Loud Beeping when Muted in a MS Teams Call

This one is driving me nuts. It just started happening last week and I haven't been able to find a solution to it.

So... I've heard back from Shokz.

First thing is to understand what's going on.

When you "mute" your audio, there are two ways that an application can do this. The first way is to turn the gain on the microphone input down to zero. That means you don't get any input from the microphone. The second way is to tell the microphone to mute. Although the effect on the audio is equivalent, the two ways are very different. The first way just stops any audio from the mic. The second way explicitly sets the mute, which can do additional action such as turning on a red LED on the microphone, etc.

Why is this important?

If you explicitly tell the Shokz headset to "Mute", then it tells you this - "Mute on", then beeps whilst on mute, then "Mute off" when you cancel the mute again. The Shokz headset isn't alone in doing this, apparently some other headsets do this too (but I don't have any so can't confirm this behaviour).

If you just turn the microphone gain down to zero, the Shokz headset hasn't actually been muted, so you get no notification.

When you "mute" on Zoom, it just turns the microphone gain to zero. It doesn't actually mute the input.

In earlier versions of MS Teams, when you "mute", it also turned the microphone gain to zero. It didn't actually mute the input.

In the recent update to MS Teams, when you "mute", then it does actually tell the microphone to "mute". This means the microphone would know to turn on its red LED, etc. Unfortunately, for the Shokz headset, this means you get the irritating notifications, beeps, etc.

Now, all these notifications, beeps, etc. are all generated within the Shokz headset. They don't come from Windows. It's the Shokz headset firmware making all these noises. The correct fix is for Shokz to have an option on their headset to disable the mute notifications. Unfortunately, they don't.

There are some solutions:

1. Use the WebApp version of MS Teams, rather than the desktop version.

The WebApp version of Teams, when you "mute", simply turns the mic gain down to zero. It doesn't tell the headset to mute. So, the WebApp doesn't make the headset beep, etc. I've switched over from the Desktop version to the WebApp version of Teams, and it's all OK again. Microsoft - please, please, please don't change the WebApp to mute the audio sources properly!!!!

2. Buy the £50 BT dongle from Shokz

I really, really hate this option. I hate that Shokz have even done this. What they have done is take a generic BT dongle that's worth perhaps £10 at best, then put a different software driver on it that blocks the mute command from getting to the headset. Now when the app tells the headset to "mute", the driver blocks the mute command and instead turns the microphone gain to zero. Magic. No beeping.

What the dongle gets wrong is when you turn off the headset, it doesn't remove the audio source, so your audio configuration doesn't switch over to your other speakers (if you have them).

I hate that Shokz have basically left this issue with the firmware in their headset, then tried you to pay 5x for a generic BT dongle with some hacked drivers that work around the firmware issues in their headset.

Bottom line, this isn't a Microsoft problem, this is a Shokz problem with some very unfriendly firmware in their headset, and they refuse to fix it. Instead, they want you to spend _another_ £50 to buy their custom BT dongle and driver, which 5x overpriced.

I love the Shokz headset... I really hate the way that the Shokz company is behaving.

It's not a question of changing the gain, it's allowing the mic to indicate that it's muted.

Imagine you have a mic on your camera or similar, and when it's muted, it turns an LED on. Lots of microphones do this. If you don't explicitly mute the microphone, it won't know to turn its LED on. The microphone can't know if the app is internally muting the audio stream.

So, what Microsoft are doing is correct - if you click "Mute" in the app, then the app tells the microphone that it's muted, and the microphone can show that it's muted. That's very good behaviour.

What's not good is to do a loud beeping noise every 5 seconds to remind the user that they are muted. That's the actual problem... and that's Shokz's firmware, not Microsoft propagating the mute state from the app to the microphone.

Personally, I don't believe MS will move to fix this. The behavior that has changed is this: previously, when you clicked the Mute button in Teams, it muted the microphone *for Teams only*. The mic remained "live" for other applications.

Now, with the updates that have rolled in the last year or so, pressing Mute in Teams *mutes the microphone for the entire operating system in the Sound Settings*. Some Bluetooth devices -- including, but not limited to, Shokz products -- respond by notifying the listener that Mute is turned on, and also beeping a reminder.

That last bit isn't really new behavior. These BT devices always did this when they were muted by the OS. But now, Teams is engaging the OS mute instead of just muting itself.

Anyway, the immediate term solution is to spring for the Loop 100 adapter from Shokz, which provides an audio interface to the OpenComm headphones that does not interact with regular OS Bluetooth.

https://shokz.com/products/loop-100-wireless-adapter