Choosing the best noise cancellation software for call centers
Background noise reaches customers from busy floors and home offices alike. Compare the options and know what to test before you roll one out.
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The short answer
The best call center noise cancellation software removes background sound and other voices on both sides of the call, keeps speech natural, runs on the computers and platforms your agents already use, and does not hurt transcription. Test it on your own noisiest calls before you choose.
Why call center noise needs its own solution
A contact center is a hard place for audio. Nearby agents talk at the same time, phones ring, and keyboards clatter. Agents who work from home bring a different mix of household sounds. Customers call from cars, streets, and stores.
Noise costs more than comfort. When either side struggles to hear, people repeat themselves, calls run longer, and mistakes become more likely. If you transcribe or analyze calls, noise can also reduce the accuracy of every system that depends on the transcript.
Call center audio is also different from a podcast or a livestream. The most disruptive sound is often other people's speech, which is harder to separate from the agent's voice than steady noise such as a fan.
The main types of noise cancellation for call centers
Most options fall into a few groups. Many contact centers combine more than one.
Noise-reducing headsets and microphones
Reduce sound at the source. Useful, but results vary with the hardware each agent has, and they do nothing for noise on the customer's side.
Noise suppression in the contact center platform
Some contact center and softphone platforms include noise suppression as a setting. Check which side of the call it processes and how it handles background voices.
AI noise cancellation software on the agent's computer
Filters audio on the agent desktop before it reaches the call. It works with existing headsets and calling applications, but it has to fit your computers, virtual desktops, and rollout process.
Speech enhancement
Goes beyond removing noise to improve the voice itself, such as the detail lost on narrowband phone lines or through poor microphones.
Speech enhancement vs. noise cancellationNoise cancellation for voice AI
Cleans audio before speech recognition in AI systems. For a machine listener, the goal is an accurate transcript, not audio that only sounds clean to people.
Inside Sanas ASR-optimized noise cancellationWhat to look for in call center noise cancellation software
Feature lists look alike. These questions separate products in a real contact center.
- Both sides of the call: does it clean the customer's audio as well as the agent's?
- Background voices: does it remove nearby conversations, not only steady noise such as fans and traffic?
- Voice quality: does the agent still sound natural, without clipped words or a robotic tone?
- Echo and room sound: does it handle reverberation in home offices and on open floors?
- Speed: is processing fast enough that the conversation flows without awkward gaps?
- Computer fit: does it run well on the machines and virtual desktops your agents actually use?
- Platform fit: does it work with your contact center platform and softphone without changes to your telephony?
- Central control: can IT deploy, update, and configure it across many agents and sites?
- Privacy and security: is audio stored or sent anywhere, and which security credentials does the vendor hold?
- Transcription: does it improve, or at least not reduce, the accuracy of your speech analytics?
Ask for evidence, not adjectives
Most vendors call their noise cancellation the best. Ask for objective scores instead, and for the conditions behind them.
Speech quality is often measured with metrics such as NISQA and DNSMOS, which estimate how listeners would rate the audio. Ask which test set was used, whether it includes background voices, and how close its conditions are to your own calls.
Sanas publishes its scores against Krisp on background voice and noise cancellation challenge sets. Published scores are a starting point. Your own calls are the test that counts.
See the Sanas vs. Krisp comparisonHow to test noise cancellation in your contact center
A short, structured test shows more than a demo recorded in a quiet room.
Collect your hardest audio
Select calls from your loudest floors, home offices, and customer environments, including calls with other voices in the background.
Compare side by side
Listen to the same calls with and without processing, during speech as well as in the pauses.
Include clean calls
Check that processing does not degrade audio that was already clear.
Check transcripts
If you use speech analytics, compare transcription accuracy with and without processing.
Pilot with real agents
Run a pilot on the devices, desktops, and platforms agents use every day, and ask agents and customers what changed.
Plan the rollout
Confirm deployment, updates, support, and security review before you scale.
Where Sanas fits
Sanas Speech Enhancement removes background noise, background voices, echo, and reverb for everyone on the call. It also improves the voice itself: it upgrades 8 kHz telephony audio to 24 kHz and compensates for poor headsets and microphones.
It runs on your existing telephony infrastructure with no codec or system changes, and no audio is stored or transmitted externally. For teams that transcribe calls, Sanas reports lower word error rates across streaming speech recognition systems, with no degradation on clean audio.
Engineering teams can also add Speech Enhancement to their own applications through the server-side SDK on the Sanas Developer Platform.
Explore Sanas Speech EnhancementFurther reading
Common questions
The best choice removes background noise and background voices on both sides of the call, keeps voices natural, fits your agents' computers and contact center platform, and holds up on your own noisiest calls. Compare published scores, then pilot with your own audio.
Combine good workspace practices with software. Use quality headsets and sound-absorbing spaces where you can, then add AI noise cancellation that processes both the agent's and the customer's audio. Test the result on real calls.
It depends on the product. Some only process the agent's microphone. Look for software that cleans both directions, so the agent also hears the customer clearly.
It can. Conventional noise cancellation can remove acoustic details that speech recognition relies on. If you use speech analytics, compare transcription accuracy with and without processing.
No product removes every sound in every condition. Judge software on how well it keeps speech clear and natural in your hardest conditions, including other voices nearby, not on a promise of total silence.
Noise cancellation removes unwanted background sound. Speech enhancement is broader: it can also improve the voice itself, for example the detail lost on narrowband phone lines or through poor microphones.
Hear the difference on your calls.
See how Sanas Speech Enhancement handles background noise and voices on both sides of the call.