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Discord Noise Suppression: Krisp vs Standard, and When Neither Is Enough
Discord presents more than one suppression setting. How to decide between them without trusting anyone else's room.
Discord's voice settings offer more than one answer, and the right one depends on your room. The client presents a Krisp-branded option, a standard option and off; the partnership behind that first setting has been widely reported and is visible in the interface itself. As a rule of thumb, standard is the lighter-touch setting and a reasonable default in a quiet room, the Krisp option is aimed at rooms with audible background noise, and off is correct when the problem is already solved by hardware or by a separate application. None of that replaces testing on your own machine, and this piece is mostly about how to run that test.
What the client actually presents in voice settings
Discord's Voice and Video settings include a noise suppression section with more than one option, among them a Krisp-branded setting and a standard setting, alongside turning suppression off. That much is observable in the client. What is not observable, and what this desk will not assert, is how either option is implemented internally: no processing details, no model claims and no performance figures are published in a form we can verify, so none appear here.
- The Krisp option inside Discord is a feature of Discord, enabled by a partnership that has been widely reported.
- The standard option is Discord's own lighter-weight suppression setting.
- Off is a legitimate choice rather than a failure state, when your input is already clean.
The practical consequence of that opacity is that the comparison has to happen on your equipment. Discord noise suppression behaves differently across microphones, rooms and machines, and a verdict formed on one setup transfers poorly to another. Anyone declaring a universal winner in the krisp vs standard question is generalizing from a single room. What can be said in general terms is the shape of the trade-off: heavier processing tends to cost more CPU and to intervene more assertively in the signal, which helps in a loud room and can be audible as artifacts in a quiet one.
Choosing between the options
Start from the room rather than from the setting. In a quiet space with a decent microphone, the standard option is usually sufficient, and the lighter the processing, the less it can damage. In a room with a fan, a mechanical keyboard, a housemate or traffic outside, the Krisp setting is the one built for that job and the one to try first. If you already run a hardware solution or a separate desktop application, stacking a third layer is the common mistake: switch Discord's suppression off rather than adding to it.
The CPU question, in general terms
More processing costs more processor time. That is true of any real-time audio work and requires no inside knowledge of Discord's implementation. If you play a demanding game while talking, watch frame timing and voice quality together, and be willing to trade a little suppression for stability. On a modern machine the cost is often unremarkable. On an older laptop it is worth measuring rather than assuming, and the measurement takes one match to perform. Noise suppression is not free of cost simply because the toggle is.
How to run the comparison yourself
Record it, do not guess at it. Ask one person to stay in a voice channel while you cycle the setting between off, standard and the Krisp option, saying the same sentence each time under the same noise. Then reverse the roles, because the person speaking is the worst possible judge of their own transmitted audio. Do it once in a quiet room and once with the noise you actually live with. Fifteen minutes of this settles the krisp vs standard argument for your setup more decisively than any article can.
If the in-app options fall short, the standalone desktop application is the different answer, and it is genuinely different: it installs a virtual microphone you select in any program, not only Discord, with a free plan of 60 minutes a day and paid tiers from $8 a month billed annually, verified August 2026. Our scored review of Krisp covers it against the rubric, and every score in that review comes from the same published methodology. Windows users with an RTX 2060 or better should also try NVIDIA Broadcast, which is free, and players already routing game audio may prefer SteelSeries Sonar. For the underlying concepts, our explainer on what noise cancellation is remains the shortest route, and the full field is ranked in our roundup of noise suppression software.
Caveats and edge cases
The in-app setting and the subscription are not the same thing
This confuses people constantly. Enabling Discord's Krisp option does not give you an account with the vendor, does not consume the 60-minute daily allowance of the free plan, and does not apply to Zoom, Teams or OBS. The standalone application is a separate install with its own pricing, verified August 2026. Choosing one does not commit you to the other.
Interfaces change
Discord revises its voice settings from time to time, and options are added, renamed and removed. Check what your client shows rather than what a screenshot from two years ago shows, including the screenshots in older articles about this exact comparison.
Stacked suppression
Suppression in a headset, a standalone virtual microphone and an in-app toggle can all run at once, and the combined result is usually worse than any one of them alone: thin voice, clipped word endings, gates that open late. Pick a single layer and leave the rest off.
Frequently asked questions
Which option should I choose in Discord?
It depends on your room. The standard setting is lighter and generally the safer default in a quiet space with a decent microphone. The Krisp setting is aimed at audible background noise and is the one to try when a fan, a keyboard or a housemate is in the recording. Test both on your own setup before deciding.
Does the in-app Krisp option cost anything?
No. It is a setting inside Discord, offered through a partnership that has been widely reported, and it is separate from the standalone subscription product. The standalone application has its own free plan of 60 minutes a day and paid tiers starting at $8 a month billed annually, verified August 2026.
Does suppression use a lot of CPU?
Real-time audio processing always costs some processor time, and heavier processing costs more. We publish no figures for Discord's implementation, because we cannot verify them. If you play demanding games while talking, compare frame timing and voice quality with the setting on and off, then choose accordingly.
Should I use the desktop application instead of the toggle?
Consider it if you need the same processing outside Discord, in Zoom, Teams, Meet or a recording tool, because the standalone application installs a virtual microphone available to every program. If Discord is the only place you talk, the built-in setting is the simpler answer and costs nothing at all.
Is turning it off ever the right call?
Yes. A quiet room, a well-positioned microphone and correct input gain can produce a cleaner result than any suppression, since every suppression stage makes decisions about your voice that it can get wrong. Off is also correct when another layer already handles it, to avoid stacking two processes.