How do you troubleshoot communication audio stuttering

Crossposted from r/computers

I am occasionally working from home and on my desktop I have this really annoying issue with communication sessions such as Zoom, Teams, and Discord where it cuts off audio and freezes video every second for 2 seconds in the respective applications only. It's important to note that MY audio (My mic input) does not have any cutouts or delay or anything. Others can hear me just fine, It's just my inbound side that audio is an issue.

Trying to google for this is not very helpful:

• Slow internet - running 1g/1g and I have other programs that run absolutely fine.
• Heavy background usage - I close *Every* other application in the task bar and task manager is showing a usage of 6% CPU, 37% Memory, 9% GPU
• Application conflict - See above.
• Driver issue - all drivers are updated to their latest version.
• Bad bluetooth - Tried with multiple speakers, issue is consistent across them all. Background noise from other applications (before closing per above step) is not interrupted at all in any way.
• Bad headphones - Same as above - confirmed working just fine for EVERYTHING not related to communications.
• Bad app settings - Same as above, in Zoom you're able to test the speaker settings and THAT comes through clear. It is only in communications.
• Bad sound settings - I suppose this is what I'm trying to figure out.
  • Noise cancelling settings - Disabled to no change
  • ???

Just curious if anyone else has experienced this and if so, ANY ideas on how to troubleshoot it or figure out what can be done.