WhatsApp to Offer Better Sound Recording Quality and Extra Features

Voice messages become more of a thing each day, with the average of 7 billion of them daily on WhatsApp only. The quality of audio experience thus also matters more. In the next update, WhatsApp offers a big set of tools meant to improve voice experience for its users, enabling them to enjoy better quality and enhanced usability.

The first of these things is improved voice recording quality. Usually, it depends on both the hardware and the software of the recording equipment. WhatsApp can only control the software part of it. But implementing better encoding and compressing algorithms gets the job done on any given device.

But the list of the usability updates is even more impressive. The first on this list is the ability to listen to voice messages when you’re out of the chat. It’s not a fully-fledged background playback, as the app has to be active. But you can browse through other chats, read messages and reply while listening to the audio. In the mini player above, you can pause or navigate through it. Or just drop the playback and later return to where you stopped; also a useful feature.

You can also pause and resume the recording, if you cannot find the words or speak at all because of some noise, like a train or a car passing by, you just put it on pause and finish when you can speak again.

Fast playback is hard to overrate, but previously it only worked with messages sent to you directly. The new update enables you to use it with forwarded messages as well. Other new features include waveform visualization, so you can see the moments of pauses and, for example, louder speech. Last but not least: now you can preview (or rather prehear) your voice messages before sending them, if you think there may be something wrong with them.

Have you received this update already? Which of these features do you consider the most useful? Let us know in the comments!