[IneffablePigeon]

Live video or audio chat is basically the only time you do want this. Granted, that’s a big chunk of microphone usage in practice, but any time you are doing higher fidelity audio recording and you have set up the inputs accordingly you absolutely do not want the artefacts introduced by this cancellation. DAWs, audio calibration, and even live audio when you’ve ensured the output cannot impact the recording all would want it switched off.

Default on vs default off is really just an implementation detail of the API though, as you say.

[Wowfunhappy]

> Live video or audio chat is basically the only time you do want this.

If I'm recording a voice memo, or talking to an AI assistant, I would want this. Basically everything I can imagine doing with a PC microphone outside of (!) professional audio recording work.

That last case is important and we agree there needs to be a way to turn it off. I think defaults are really important though.

[blowski]

My colleague works in a very quiet house, and has no need for noise cancelling. Sometimes, he has it turned on by accident, and the quality is much worse - his voice gets cut out, and volume of his voice goes up and down.

As you say, as long as either option is available, the only question is what the default should be.