Navigate to the "old-school" device properties screen (not the shiny new Windows 10/11 version). Untick the checkbox "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" under the Advanced tab.
Exclusive mode is a bit like full-screen for GPUs. DirectX games can do things like override the output color management, gamma ramps, brightness, HDR mode, and even set the "white point" on some displays! Similarly, audio applications can take control of your audio devices in all sorts of ways if permitted.
While "full control" of a GPU is still useful, because we're not living in a utopia where all displays are 12-bit HDR all the time, audio has long ago passed the point where direct control delivers tangible benefits. Software mixing is more than capable of "keeping up" even with an absurd number of simultaneous streams at a quality level that vastly exceeds what the human ear can perceive.
I found that with Teams, it's more important to turn off direct control of the microphone than the speakers, but I do both just to be on the safe side...
Exclusive mode is a bit like full-screen for GPUs. DirectX games can do things like override the output color management, gamma ramps, brightness, HDR mode, and even set the "white point" on some displays! Similarly, audio applications can take control of your audio devices in all sorts of ways if permitted.
While "full control" of a GPU is still useful, because we're not living in a utopia where all displays are 12-bit HDR all the time, audio has long ago passed the point where direct control delivers tangible benefits. Software mixing is more than capable of "keeping up" even with an absurd number of simultaneous streams at a quality level that vastly exceeds what the human ear can perceive.
I found that with Teams, it's more important to turn off direct control of the microphone than the speakers, but I do both just to be on the safe side...