Other person's Zoom sound cuts out on PC but not Mac

October 14, 2021 8:32 PM

I was having a Zoom singing lesson today, and kept having a problem where when the teacher sang and played piano the sound would get choppy and I couldn't hear her. We tried Skype, and same thing. Then I tried Zoom on my old Macbook, and it worked fine. What is going on here? Is there a way to fix this?

She confirmed that she hasn't had any similar issues with other students. I tried all the different settings and outputs I could think of on the PC.

posted by lookoutbelow to Technology (5 answers total)

I have the same problem, periodically, with an Astro A50 headset. Windows is a terrible operating system and can reassign input and output audio settings without warning, especially when drivers and third-party software are updated. Double-check that your audio settings are set to the system defaults or to the specific devices you are using, before using Zoom or before making a video call.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:52 PM on October 14, 2021

I don’t know about the Mac vs. PC issues, but it is definitely worth it to make sure that in the settings she is using original sound and has the background noise setting as low as it can go. Here is a pretty good walkthrough of the settings that help for Zoom music. You probably know all these, but literally every music teacher who I helped with Zoom lessons last year had no idea about any of this 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️(I am a music teacher, I love music teachers!), so it’s worth checking.
posted by charmedimsure at 10:07 PM on October 14, 2021

I’m guessing that your MacBook is better at picking up wifi (assuming you’re using wifi). At my house, I can use my iMac or our iPad upstairs, no problem. My daughter’s crappy Chromebook is unusable upstairs - it needs to be closer to the router (in our basement).
posted by Kriesa at 4:37 AM on October 15, 2021

charmedimsure probably has the right answer. Likely your older Mac doesn't have the CPU power to do noise reduction (which is processing intensive).
posted by tiamat at 6:45 AM on October 15, 2021

Response by poster: If I can jump in again, the settings were all set to be optimized for music on both sides as mentioned (and identical on the Mac and PC), and as far as I've been able to tell, the PC has a better internet connection and general processing power than the fairly old MacBook. It seems significant to me that the problem was the same on Zoom and Skype. I tried my wired headphones both using the USB microphones sound output, connected directly, and the built in speaker with the same issue. Something to do with the windows audio drivers makes sense? Or the microphone? What can I do to investigate that? Any ideas anyone has would be much appreciated, the MacBook is super unreliable so I'm hoping I don't have to use it.
posted by lookoutbelow at 2:10 PM on October 15, 2021