLICITLY specify it here: I am bored to wait 2 years after the windows client (because we are supposed to be a small community) and it would be nice to do it every where from the beginning: let forget our differences !
- I wanted to specify, that I am also concerned with the linux client (just in case people think we also have amazing ears capable of filtering sounds from various canals like physical, apps, ...).
It is a troll reply to beg you not to forget other team-clients I also can used this feature.
Nathan892855 Please use the feedback portal to tell Microsoft that you want this feature and how valuable it would be to you.
Allow users to mute individuals but just from our point of view · Community (microsoft.com)
To explain why it's currently not possible there is a single audio feed that is pre-mixed, it's not something that happens in your client.
it seems that it is no longer possible to access that page or that for some reason I have been blocked
- yes please implement this. i desperately need this, as im in meetings every day with mixed team (local/remote) and i hear the local ppl twice with a delay. drives me crazy.
- This needed to be implemented years ago like it was for Discord/Zoom/Teamspeak. How is Teams so far behind other voice/video chat that they don't have this feature implemented?
- If you are in a community space, the best thing is to wear headsets, so that you don't bother your neighbors or go to a conference room where you can both join the call together.
Even with headsets, if some users are remote and others are sitting a few feet from you, you'll hear them both in person AND through your headset, which is highly unsatisfactory. Other voice chat programs figured this out years ago.
- even if wearing headsets, the non electronic audio and subsequent electronic audio some milliseconds later is wildly annoying and distracting
headphones, as a hardware solution, is not what OP asked for, they clearly asked for software solution
