Discord Beta Suppresses Background Noise

Discord voice chats are particularly relevant as the COVID-19 pandemic drives a lot of people to work and play at home, and there's now a way to make sure your home sounds don't get in on those chats. Discord now senses and eliminates any unwanted sound in the background to counter the irritation, ensuring everyone in the group can hear each other loud and clear.

According to a company blog post, chat service Discord adds a new noise suppression feature into beta as part of a collaboration with Krisp.ai. Friends and co-workers are not expected to hear the noisy mechanical keyboard or talkative roommate.

The app, which today rolls out to all Desktop users of Discord, detects and eliminates background noises so that voices can be heard more clearly. The post said, “Have a vacuum running in the background; slam a door; ruffle a bag of chips; keep using your really loud keyboard your friends complain about. They won’t be able to hear it.”

According to Discord, Krisp will only run on computers to cancel noise, and no data will be forwarded to his servers. The company says that the mobile support is in the works and the functionality in the app settings can be toggled on and off. Go to the app Settings" > "Voice and Video" > "Advanced" > "Noise Suppression."

Last month, Microsoft said it would implement real-time noise reduction for its video chat app Teams later this year.

As more people remain indoors during the pandemic because of social distance, chat apps have seen their networks strained and their number of users skyrocketing. Discord says it's seen 50 percent growth in daily voice users in the US since the start of the year. It's seen the average number of people in Spain and France double on the website. And in Italy as of the beginning of 2020, average consumers have been tripled.