Why does my screen freeze or others get sound interference using Zoom?

I have an Acer 15.6" FHD IPS Touchscreen Business Chromebook. When using the Zoom app, sometimes people tell me or I can see that my screen freezes or more often others hear sound interference coming from my Chromebook. If I mute myself that seems to solve the sound interference. But when I need to speak I have to unmute and I worry about the sound. I also may get a message that I have an unstable connection, however, I have the best high-speed internet via Comcast/Xfinity and am close to my router. I have closed other applications and rebooted my modem router without any success in solving these issues. I am not having this issue on my android smartphone or my android tablet. Has anyone else had this issue with Zoom and have suggestions to fix this?

Accepted answers

billsey

The best workaround I've seen for the noise issues is to stay muted and use the spacebar to temporarily unmute as needed. As long as you have the space pressed you are not muted, when you release it goes back to muted. Stuttering display and pixelation are usually caused by poor internet bandwidth or something interfering with the network in the background. Can you view other video sources without issues? If so it could easily be the Zoom app itself, since they use different code for the Chromebook version that they use for other OSes.

All comments

billsey

The best workaround I've seen for the noise issues is to stay muted and use the spacebar to temporarily unmute as needed. As long as you have the space pressed you are not muted, when you release it goes back to muted. Stuttering display and pixelation are usually caused by poor internet bandwidth or something interfering with the network in the background. Can you view other video sources without issues? If so it could easily be the Zoom app itself, since they use different code for the Chromebook version that they use for other OSes.

PSteinf

Thank you, billsey. I will check with my ISP to see if there is something they can do about the bandwidth. This is something I don't understand. Someone else mentioned this to me previously. Yes, I can view other video sources without issue, if you mean Youtube for example or videos on Facebook, etc. I obviously prefer to use my laptop because of the larger screen. But I can use my 10.5" tablet also. I just got it and used it once for a Zoom gathering. I believe it did freeze once but no one said there was a sound issue. Thanks again for your suggestions.

billsey

There are a couple of things that can affect bandwidth and the ISP is usually only one of them. There are often other signals that conflict with yours that can degrade the connection. You might try a wifi analyzer app to see where the surrounding signals are, you want your router to sit in the quietest band for both the .5GHz and the 5GHz signals.