We at Techplugged prefer to use FaceTime Audio or WhatsApp instead of normal phone calls whenever possible. The folks we’re phoning see it as a regular phone call, yet the audio quality is far superior to a regular phone call.
But! It turned out that we weren’t doing things correctly. Today, we discovered a newish Control Center function that quickly increases the quality of your microphone during calls, whether you’re audio-only or on video.
Voice Isolation is available on most iPhones, iPads, and Macs from the last few years that are running iOS 15 or macOS Monterey. (It appears that anything that supports Spatial Audio also supports Voice Isolation.) It’s oddly difficult to discover, and you can only access it when you’re already on a call: swipe down from the upper-right corner (or click in the upper-right corner on a Mac) to get to the Control Center, then press on the “Mic Mode” button. It is set to Standard by default, however, there are two alternative options: Voice Isolation and Wide Spectrum. Wide Spectrum will actually allow the other people on your call to hear more background noise, which may be beneficial if you’re holding up your phone at a concert but seems like a terrible thing to do to the other people on the line. But what about Voice Isolation? The magic happens in voice isolation.
