Sound distortion when playing musical instrument

[OboeSally]

When I play a musical instrument during Zoom lessons, the sound comes out distorted. "Choppy" is the best way I can describe the problem.

I am on a Dell Inspiron 14 laptop, Windows 11, Zoom version 6.1.11. I am able to record video and audio from my laptop camera without any issues. My Internet connection is via Ethernet cat 5 E, so upload speed is not a factor.

My Zoom settings are optimized for musicians and are exactly the same as those used by my teacher and classmates. They're also the same as the settings I used on my older Acer laptop, which worked fine.

I tried an experiment by doing a Zoom meeting with myself from my husband's older Dell using all the same Zoom and Dell settings and the same versions of Windows and Zoom as mine. My playing came through just fine over his laptop.

Both laptops use Realtek Audio with one difference. His runs a driver version from 2021; mine runs one from 2023.

Could my distortion issue be the result of a conflict between the Zoom app and my microphone driver? Should I try to replace my driver with the older version?

[OboeSally · Accepted solution]

Update to my previous post: Yes, that was the problem. I uninstalled the Realtek Audio microphone driver from 2023 and replaced it with the Realtek Audio driver from 2021 that was on my husband's laptop. Now, Zoom works as promised.