Surface Book 2 audio - Crackling sound in Zoom meetings

Hi australiasquare,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Community.

Try to access the Audio Enhancements through Control Panel. While your Headset or Mic is plugged in, open Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound. Select your headset and choose Properties, check if you have the Enhancements tab.

If none or still issue persist, please try these steps first:

1: Run Surface Diagnostic Toolkit and check Windows Update

2: Run System File Checker Tool in Windows 10

If this answer your question, we highly encourage you to inform our Community by clicking on Yes or marking my post as an answer. This will help other members who may have the same issue as you. Otherwise, don't hesitate to update us so we can further assist you.

Kind Regards,

Marrion Y .

If none or still issue persist, please try these steps first:

1: Run Surface Diagnostic Toolkit and check Windows Update

2: Run System File Checker Tool in Windows 10

Tried running SDT and SFC as recommended above, no violations found, could it be because of Windows Pro Insider Preview, is it worth rolling back to try and resolve? I have had this problem now for the past month or so and tried everything including stopping almost all other programs in the calls.

I have tried with hardware acceleration in Zoom on and off and with Zoom on the integrated GPU and on the Nvidia GPU.

I'm having the exact same issue. The problem is it is intermittent and hard to diagnose. 

I'm trying to pinpoint when it happens but not 100% sure. It seems to happen within the first 30 mins of my device being turned on, but that could be because that's the time I do most of my speaking.

One time I rushed to plug in my Surface dock to use ethernet cable (thinking it was bad wifi) and it appeared to fix itself but when I tried that again another time it didn't work.

The weird thing though is sometimes on Zoom it will tell me my bandwidth is low, when in fact I have 100/40 nbn and sitting right next to the modem. Could the 2 issues be linked?

I mute/unmute myself and turn on/off original sound on Zoom which does something, but then when I think it's fixed it will happen again. Frustrating to say the least.

On Google hangouts my colleagues would get a sudden loud feedback blast from me (so embarassing since I have the most spec'd out machine) 

Hope you can shed some light on this issue and get it resolved asap especially as a lot of us are working from home and using video conferencing daily. Thanks in advance

I have the same issue with a Dell Laptop

Any ideas yet?  I believe it is a settings issue.  Not many technical terms will come from me, I believe the "signal processing" or similar is trying to be smart and causes the issue.

I have the issue in either Google Meets (a.k.a hangouts) or Zoom and it happens with web version of the app and it happens in Chrome or Edge.  

I was on with Costco tech support, updated microphone driver and computer bios.  Tried other updates, no luck.  On either application it shows microphone options even though there is only one actual built in microphone.  If I switch from one to the other it will work for a short while and the crackle will come back.  

Very annoying 

Again - forward those ideas..

Glad another person had the same idea too!

I tried running SDT and SFC as recommended by Marrion_Y but it didn't find any issues with my SB2, nor had any different outcome to my Zoom sound issue.

I was thinking along the same line as LarryB99, that there must be something on the signal processing side causing it - because it usually happened to me when there are large number of participants in the call.

When I tried to reproduce the issue with just two participants, it didn't happen even after an hour. This experiment was immediately following a rather embarrassing Zoom meeting where I gave all attendees a very unpleasant shock to their ears - so I thought I could reproduce it but no.

So maybe it is CPU trying to do some smart signal processing when there are large number of sound input coming through?

Anyway the best candidate for possible 'excessive signal processing' I could find was Noise Suppression in

• Settings -> Sound -> Input | Device Properties -> Device Properties -> Additional Device Properties -> Enhancements -> Noise Suppression.

Every since I unticked the checkbox for Noise Suppression, I haven't had this issue reoccur (YET).

Not sure if it is a permanent solution or I am just fortunate enough not to experience the problem again.

Would love to hear others' experience after trying out this setting?