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Zoom can give you a separate audio file per participant, but only under specific conditions. Here is the exact setup, the limits to know about, and what to do when Zoom is not enough.
When you hit record in Zoom, the default output is a single mixed audio file with everyone's voice on the same track. For a casual meeting recap, that is fine. For an interview you want to publish — a podcast, a customer story, an internal training clip — it is a real problem.
With one mixed track you cannot adjust each speaker's level independently, you cannot remove a cough from one person without ducking everyone, and you cannot cleanly cut crosstalk. This is why "Zoom interview separate audio tracks" is one of the most common searches in the podcast and editor communities.
Zoom does have a setting that produces a separate audio file per participant. It works, with caveats. Here is the exact path, plus what it does not solve.
The setting lives in Zoom's recording preferences and is off by default. Turn it on before your interview, not after — Zoom cannot retroactively split a recording that was made without it.
In the Zoom desktop client, open Settings, then go to the Recording tab.
Check the box. Zoom will record one combined MP4 and one separate audio file per person who joins from a desktop client.
Local recording is required for the separate-track output. Cloud recording produces a single mixed file regardless of this setting.
Only the host or co-host can start a recording that produces separate participant files. Make sure the host starts it before guests begin talking.
Zoom saves a folder per meeting. Inside it, look for an "Audio Record" subfolder. You will find one M4A file per participant, plus the combined recording.
Zoom's per-participant feature works, but it has specific limitations you should know about before relying on it for a publishable interview:
For casual interview content, these trade-offs are usually acceptable. For anything you plan to charge money for or distribute publicly, they start to matter.
Zoom's per-participant recording is genuinely useful in a few scenarios:
If you fall in any of these buckets, the setting above will save you hours of editing time compared to working with a single mixed track.
When you need separate tracks that are actually clean — uncompressed source quality, separate video files per participant, no dependency on which client your guest uses — a Zoom recording is not the right tool. A dedicated browser-based recorder is.
Tools like Airtape record locally on each participant's device using the MediaRecorder API. Each person's audio and video is captured at source quality on their own machine and uploaded in chunks after the session. A 30-second internet drop does not corrupt anything — it just delays the upload.
Stick with Zoom's separate audio setting if all of the following are true: every guest joins from desktop, the recording is for internal or low-stakes use, and you do not need separate video tracks.
Switch to a dedicated browser recorder if any of the following apply: you publish the recording publicly, guests sometimes join from a phone, audio quality is part of the product, or you need clean video tracks per participant for a video podcast.
In Zoom's desktop client, open Settings, go to Recording, and enable "Record a separate audio file of each participant". Start a local recording (not cloud). After the call, Zoom saves one M4A per participant in the Audio Record subfolder.
No. The setting must be enabled before the recording starts. If you forgot to turn it on, the only file Zoom will give you is the mixed recording, and there is no built-in way to separate the voices afterward.
No. Even with the per-participant audio setting enabled, Zoom only produces a single combined video file. For separate video tracks per guest you need a dedicated recording tool like Airtape.
Zoom applies real-time compression to optimize the live call. The separate files are split from that compressed server-side mix, so they share the same baseline quality. They are not source-quality recordings from each participant's microphone.
Mobile participants are folded into a shared track and you will not get a clean separate audio file for them. The separate-track feature only works reliably when every participant is on the Zoom desktop client.