Webex issues with Audio

[bhbabu]

Hi Webex Team,

Not sure if this is the right forum to report this.

Recently we have a noticed a significant degradation in the quality of the webex meeting's audio.

The audio keeps breaking for some time when a person is speaking.

We have to keep asking the person to repeat what he said. This has been happening for since December 1st week.

Is this something that the team is aware of, and when can we see it fixed?

Regards

Bhaskar

[Ian Jack]

Sorry to be a pain with yet another question, but I would like to get this resolved.

I have found that there is a trace tool available for the desktop app. Is this likely to show up anything of any benefit ?

Windows - https://help.webex.com/en-us/article/WBX000026383/WBX-Tracer
MacOS - https://help.webex.com/en-us/article/WBX000026384/How-Do-I-Capture-Webex-Trace/Crash-Logs-on-a-Mac?

[Ian Jack]

One thing I have noticed is that when I run  the Webex Network Test - https://mediatest.ciscospark.com/#/main - I do see very high UDP Loss Rate on upload, often over 70% when the audio is cut. I don't know if this is related to the issue or whether it is my router, the ISP or the webex server, but it is suspicious.

[Ashish Patel]

Hi
Normally Webex Audio uses UDP and falls back to TCP. TCP is bad for real time media.
Anyway you can try

* If you are on VPN? Can you try not using VPN
* Can you try hotspotting to your mobile device and seeing if that help in any way?
Thanks
ashish

[Ian Jack]

Hotspotting to the mobile definitely works, but not really practical for every day use.

Turning off the VPN (Cisco Secure Server) and running the Webex test showed a UDP Loss rate of 0.02% although TCP Download speed failed - Server Overloaded. This is worth experimenting on a few calls. Thanks.

[Ian Jack]

Turned off the VPN before starting a call and got no audio at all until I reconnected.

[vsimier]

Have the same issues, happened mid December and mainly when you have outlook or websites opened. The audio is dropping and the screen is freezing for few sec. Any actions we have to take?

[Wade H.]

Some of the audio issues we've experienced recently have been related to the new "remove background noise" feature, which was enabled by default for all Webex (Teams) users. While the feature works really well for many, there are lots of devices/environments which don't seem as compatible, and it leads to choppy audio. Many of our users have reported that disabling this feature has improved their audio. Unfortunately, many users don't realize this setting was added or that it may be causing issues for them.

Beyond that, I wonder if Cisco's networks are still struggling to handle the increased loads due to Covid. When looking at the troubleshooting logs in Control Hub, I often find that users located in Ottawa, Canada, are being connected to distant media nodes such as Dallas, San Jose, or sometimes Europe/Asia. I know there are much closer media nodes in Toronto, New York, and Washington, so there must be some overflow issues happening.

[Fritz_H]

Please allow me to add, that the sound-quality of the recent Community Live Event
("Transforming your Small Business with Webex") also was unpleasantly low.

When using a Microsoft-Product for daily conferencing with multiple participants, including one joining from Egypt
(I am in Austria, central europe) with the same computer and same ISP I do experience almost perfectly clear audio...

Room 4 improvement  or  an issue?

[bhbabu]

Hi,

This used to work perfectly fine 2 months back. Some change has caused the degradation , is what I suspect.

Definitely an Issue!

Thx
Bhaskar

[hsrikond]

I have this problem as well. For the past month or so, I see the audio drops quite frequently and it is really hard to make a conversation. We are tending to talk though usual phone call instead, it's that bad.

I didn't have this issue earlier.

[lwalbeck]

I find that audio consistently drops when connected to AnyConnect VPN, however when disconnected from the VPN, audio is perfectly fine with very few drops. I'm on a wired ethernet setup with fiber 1000 up/down.

[kndskelton]

Is this with one participant or all? If one person.. it's their mic setup. If it's all then a different problem.

[Ian Jack]

For us it is individual attendees on a call, but many individuals across many calls. Interesting that it appears to be only when joining through the desktop app, but through the browser, everything is fine. I will experiment with the background noise suggested above.

[bhbabu]

Hi ,

This is for all the users in our group.

Please check with anyone under my manager – Veena .

We are consistently facing this issue over the last 5+ weeks,

Thanks
Bhaskar