zoom and windows 10 - microphone and speaker drop off

Just had a conversation with my Zoom rep. It appears there is a known issue with certain revisions of Realtek hardware in HP/Dell and Microsoft systems. The Zoom software has trouble communicating with the hardware in order to properly handle background noise suppression. The result is the Zoom software mutes the mic or locks the microphone hardware requiring a reboot. 

Zoom is working to write code to be able to properly suppress background noise and adjust from low/medium/high or even disable to help with these issues. It's supposedly scheduled for inclusion in Version 5.4 of the Zoom software. Unfortunately, there is no ETA for release.  

I wonder if anyone's tried going into the sound settings on Zoom and turning off the background noise suppression?

I have a Dell, so I'm not sure if my instructions will translate, but here is what I did: I opened the computer settings window and clicked on "sound." Under "input" it lists the Realtek microphone and there's an option for "device properties." I clicked on that and a separate window pops up called microphone properties, where there are four tabs at the top - general, listen, levels, and advanced. The pertinent settings are found under the advanced tab.

My audio (for Zoom only -- all other applications fine) disappeared suddently and completely on September 30th. As soon as that meeting started, the students could hear me but I could not hear them. Every meeting since has been the same--no sound for me, only even though students can hear me just fine. After the initial problem on September 30th, the sound never worked again with Zoom (microphone is fine--just speakers), until I changed the settings as noted above today. I've tested it twice today since changing the settings and issue seems to be resolved -- I hope it's a permanent solution. But even if all I have to do is turn the Zoom App speakers back on in settings every day, it beats the workaround I was using!

I've been having the same problem. I recently replaced my old Dell laptop (which was slow but worked fine in Zoom) with a new Dell. My microphone cuts out in Zoom after a few minutes and people say they can't hear me. The microphone seems to work fine in other apps. I also spent a lot of time going back and forth with Dell trying to fix this issue, and in the end they wanted to charge me for a software consultation. For a brand new computer.

Same here, Win 10, gaming machine that's a couple of years old with an ASRock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 LGA 1151 Intel Z270  ATX Motherboards - Intel processor. Sound is handled by the board and there's an NVIDIA driver for sound as well. The sound started fluctuating wildly a couple of weeks ago using Zoom as well as online video with sound, for instance Twitter (Waterfox 64 bit). The sound doesn't drop off it drops to very, very soft which you can hear with the volume turned all the way up for the speakers and the windows control. I've turned off every sound augmentation available under windows and turned off the Zoom sound balance option, no luck. I uninstalled all sound drivers on the machine and let them re-install, sound was good for a few hours then back to wild fluctuations for Zoom.

Some things I've observed;

One on one Zoom meetings haven't been effected, anything more than one or possibly two other attendees and the sound goes crazy.

Games are not effected, sound quality is great and surround is working fine.

VLC is fine, no fluctuations.

Plex is fine, I believe that Plex server uses the local machine for volume control, no problems (please correct me if I'm wrong about that).

Sound is not effected on any of my other devices, Zoom on an android phone has no problems, Zoom on an android tablet has no problems regardless the number of attendees.

This morning I finished one Zoom conference and immediately started  another, the first was fine, many attendees but only one microphone was unmuted, everyone else was muted by the host. The second conference was a free for all, lots of attendees, no limits on microphones and sound immediately went bad again. I looked at task manager and there were three Zoom instances running, two were nested and one was just sitting there like a lump. Killing that process didn't change the fluctuation.

It feels like the Zoom software is having a problem with the potential for multiple sound sources once it sees more than a very small handful of sources.