Tim Flick

It's somewhat worse with the new release.  Even after implementing the work around, when loading hits about 40%, if I have a video playing, I get a loud squelching noise for a second, everything freezes, then 99% of the time, it continues on. Occasionally, my drivers crash and I have to reboot before videos or sound will work again.  I still have to use the lower quality sound setting though.

I had the exact same issue.  Check out my comment in this ticket: MCPE-175138

After reading through the comments here and noticing that sound is affected for most of the users, I tried an experiment.  I went to the Control panel and to Hardware and sound.  I noted that my sound was set to 24 bit, 48000 Hz: 

I  reset it to the highest 16 bit setting: 

I was able to successfully log in and the game worked normally.   I then logged out, closed the game and reset the sound setting back to 24 bit, 48000 Hz and tried to log in again. The game froze while loading at 40% and crashed.  I attempted to set the sound setting back to the 16 bit setting, and could not. The properties window froze and became unresponsive. 

I rebooted, reset the sound to 16 bit and was again able to log in to the game successfully. 

This definitely seems related to the 24 bit sound drivers somehow. 

About 3 1/2 or 4 weeks ago, I was suddenly unable to log into Bedrock any more. I've updated windows, updated my drivers.  I've ensured the xbox and related services are running, but it still hangs when trying to load.  I have uninstalled the game and the launcher and reinstalled both with no luck.  If I use the launcher, the game will consistently freeze at between 38% and 41%... after about a minute, it crashes to desktop.  When it crashes, I see the error in the screenshot below.  If I start the game from the bedrock link and not use the launcher, it will consistently hang at about 32% to 35%, but not freeze.  The progress indicator keeps spinning, but it never finishes loading.  I've left it trying like that for hours and when I come back to the computer, it's still spinning at ~32% or so.

I've tried dozens and dozens of times over the last month and interestingly, twice out of all those attempts, I was able to successfully log in.  It hesitated at 40ish percent, then finally finished loading.  If I log out and try to relaunch though, it freezes and crashes.  I have no idea why it let me in those two times. 

I've been working with Minecraft Help for a couple of weeks and they are stumped. They finally suggested I post on this bug report.  

I've also noticed the issue with YouTube that I see others have seen.  YouTube will be working fine, but when Bedrock hangs and crashes, YouTube also stops working and will not play videos.  I have to reboot for YouTube to start working again.