audio feedback in MS Teams and Zoom

[The Knize]

I thought I would give it a shot of asking about this here. I assume a lot of folks on B&B are on MS Teams and/or Zoom, a lot.

My Teams/Zoom set up laptop with external Logitech camera, external Blue microphone, and, it was, external speakers connected via wire with 1/8" phono plug, but now I find I have to use Bluetooth wireless headphones because I would getting so much feedback.

It used to be that everything the same except the speakers seemed to work fine, with rare feedback. But not all that long ago I started to have frequent, if not constant, feedback problems if I tried to use speakers rather than headphones. I have tried moving the speakers and microphone around, and that will often eliminate the feedback for a bit, but it seems to start up again after a few minutes

I think feedback happens in Teams, and Zoom, but to be honest, I have not tested it so much in Zoom.

I like my over the ear headphones okay, but my ears get tired, and I do not love the on-screen look.

Anyone else have an apparently sudden feedback problem develop with Teams/Zoom that was rare in the past? Any thoughts about how to deal with this?

I suppose I have not tried hooking the speakers with Bluetooth. Seems to me at one time I had a wired hook up for the speakers that had some sort of in-line filter that was supposed to limit interference. I do not know whether it would limit feedback. I do not think I want to change mics. I suppose I could work on the mic's directional settings.

 

[Eben Stone]

Solving problems like this is basically what I do for a living, although I'm mostly on software side of it not the hardware.

Short and quick answer: just give up on the speaker and use a headset (or earbuds). Seriously.

The problem is you're using a loudspeaker instead of headphones (or earbuds). The mic is picking up audio from the loudspeaker, causing feedback. The software feedback cancelling feature can't eliminate the feedback for whatever reason. Typically that happens if one or both the devices is wireless. You said both mic and speakers are wired, so the problem is the speaker. Software feedback cancelling isn't perfect. It doesnt eliminate feedback it just reduces it. In many cases it can reduce it so it's not noticeable, but there are a lot of factors. Mic placement in promixity to the speaker, the mic sensitivity, and the volume of the speaker can sometimes make it impossible for the feedback cancelling to work at all. Sometimes the sound card hardware and/or driver is buggy.

My suggestion:

A wired or wireless mic with wired or wireless earbuds will work. The reason that works is because the mic cannot pickup the sound from the earbuds. The app feedback cancellation feature isn't even needed because there wont be any feedback. Earbuds are small and aren't very noticable to the other meeting participants. You should be able to wear earbuds for hours without hurting your ears. I use wired Klipsch earbuds sometimes up to 8 hours.

If you need some emergency solution using the hardware you have now, playing around with the mic directional settings and turning the volume down on the speaker are probably the only things that are going to help. I would try putting the mic and speaker as close to each other as possible, like an inch or two apart but definitely not touching, and aim the speaker away from the mic and away from any nearby walls. Start with that and fiddle around with their proximity. I'm doubtful, but maybe you'll be lucky and find something that works.

Something else:

I doubt it, but you could be experiencing echo not feedback. You could try relocating to a larger room. Try a room with carpet not hard floor. And lots of soft furniture like sofas and lounge chairs, like a living room. If your issue is actually echo and not feedback this might help slightly. If the issue is actually feedback this won't improve anything.

 

[Multum in parvo]

I don’t care how I look so a wired headset makes a light wearing and trouble free setup for me. I’m on my second pair of Marshall Major II since 2017. Unfortunately every manufacturer is now geared for wireless.

 

[The Knize]

Solving problems like this is basically what I do for a living, although I'm mostly on software side of it not the hardware.

Short and quick answer: just give up on the speaker and use a headset (or earbuds). Seriously.

The problem is you're using a loudspeaker instead of headphones (or earbuds). The mic is picking up audio from the loudspeaker, causing feedback. The software feedback cancelling feature can't eliminate the feedback for whatever reason. Typically that happens if one or both the devices is wireless. You said both mic and speakers are wired, so the problem is the speaker. Software feedback cancelling isn't perfect. It doesnt eliminate feedback it just reduces it. In many cases it can reduce it so it's not noticeable, but there are a lot of factors. Mic placement in promixity to the speaker, the mic sensitivity, and the volume of the speaker can sometimes make it impossible for the feedback cancelling to work at all. Sometimes the sound card hardware and/or driver is buggy.

My suggestion:

A wired or wireless mic with wired or wireless earbuds will work. The reason that works is because the mic cannot pickup the sound from the earbuds. The app feedback cancellation feature isn't even needed because there wont be any feedback. Earbuds are small and aren't very noticable to the other meeting participants. You should be able to wear earbuds for hours without hurting your ears. I use wired Klipsch earbuds sometimes up to 8 hours.

If you need some emergency solution using the hardware you have now, playing around with the mic directional settings and turning the volume down on the speaker are probably the only things that are going to help. I would try putting the mic and speaker as close to each other as possible, like an inch or two apart but definitely not touching, and aim the speaker away from the mic and away from any nearby walls. Start with that and fiddle around with their proximity. I'm doubtful, but maybe you'll be lucky and find something that works.

Something else:

I doubt it, but you could be experiencing echo not feedback. You could try relocating to a larger room. Try a room with carpet not hard floor. And lots of soft furniture like sofas and lounge chairs, like a living room. If your issue is actually echo and not feedback this might help slightly. If the issue is actually feedback this won't improve anything.

Thank you so much for writing all of that out. All very valuable. And I appreciate the bottom line advice of just wearing headphones. That is really not a terrible solution. For one thing the headphine sound quality is amazing. I do wish these headphones had the option of using a wire. The last set I had did, which allowed for switching to wired if the battery died.

The rest of your post seems all good and are things I might try. Part of the proble is that I seem to be able to get rid of the feedback by moving things around, but then it comes back after an unpredictable amount of time during the same session. I really cannot have feedback on my system interrupt a Teams session, and them have me fooling around with it to get it to go away again.

What I really do not understand, is that I used this system with the same equipment with the wired speakers, and the same mic in the same position, without fussing around with anything at all, and never seemed to have any feedback problems. Or maybe once in a while I would get some feedback, which I could get rid of by simply turing the speakers a bit. But the problem was rare and easily adddressed. Now, suddenly, the problem is chronic and not fixable for any reasonale amount of time at all. So I was thinking the might be some quick fix I was overlooking. Maybe some change inadvertently made that I did not notice.

I have good wireless earbuds that I got for my phone. Good point that they would look less intrusive. But I do not find in the ear plugs all that comfortable for long periods of time, and they seem to irritated my ear canal so that I get chromically itchy ear canals. Maybe I am the only one. I seem to like on top of the ear phones more than anything that plugs into my ears. The former do get uncomfortable after wearing for hours. Maybe what I need to do is to switch listening devices around over the duration of a long session.

Thanks so much for folks sharing their thinking and expertise on this. You are very kind. And determing that things cannot be brought back to the way they were without feedback, helps me in that I do not have to worry there is something I am overlooking. i am grateful and in your debt!

 

[Eben Stone]

Part of the proble is that I seem to be able to get rid of the feedback by moving things around, but then it comes back after an unpredictable amount of time during the same session.

It could be something like the auto gain feature of Zoom or Teams messing with the mic sensitivity. This sounds counter intuitive, but you could try turning on a fan in the room so there is always a steady amount of low background noise.

 

[The Knize]

It could be something like the auto gain feature of Zoom or Teams messing with the mic sensitivity. This sounds counter intuitive, but
n turn a you could try turning on a fan in the room so there is always a steady amount of low background noise.

thanks, I actually have an air cleaner nearby that I can turn up. who knows? maybe that is what changed. maybe I turned it down to a lower setting to lower the noise it made. thanks!

 

[The Knize]

I thought I would report back as to my solution to this feedback problem that developed with MS Teams. I still have no idea why it suddenly became a problem after working fine from the beginning of COVID to early this year. I do not think I made any changes in configuration at all, much less that would have been expected to cause the problem.

Earbuds and/or earphones, of course, solve any problem of feedback, even using a Blue Yeti microphone on an arm, not any kind of wireless mic. I do prefer speakers, however. Using the speakers, which are capable of Bluetooth wireless operation, but which I plug in via wire with 1/8 inch male plugs on either end, I had been plugging them into the earphone jack on Yeti microphone itself and I had the speakers on my desktop, although some distance way from the microphone and pointed away from the microphone.

I put the speakers under my desk and plugged them instead into the earphone jack on the side of my laptop in its docking station, and that seems to have completely taken care of the problem. Zero feedback and no other problems.

 

[Toothpick]

I use Zoom at least 3-4 x per week at home.

I have a Blue Yeti wired to the Mac 27”. I have a Logitech c920 wired. I use a very basic $30 set of external speakers wired.

All that to say….I have no solution to your issue
All has been working fine for more than a year or so now.

My mic is the Yeti and I hear everyone through the speakers. Everyone sees me through the Logitech.

Sometime software updates will trigger unwanted feedback. Electrical interference may also trigger it. If there has been ZERO added hardware or updates….it‘s a mystery for sure.

Did you upgrade to the new Teams? I kept getting notices at work to upgrade to the ”new“ Teams on my work PC. I denied them as long as I could but finally it just forced it’s way on my PC. Now I have no choice but to use the new Teams at work. It looks just like the old one but it has a tiny ”new” icon over the pinned Teams icon.

 

[The Knize]

I use Zoom at least 3-4 x per week at home.

I have a Blue Yeti wired to the Mac 27”. I have a Logitech c920 wired. I use a very basic $30 set of external speakers wired.

All that to say….I have no solution to your issue
All has been working fine for more than a year or so now.

My mic is the Yeti and I hear everyone through the speakers. Everyone sees me through the Logitech.

Sometime software updates will trigger unwanted feedback. Electrical interference may also trigger it. If there has been ZERO added hardware or updates….it‘s a mystery for sure.

Did you upgrade to the new Teams? I kept getting notices at work to upgrade to the ”new“ Teams on my work PC. I denied them as long as I could but finally it just forced it’s way on my PC. Now I have no choice but to use the new Teams at work. It looks just like the old one but it has a tiny ”new” icon over the pinned Teams icon.

I am using new Teams, but that came after the feedback problem.

Thanks! Plugging the speakers into the laptop rather than the microphone speaker output seems to have fixed things!

I am adding this text later. I may be overstating it when I say plugging into the laptop rather than the microphone fixed things. I do have the speakers well away from the microphone now, too. I do often use headphones now and I keep them handy even when not using them in case I have any problems.

You and I have very similar set ups, Jason. Pretty nice, eh. I am very pleased with the quality of the Yeti and the c920, which at work is a c922, I think, which seems to have an even better quality camera. I have Windows laptop, not Mac.

 

[luvmysuper]

I have Windows laptop, not Mac.

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