Severe 20GB Memory Leak in audiodg.exe during Zoom calls on HP OmniBook X Flip (AMD Ryzen 9 AI)

Question

Severe 20GB Memory Leak in audiodg.exe during Zoom calls on HP OmniBook X Flip (AMD Ryzen 9 AI)

Paul Chapman 0

Hello,

I am experiencing a catastrophic memory leak involving audiodg.exe (Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation) exclusively during active calls in the Zoom desktop application. Over the course of a meeting, audiodg.exe continuously hoards RAM, peaking at an astronomical 20 GB of memory usage. This completely starves the system of resources, degrading performance until the audio engine or the application itself crashes.

System Specifications:

Laptop: HP OmniBook X Flip 14"
Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 AI platform
Audio Driver Architecture: ACPI Audio Compositor Device (2025 AMD Driver framework)

Troubleshooting Already Attempted (Did Not Resolve the Issue):

Windows Audio Enhancements: Completely disabled for both the Microphone Array and Speakers via Windows Sound Settings.
Exclusive Mode: Unchecked "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" in the legacy Sound Control Panel (mmsys.cpl) for all input/output devices.
Zoom Desktop Settings: Lowered background noise suppression to "Low", changed echo cancellation to "Aggressive", and toggled "Signal processing by Windows audio device drivers" to Off.
Driver Rollbacks: Attempted rolling back system components in Device Manager. Reverting the AMD Audio CoProcessor layer to a generic High Definition Audio driver resulted in a total loss of the sound system. Reverting the ACPI Audio Compositor Device to the generic 2006 Microsoft fallback driver did not stop the memory leak.
Process Isolation: Manually setting CPU affinity for audiodg.exe to core 0/1 slightly mitigates the system impact but does not halt the RAM climb.

Key Diagnostic Finding: The memory leak does not occur when using the Zoom Web Client inside a web browser (Chrome/Edge). The leak is strictly triggered when the 64-bit Zoom desktop client hooks into the ACPI Audio Compositor Device layer to manage hardware-level processing on the Ryzen AI framework.

Given that this occurs on a modern AMD Ryzen AI architecture, this appears to be a structural memory tracking bug between the Windows Audio Graph engine and the AMD ACPI audio routing profile.

Are there any specific registry overrides, hotfixes, or diagnostic steps I can take to resolve this? I am happy to provide Event Viewer or memory dump logs if required.

Thank you.

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Answer 1

Carl-L 21,480 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hello Paul Chapman,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Before we proceed further, you said this only happens in active calls of Zoom desktop apps, may I know if you have tried other communication apps like Teams to see if the leak happens?

I'm waiting for your reply.

Paul Chapman 0 Reputation points

2026-09-11T11:12:16.3+00:00

Yes. I have tried Teams and Viber. Both these work fine. No memory leak.

I should add that it also happens the moment I activate the Zoom >Settings>Audio tab. The memory leak starts and continues until I have no available RAM (this is a 32GB system). The fact that it happens the moment I activate the Zoom >Settings>Audio tab, CoPilot suggested it is starting when Zoom enumerates the audio devices.

If I plug in my headphone mic into the 3.5mm jack and tell Zoom to use it, the leak stops. This suggests it is linked entirely to the Realtek Microphone (SoundWire Audio) device which is using a Microsoft provided driver - latest version (December 2025).

I have followed numerous trouble-shooting steps with Co-Pilot and with Gemini AI, and both have boiled it down to the conflict as I've described.

From CoPilot,
++++
Key isolation result:

The problem stops completely if I uninstall/disable the built-in mic: “Microphone Array on SoundWire Device (Realtek Microphone)”.

If I use an external headset/earphones mic instead, Zoom works normally and audiodg.exe does not spike.

Conclusion: This appears to be a Realtek SoundWire microphone driver/effects chain issue triggered by certain apps (in my case Zoom) enumerating the microphone, causing audiodg.exe memory runaway.

This appears to need a driver/firmware/BIOS fix or a way to disable the Realtek mic DSP/audio effects at the driver level.
+++++

The HP Support team have been trying to help me with this all week. Finally, they have actually asked me to ask Microsoft if there is a firmware or driver update to fix this issue.

Any help appreciated.