# How do I get the best audio quality?

> Microphone placement, speakerphone, external mics, and room tips for recordings that transcribe accurately — and what far-field audio can't do.

Updated: 2026-08-16 · Canonical: https://usecanto.com/help/recording/microphone-tips/

Transcript quality is mostly decided before anyone speaks: by where the microphone sits relative to the people talking. A phone flat on the table within a metre or two of the speakers, screen up, unobstructed, gets you most of the way. Everything below is refinements on that.

## Where should I put the phone?

- **On the table, in the middle of the conversation.** Not in a pocket, not in a bag, not on a chair — fabric and distance destroy consonants, and consonants are what transcription runs on.
- **Closer to the quiet talker.** Microphone distance matters per person: if one participant is soft-spoken or far away, bias the phone toward them. The loud person will still come through.
- **Nothing on top of or around the mic.** Don't set the phone against a laptop fan, under papers, or next to a clattering keyboard. Mind where the actual microphone openings are — a hand or case flap over the edge of the phone can muffle everything.
- **Screen up and let it lock.** Recording continues with the screen off — see [Does Canto record in the background?](https://usecanto.com/help/recording/background-recording/)

## What about remote calls?

If you're in the meeting from your laptop, the best option isn't a microphone at all: send the notetaker into the call, and it records everyone's audio directly from the meeting instead of through your room — see [What is the notetaker?](https://usecanto.com/help/notetaker/what-is-the-notetaker/)

If you do record a call acoustically, put the call on speakerphone or external speakers and record with a second device on the table. Remote voices compressed by the call and then re-recorded through a room are the hardest audio there is; expect a weaker transcript than for in-room speech.

## Does the room matter?

Yes, second only to distance. Echoey rooms — glass walls, hard tables, empty space — smear speech together; background noise (cafés, traffic, air conditioning) buries the quiet parts. You can't always choose the room, but you can close the door, sit away from the noise source, and move the phone closer to compensate.

## Should I use an external microphone?

For recurring, high-stakes recording — a weekly board meeting, interviews — a USB-C or Lightning conference microphone is a real upgrade: better pickup pattern, better far-field response. Canto records from whatever input the system provides, so a connected external mic is used automatically on mobile. On the web, pick the input device in your browser's site permissions or system sound settings — a common web pitfall is recording from the laptop's internal mic while a better one sits connected.

## What are the honest limits?

Far-field audio degrades gracefully but it degrades. Across a large room, expect the transcript to thin out for distant or overlapping speakers, and [speaker separation](https://usecanto.com/help/transcription/speaker-separation/) to get less reliable — two similar voices far from the mic are hard to tell apart. If a recording came out worse than expected, the fix is nearly always physical for next time: halve the distance, kill a noise source. For what to do with the current one, see [My recording is lost or silent](https://usecanto.com/help/troubleshooting/recording-lost-or-silent/).

Related articles:

- [How does Canto tell speakers apart?](https://usecanto.com/help/transcription/speaker-separation/)
- [Speakers are mixed up or mislabeled](https://usecanto.com/help/troubleshooting/speakers-mislabeled/)
- [What is the Canto notetaker bot?](https://usecanto.com/help/notetaker/what-is-the-notetaker/)