purevw,
You have many settings spread across your machine-and-audio devices, Linux OS, and applications such as Brave Browser.
Hopefully, given your time constraints, you will have time to study the Brave settings.
When you study, take notes of the URL addresses.
Examples:
brave://settings
brave://flags
brave://crashes
brave://settings/clearBrowserData
Also, study the following issue in its entirety, plus all of the replies. Where the audio problem is, exactly, may not be easy to discover.
You need to be determined and take careful, specific notes.
Also note, who are members of Brave support.
You wrote: “Several other people have posted similar problems.”
You will help, by listing some links to such issues/reports.