What is Zoom doing to my voice? US study figured out how speech therapists can do virtual therapy

Researchers found that Zoom was pretty accurate when it came to the pitch of the voice, but intensity and loudness were being manipulated in both a magnitude and a time-based way. — Dreamstime/TNS

When the world shut down in March 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic and health care appointments went virtual, speech pathologists everywhere were wondering, “Now what?” How could they turn their in-person speech therapy appointments into virtual ones and trust that what they were hearing on the other end through programs like Zoom were accurate?

The University of Texas’ Voice Lab asked that very question and found a not-so-surprising answer, according to a new study published in the Journal Of Voice.