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Echo Cancellation

Echo Cancellation filters your device's own speaker audio out of its microphone. Without it, anything your device plays out loud — most importantly the spoken translation from Speech Mode — gets picked up by the mic, transcribed, translated, and spoken again, over and over.

It is a single switch with two useful positions, and which one you want depends entirely on what you are trying to capture: a voice in the room in front of you, or the audio coming out of the device itself.

Two people talking across a cafe table with a phone between them: the speaker's voice flows into the phone as blue sound waves, while amber waves from the phone's own speaker loop back and dissolve against a shield before reaching the microphone

How It Works​

On — Whisperr subtracts what your device is playing from what the mic hears. Only sound from the room reaches the transcript. This is the loop guard that makes Speech Mode usable on a speakerphone.

Off — the mic hears everything, including audio your own device is playing. That is exactly what you want when the thing you're trying to translate is the video, call, or meeting coming out of your speakers.

Which Setting Do I Want?​

You want to translate…Echo Cancellation
A person speaking in front of youOn
Yourself, with the translation spoken aloudOn
A video, podcast, or call playing on this same deviceOff
Anything, while wearing headphonesEither — headphones already break the loop

Get Started​

Choose your platform:

Supported Platforms​

PlatformSupportedNotes
iOS✅On by default · toggle in Settings
Android✅On by default · toggle in Settings
Web App✅Off by default · toggle in the ••• options menu
Mac✅Automatic · always on for microphone capture, no toggle
Windows✅Automatic · always on for microphone capture, no toggle
Chrome Extension—Not applicable — captures tab audio directly, never the mic

What About System Audio Capture?​

When Whisperr captures system or screen audio instead of a microphone, echo cancellation doesn't apply: the app is reading the output mix directly, and there is no per-app exclusion for that on Mac, Windows, or in the browser.

Whisperr guards the loop a different way there — it mutes the captured stream while its own spoken translation is playing, then resumes. You lose nothing said by the far end unless they happen to talk over the translation, and the loop can never start.

Tips​

  • Headphones make the question moot. With headphones or AirPods, the translation never reaches the mic in the first place, so either setting works.
  • The setting is read when recording starts. On iPhone, iPad, and Android, flipping it mid-recording takes effect the next time you press record. In the Web App the toggle is locked while a recording is running.
  • Turning it on can slightly soften clean speech. Acoustic echo cancellation is a filter, and filters cost a little detail — which is why the Web App leaves it off unless you ask for it.
  • If you hear the same sentence translated twice, the loop has started: turn Echo Cancellation on, put headphones in, or lower your output volume.