Discord Releases Background Noise Cancellation in Beta

Discord, the popular text and voice chat service, is implementing a new feature to help reduce background noise during voice calls.

When you're stuck at home with other people, it can be hard to maintain a certain degree of privacy. A perfect example of this can be seen with voice chats when someone in the group has unavoidable background noise. Maybe it's their mom watching TV in the same room or they're in a shared gaming area. Either way, it's annoying for everyone involved.

Discord knows about this issue, it's been in demand for a long while. And with the recent stay-at-home orders relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, the service has seen a large spike in the voice chat activity. So now is the best time to launch a new noise suppression feature.

Detailed in an announcement on the Discord Blog, they are releasing a background noise suppressor for desktop versions of the Discord app. Developed in collaboration with Krisp.ai, this feature will filter out non-voice sounds like vacuums, doors, and even loud keyboards. Users can activate the suppressor via a button available on the chat window, as well as through the program settings.

This isn't the only consideration Discord has made regarding the pandemic. Previously, they announced that their screen share mode, Go Live, will increase the number of users it supports from 10 at a time to 50. This allowed one user to share their screen with others in a "private broadcast" of sorts. By increasing the size to above that of the average classroom, this allowed teachers to potentially create virtual classes on a platform that many school kids were already familiar with.

Currently, the suppression feature is only available in beta on PC. They're currently working on an official rollout to mobile.