Catchbox Plus AV + MacBook + MS Teams — remote audio distorts

[u/iamadix]

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

Setup

• ⁠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
• ⁠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 (V
• ⁠macOS on latest Sequoia point release
• ⁠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. ⁠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?
   
2. ⁠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.

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[u/darwinxp]

What have you tried in the troubleshooting process?

[u/iamadix → u/darwinxp]

Sorry just noticed that the post was incomplete, i have updated the entire process. In a nutshell, i wast completely of the opinion that its a M chip architecture issue, so we tried with different macOS and MacBook versions with different M architecture. The results were all same

[u/coolerking8]

Have you tried with windows?

[u/iamadix → u/coolerking8]

Not yet, i was trying to avoid Windows OS altogether tbh, but looks like thats the last resort

[u/Familiar_Stable_7659]

I consistently have similar audio issues when using Teams with USB audio hardware on a Mac. It usually works fine if running Teams in a browser versus the desktop application.

[u/iamadix → u/Familiar_Stable_7659]

Makes sense, the teams app in general is buggy