https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/22/microsoft-teams-now-lets-you-test-mic-and-speakers-before-meetings-ending-the-can-you-hear-me-chaos/

Just seeing a blank square when viewing images sent in Teams

We are a business that uses g-suite as our main tool and so uses teams sync to keep user calendars the same...but..it doesn't support room calendars.

I asked chatgpt for a solution and the instructions seemed complex enough to launch a rocket to mars.

What are you doing to perform the task, is there a readymade solution that isn't the kind of menu-maze to setup that requires headache tablets and a drink after work ?

Hey folks, hoping someone here has seen this before because it is driving us nuts.

Setup

• Host machine: Tried with both Macbook Air M3 ( macOS Sequoia) MacBook Pro M4 (fully updated to latest macOS Tahoe 26.5.2)
• Audio device: Catchbox Plus with Hub DSP receiver, firmware V2.2 (latest)
• Mics: Catchbox throwable mics
• Speakers: connected to the Hub DSP outputs, driven by the Hub's built-in DSP for room playback
• Conferencing: Microsoft Teams desktop app on the Mac
• Networking: wired Ethernet through a UGreen USB-C hub (10/100 Mbps, used only for Ethernet, HDMI to a display, and a USB video camera)
• Physical layout: Hub DSP connects directly to its own dedicated USB-C port on the MacBook via the OEM USB-C cable (data + bus power on the same port). UGreen hub is on the other USB-C port. Mac stays on charge during the call.
• Room role: I am the host/admin. Local users speak into Catchbox mics which go out to MS Teams. Remote participants come in over Teams and play through the room speakers via the Hub DSP.
• Teams device selection: Catchbox Hub DSP set as both input and output. Noise Suppression is on (default).

How everything connects

Local users in the room speak into Catchbox throwable mics, which transmit wirelessly to the Hub DSP receiver sitting near the MacBook Pro. The Hub DSP is plugged into the MacBook over USB-C and shows up in macOS as a standard USB audio device. In Microsoft Teams, the Hub DSP is selected as both the input and the output. So when a local person talks, their voice goes: mic → Hub DSP → USB → Mac → Teams app → Teams cloud → remote participants. Remote participants are on their own devices at home or in other offices, each running Teams on whatever they have (laptop, phone, headset, another conference room). When a remote participant speaks, the path runs the other way: remote device → Teams cloud → Mac → USB → Hub DSP → room speakers connected to the Hub DSP's outputs. The Hub DSP also does the room's audio processing in between (echo cancellation, gain, mixing) so the local mics do not pick up the room speakers and create a feedback loop. In short, the Mac is the bridge between the Catchbox room system and everyone remote on Teams, and the Hub DSP is the piece of hardware doing the room-side audio work in both directions.

The issue

First 10-15 minutes of a call: perfect. Local speech goes out clean, remote speech comes into the room clean.

After 10-15 minutes: remote audio starts sounding distorted and mumbled through the room speakers. Local mic path to remote participants is reportedly still fine.

The kicker: unplugging the USB-C from the Hub DSP and plugging it back in immediately clears it. Audio is perfect again. Then, sometimes minutes later, sometimes on the next call, it comes back. Once the call ends, we cannot reproduce it at all until we are mid-call again.

What we have already tried / ruled out

• Upgraded host from MacBook Air to MacBook Pro (fanless-to-fanned) — did not fix it, actually appeared faster on the new machine
• MacBook kept on charge, thermal pressure Nominal in Activity Monitor
• Dedicated USB-C port for the Hub DSP, isolated from the UGreen hub bus
• Hub DSP firmware confirmed at latest (V2.2)
• macOS on latest Sequoia point release
• Audio MIDI Setup: 48 kHz, 2-ch, clock source Default (all as expected)
• Ethernet is wired via UGreen hub, service order above Wi-Fi
• Toggled Teams Noise Suppression on/off — no difference
• No third-party audio kexts, no virtual audio drivers, no Loopback/BlackHole/etc installed
• Not correlated to a specific remote participant, happens with different people speaking

What Catchbox support said

They told us they have tested extensively and there is a known issue with Apple M4 chips specifically, where far-end audio in teleconferencing apps (Teams/Zoom/Meet) degrades. Their suggestion was to switch the host to a Windows machine.

What I am asking

1. Anyone else running Catchbox Plus (or any USB audio conferencing gear) on an M4 Mac seeing this exact "10-15 min in, remote audio distorts, unplug fixes it" pattern?
2. Anyone found a software-only workaround that survives a full 60-90 minute call? I know sudo killall coreaudiod clears the audio pipeline mid-call, but I would love not to touch a terminal during a company townhall.
3. If you moved a similar setup from Mac to Windows to solve this, did it actually hold up long-term or did the issue just show up in a different way?
4. Any Teams admin policy or Catchbox Companion setting (AGC, AEC, dynamic processing) that you have found makes the Hub DSP behave better with Teams?

The townhalls are company-wide and I would rather not do the "walk over and jiggle the cable" dance in front of a few hundred people. Any pointers appreciated.

At my work, we pre-produce webinars and broadcast them to the audience. We've used GoToWebinar in the past but ran into firewall issues with so many internal employees also accessing the stream. Since we operate in the Office 365 environment, an idea came about to finally try Teams Webinar, but I was disappointed to find in my test today that I cannot share a video with the audience directly - I have to find a work around. Sharing my screen with the video player running obviously causes lag and frame drops.

I am aware of the workaround that comes up in Google search where you use PowerPoint online to host the file, but that comes with mixed reviews from what I've seen. I need certainty that it will work.

Anyone familiar with Webinar capabilities as it relates to video sharing, with audio?

A couple of months ago, Microsoft Teams introduced an option allowing us to choose between recording audio-only or both video and audio. Is there an admin setting in the Teams Admin Center to allow recording only the shared screen while excluding participants' camera video feeds?

I've been around the block with AI and searching for a solution for this, but essentially I just want to see holidays and other events overlaid into my calendar in Teams, instead of it creating separate calendars side-by-side. This doesn't seem like it should be a big deal, since it already compresses multiple events into the "+2, +3" style view if there are too many events. But for some reason Microsoft in their infinite wisdom has disabled the muli-layout view option in Month view to turn that off and see everything in one calendar. I feel like Google calendar had this like 15 years ago already, but alas, my job uses Teams.

Any solutions out there? A means of importing holidays and events would also be an option.

Please, my workplace does not have the legal shark stickers, nor does my school account. We don't have the programmer robot stickers either; I can see and edit only one from the suggested list, but cannot find more. I want to be able to edit them and send them to my coworkers, but I can't find all of them anywhere when Googling it.

Can somebody please screenshot them and send them my way 😭 I need them so badly 😭 I don't know if my workplace has them disabled or if it's a regional thing or what, because I just don't have them :(