[LAU] online calls with decent auido for music lessons

[Lorenzo Sutton]

Hi LAU,

As we're entering a 'tighter' lock-down in my area this week I will need 
to attend online music lessons (bass). The suggested tool is zoom with 
'original sound' option selected, but it seems this is not available on 
Linux (nor in a web (chrome?) client) [1].

In the past setting the 'noise reduction' (or maybe it's echo 
cancellation) to low seemed to work OK, but I'm wondering if anyone 
knows of any work-arounds.

Or any other platform (Discord seems to use Opus which sounds promising).
The one used for the last LAC seemed also quite nice, but I guess that's 
not free (as in 'gratis')? As zoom is the tool selected by the music 
school it should also be something relatively hassle-free for the 
teacher and cross-platform (i.e. assume they will not be on Linux, so no 
funky stuff like having to install a Mumble server etc. :-| ... Although 
the offers on mumble.com seem quite reasonable, but has anyone used it 
for music?)

I _am_ already able to set-up e.g. my Zoom H5 (the device not the 
software) or usb audio interface via JACK to have a decent mic/input at 
the source and then pulseaudio-jack sink for audio I/O with these apps 
(I actually helped my son do remote drum lessons which included piping 
smplayer via jack to him locally and his teacher as well as the e-drum 
line out with JACK).
But of course there's no much point in having decent quality at the 
source if the software is doing funky stuff like noise reduction and 
echo cancellation at the source :-|

Any suggestion welcome.

Lorenzo.


[1] e.g. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/Zoom/comments/g9qu9v/original_sound_and_stereo_options_missing_on/
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115003279466-Enabling-option-to-preserve-original-sound

[2]