Ridiculous issues with new M2 Mac mini?

[overkill]

Hello!

I just bought a new M2 Mac mini base model and one of its primary uses is as a videoconferencing machine to be used 3-5 hours a day. I have been having a ridiculous amount of issues and I am looking for ideas. I am using it with a Logitech Brio webcam on a tripod with no usb extension cable and the mini is hooked up to a 65" 4k tv over HDMI 2.0. This is what I am experiencing:

1. Audio will work for a while but eventually when I am unmuted all everyone else hears is a loop of echo noises. When I am muted and I open up audio preferences I can see the mic levels jumping wildly. I can use the iPhone a a mic and that seems more stable although sometimes it loses the connection. I tried using AirPod Pros as the mic and zoom immediately crashed.

2. Video is usually ok but will my video will freeze at some point in the conference. Audio still works and I can see video / screen sharing of the other participants.

3. Sometimes I see a spinning beachball and the zoom app becomes unresponsive. If I am lucky I can get through most of the rest of the zoom conference seeing and hearing participants and seeing screen shares. Eventually the entire app locks up.

In an effort to troubleshoot, I have completely wiped the Mac mini and reinstalled the latest os: 13.2 (22D49). I have a minimal software installation including 1password and the webcam settings app. no other non apple software is installed on this system. I have the default camera and mic set to the brio webcam and the default speaker set too "same as system" which is the tv.

Has anyone else been running into issues like this? Zoom works fine on my other devices (M1 Studio, iPad Pro, iPhone) and everything else I've tried on this Mac mini (before wiping to a minimal installation) works great. I can only assume that these problems are between the current version of the zoom app and the hardware or os of the new m2 Mac mini. I am running zoom 5.13.6 (14918).

Thank you in advance!

[overkill]

I have more information on this. I set zoom up not to connect to audio on setup and set the default audio device to the iPhone via continuity. I made sure the iPhone was near and unlocked before connecting to zoom audio.

All problems have disappeared. From this I assume that the bug is related to Zoom using the microphone in the Brio via the Mac mini's USB ports. If I prevent Zoom from ever connecting to the Brio mic there is no issue.

[yardleywang]

I have the same challenge and would like to use the brio mic and not another mic. If I install any other mic, it works fine. Please advise.

[overkill]

Well its nice to know I am not alone I suppose. I was also able to get the airpods working as the mic. The trick seems to be not connecting to audio when joining the meeting. Then make sure the airpods / iphone / whatever are connected to the mac mini, join meeting audio, and everything is fine. I think if the wireless mic is not connected to the computer and zoom tries to connect the meeting audio, it will default to the brio mic and all the problems will start. does zoom tech support even read this forum?

[GCarde]

At least you can get it to work, mine just gets stuck on the little beach ball and will not show any video.  This is crazy, What happens to everything just working on a mac?