This App Blocks Out the Sound of Barking Dogs and Tricycles During Video Calls

In this pandemic, we all know the pain of trying to talk over the sound of random household noises like dogs barking or children crying. It isn’t exactly easy to hear our colleagues over the honking of cars outside either. And who here has not had to ask everyone to mute themselves when they aren’t speaking? Thankfully, there’s an app for that now. 

Krisp removes unwanted background noises from both ends of a call. It also has room echo and acoustic echo removal features so you and your coworkers can hear each other perfectly. 

It’s available for free on both Windows and Mac. You can use Krisp with over 800 communication apps including Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Facetime, and Facebook Messenger. The app has a nifty feature that lets you record meetings as well. 

The free plan comes with 240 minutes of noise cancellation a week, along with 1 GB of recording storage. If you opt for a Personal Pro plan, you’ll get unlimited minutes and 10 GB of recording storage for $5 a month (billed annually).

We tried setting up Krisp with Skype and Zoom, and it was pretty easy. All you need to do is go into your video conferencing app’s audio settings and select Krisp as your microphone and speaker. We tested it by playing very loud dog barking noises, and the person on the other end of the call didn’t hear a thing.

The way Krisp’s technology works is that its AI has been taught to distinguish human voices from all other sounds. This was done by collecting 20,000 noises, 50,000 distinct speakers, and 2,500 hours of audio then feeding them into a neural network. Krisp acts as an additional layer between your physical microphone or speaker and your video conferencing app, only allowing human voices to filter through. 

There’s no need to worry about your audio being stored and used by Krisp—the app performs all audio processing locally, meaning your voice and audio will never leave your device. 

Krisp’s noise-canceling technology certainly addresses a major pain point when it comes to working remotely. With unwanted sounds filtered out, online meeting participants can focus on the matter at hand and get the job done.