If you hear your own voice come back a moment after you speak, the echo is almost always caused by someone else on the call: their speakers play your voice, their microphone picks it up, and it travels back to you. If other people say they hear an echo, it's usually your end that's sending it. Headphones stop it in nearly every case, because a microphone can't pick up sound that only goes into your ears. Lower speaker volume and the app's echo cancellation take care of most of the rest.
Hear how much of your speakers your mic picks up
Switch off echo cancellation in the mic test, play something on your speakers at call volume and record a 10-second clip. The playback shows what your mic would send into a call before the app cleans it up.
Who's causing the echo?
An echo needs a loop: sound from a speaker reaches a microphone in the same room and is sent back into the call. The person who hears the echo is the one whose voice is being looped, not the one doing the looping. That's what makes it confusing. Your setup can be perfect and you still hear yourself, while the person causing it hears nothing wrong at all.
| What you notice | Where it usually comes from |
|---|---|
| You hear your own voice a moment after you speak | Another person's speakers and microphone |
| Other people say they hear themselves when they talk | Your speakers and microphone |
| You hear yourself instantly in your headset, with no delay | A monitoring setting on your computer or headset |
| Everyone sounds hollow, as if in a bathroom | A bare, hard room around someone's microphone |
| A loud howl or whine that keeps building | Two devices in the same room joined to one call |
To find the source in a group call, ask everyone to mute, then unmute one at a time while you talk. When the echo comes back, it's the person who just unmuted. Headphones fix it for them and for everyone else.
Wear headphones
Headphones are the one fix that always works, because the loop has nowhere to start. Other people's voices go straight into your ears, and your microphone only hears you. Any kind will do: wired earbuds, a gaming headset or wireless earbuds. Open-back headphones turned up loud can leak a little sound, so keep them at a normal volume.
Bluetooth headsets switch to a lower-quality call mode when you use their microphone. If that makes you sound muffled, keep them for listening and talk into your laptop's microphone instead. The echo still can't happen, because the sound goes into the headphones. See why Bluetooth headset mics sound bad for that setup.
No headphones? Turn the speakers down
Call apps cancel echo by subtracting what they play through your speakers from what your microphone hears. That works well when the speakers are quiet compared with your voice, and less well when they're loud or distorting, because the sound reaching the mic no longer matches what the app sent out. Help it along:
- Lower the speaker volume until you can just hear people comfortably. Every step down makes the echo canceller's job easier.
- Keep speakers away from the mic. On a laptop they're built close together, but external speakers placed to the sides, rather than right next to the microphone, feed less sound into it.
- Avoid speakers that add a delay. Bluetooth speakers, or a TV or monitor connected over HDMI, can delay the sound, and a long or changing delay makes the echo harder to remove.
- Soften the room. Bare walls and hard floors bounce more sound back into the mic. A rug, curtains or a sofa help, and they also fix the hollow sound people often call echo.
- Use a speakerphone built for calls if several people share one computer. These have echo cancellation tuned for exactly this job.
Don't join one call on two devices in the same room
Joining from your laptop and your phone at once, or sitting next to a colleague who's in the same meeting, creates the worst kind of loop. Each device's speaker feeds the other device's microphone, the sound goes round again, and it can build into a howl. Muting the microphone on one device isn't enough, because its speaker keeps playing. Turn off audio completely on all but one device:
- Zoom: on the second device, click the arrow next to Mute and choose Leave Computer Audio. In the phone app, look for Disconnect Audio under More.
- Teams: on the screen before you join, choose Don't use audio for the second device. In a meeting room with a Teams Room system, choose Room audio, so your laptop doesn't add its own speaker and mic.
- Next to someone in the same meeting: one of you joins without audio, or you both wear headphones and sit well apart.
- Joined twice by accident? A meeting open in a browser tab and in the app at the same time doubles everything. Close one.
Check your app's echo cancellation and music mode
Zoom, Teams, Discord and other call apps cancel echo for you by default. The usual way it gets switched off is through a music or "original sound" mode, which turns off the processing so instruments come through untouched. That's fine with headphones and a bad idea with speakers.
- Zoom: in Settings > Audio, under Microphone modes, Original sound for musicians switches off Zoom's usual processing. With speakers, keep its Echo cancellation option ticked, or go back to the standard Noise removal mode.
- Teams: High fidelity music mode in Settings > Devices has its own echo cancellation checkbox, which is on unless someone unticked it. Microsoft suggests turning music mode off for ordinary calls.
- Discord: Echo Cancellation is a switch in User Settings > Voice & Video. Keep it on if you use speakers, and consider push to talk, so your mic only sends while you hold the key.
- In a browser: calls in a browser, like Google Meet, usually rely on the browser's own echo cancellation. The mic test has a switch for it, so you can hear what it does.
Why do I hear myself with no delay?
If you hear your own voice in your headset instantly, with no gap, that isn't echo from the call. It's monitoring, also called sidetone: your computer or headset plays your microphone into your ears on purpose. A little helps some people avoid talking too loudly. If it bothers you:
- Windows: open Settings > System > Sound > More sound settings. On the Recording tab, double-click your microphone, open the Listen tab and untick Listen to this device.
- Headset software: many gaming and office headsets have a sidetone or mic monitoring slider in their companion app. Turn it down or off.
- Other apps: audio monitoring in OBS, voice changers and the mic test's Hear yourself button all play your voice back to you. Turn them off.
Test your setup before the next call
You can't hear your own echo, because it reaches the other people, not you. So a test has to show what your microphone picks up, or use a second person.
- See what your mic hears from your speakers. In the mic test, switch off Echo cancellation and Noise suppression, play a video on your speakers at your usual call volume, and record a 10-second clip while you talk. If the video is loud in the playback, your mic is catching your speakers and the call app has to remove all of it. Headphones or a lower volume fix that.
- Check you picked the right devices. The call check tests your camera, microphone and speakers together, then lists the device names to choose in your call app. A common cause of echo is a headset that's plugged in while the app still plays through the laptop's speakers.
- Make a test call. Zoom has a test meeting at zoom.us/test, and the Teams app has Make a test call in Settings > Devices. Better still, call a friend and ask whether they hear themselves.
Questions
Why do I hear an echo when nobody else does?
Because it's your voice being looped by someone else's speakers and microphone. Everyone else hears that person normally. Ask people to mute one at a time to find who it is, and ask them to wear headphones or turn their speakers down.
Can I cause an echo if I'm wearing headphones?
Rarely. Check that your call app really plays through the headphones and not the laptop speakers, and that the headphones aren't so loud that sound leaks out. If both are fine, the echo is coming from someone else.
Why does the echo only happen with one person?
Their setup is the loop. It's usually laptop speakers turned up without headphones, a music or original sound mode with echo cancellation off, or a second device joined to the call in the same room.
Is sounding like I'm in a bathroom the same as echo?
No. That hollow sound is the room itself: your voice bouncing off hard walls before it reaches the mic. Move the mic closer to your mouth, or talk from a room with soft furnishings. Our guide to louder, clearer mic sound covers mic position.