Krisp: mute background noise during calls

Krisp, a background noise cancelling application that was released for Mac OS X initially, is now also available for Windows devices.

The application tries to address a problem that making calls on Windows or Mac devices brings along with it often: background noise and its effect on the call quality.

Background noise and the effect that it has on calls you make depends largely on the noise itself. It can be quite distracting if you need to make a call from a crowded place or in loud environments; not only are you affected by this, the people that you talk to may also be affected by background noise.

Background noise from call participants can also be highly annoying, and Krisp promises to take care of both of these.

Krisp attempts to mute or mask background noise during calls and other microphone activity. Installation and use is not as straightforward as one would expect though.

The application sits idly in the system tray area upon installation and the first thing that you will notice when you activate it is a prompt to sign in.

I'm not a huge fan of applications that require you to sign in before you can do anything with them. Apart from the bad user experience, it also raises privacy alarm bells right from the get-go. Krisp loads a login page in the default browser when you activate the login option. There you are asked to enter your email address and confirm it by entering a code that was sent to it.

The local application should pick up the sign-in state so that you can start using it; this was not the case on one of the devices I tested it on. The app seemed stuck on "Loading Krisp Please Wait" and the "try again" button would not resolve the issue.

You need to select Krisp as the speaker/microphone if you get past this. Just toggle the "mute noise" option afterward under microphone or speaker to reduce background noise while using the speakers or microphone.

Krisp is designed for calls but it can also be very useful if you use voice chat applications such as Discor, Teamspeak, or others. How good is the noise cancelling? You can check out a demo on the Krisp homepage that gives you answers for common scenarios such as coffee shop, conferencing, street, or screaming child. The developers plan to release Krisp for Android and iOS in the future as well.

Closing Words

Krisp does a great job when it comes to cancelling background noise when you use the microphone on your computer or listen to others. I wish it would not enforce the sign-in as there is no need for that at all at this point in time.

Now You: Have you tried Krisp? What is your take?

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