How to Play Sounds Through Your Mic

Most answers to this question say "use a soundboard" and stop. The catch is where the sound goes. A soundboard that plays to your speakers is only for you; the call gets your microphone, and your microphone is a separate path. So we tested the three ways a sound can reach a call and measured each one on the receiving end.

Why can't people in my call hear the sounds I play?

Because the call only listens to your microphone, and your computer plays sounds to your speakers or headphones. Those are two separate paths. With headphones on, nothing you play ever reaches the mic, so the call hears nothing. In our test the other side got no trace of the air horn: the closest match in the recording was 34 dB down, which is just noise.

Without headphones, your mic can pick the sound up from the speakers, as it does your voice. Then the call gets a quiet, roomy copy under your voice, and call apps try to remove exactly that, because to them it looks like echo.

What does the call hear in each case?

Through a virtual mic the sound arrives almost as loud as the file; through the speakers it arrives 17 dB down and blurred by the room. The 2 dB we measured on the virtual mic is the Soundboard's sound volume, which starts at 80%. Turn it up and the horn comes through at full level.

Echo cancellation didn't save the speaker route in our test either way. With Chrome's echo cancellation, noise suppression and auto gain turned on, the horn arrived at 17 dB down; with all three off, at 16 dB. Our test browser had no real speakers, so its echo cancellation had nothing to compare with. On a real laptop it may take more of the sound out, which only makes the speaker route worse.

How do you play sounds through your mic in Chrome?

Soundboard is a free browser tool that plays sound clips into your microphone for calls and streams in Chrome. It works in calls through the free Facecam extension, which adds a microphone called Facecam Virtual Mic to every site in Chrome.

1. 1

   Add the extension and open the Soundboard

   Install Facecam for Chrome, then open the Soundboard on facecam.ai. The ten built-in sounds are ready to play.

2. 2

   Add your own sounds

   Click Add sounds and pick audio files of up to 30 seconds each. They stay on your computer. The board holds up to 24 sounds in calls.

3. 3

   Send them to your virtual mic

   Click "Use these sounds in calls". The page confirms that the sounds were sent to Facecam.

4. 4

   Pick Facecam Virtual Mic in the call

   In Google Meet, Zoom on the web, discord.com or any call site in Chrome, open the microphone menu and choose Facecam Virtual Mic. Your own voice still goes through it.

5. 5

   Play sounds during the call

   Play them from the Soundboard section under More in the Facecam extension's menu, or give the first six sounds keyboard shortcuts at chrome://extensions/shortcuts ("Soundboard: play sound 1" and so on) so you can fire them without leaving the call.

Can you play sounds through your mic without a soundboard?

Yes, but you still need something that acts as a microphone. On a desktop app the usual route is a virtual audio cable: you set a program's output to the cable and pick the cable as your mic, then mix your real mic in with another tool. It works in any app but takes setup, and your own voice disappears unless you mix it back in. A browser soundboard with a virtual mic does the mixing for you, but only for calls in Chrome.

Do sound effects sound bad in calls?

They sound like a call, not like a file. Our test call sent about 31 kbit/s of mono audio, Chrome's default for a voice call, and the horn still came through clearly. Meet, Zoom and Discord also run their own noise filters, which are built to remove sounds that aren't speech, so applause or crickets may come through weaker than an air horn. If a sound vanishes in one app, turn that app's noise filter down while you play it.

Want your voice changed as well as sound effects? The same virtual mic carries the free voice effects of the Real-Time Voice Changer, and the sounds play on top.

What didn't we test?

• A real room. The speakers-without-headphones case used a copy of the horn mixed into the mic feed 20 dB down. How loud your speakers are and how far the mic is will change that number.
• Real call apps. Our call was a WebRTC page in Chrome, the same technology Meet and discord.com use, but without their own noise filters. We didn't sign in to Discord, Meet or Zoom.
• Desktop apps. We tested the Facecam Virtual Mic, which exists for websites in Chrome. The Zoom and Discord desktop apps and games get Facecam Virtual Microphone from Facecam for PC and Mac instead, which we didn't measure here.