Permanently removing/disabling DTS from Windows and its association with sound drivers

Hello,

ever since the 20H2 update, all audio playback (in all applications, regardless of video playback or just plain audio) has some major issues where the playback stops every few seconds, pauses for a second and restarts, similar to switching to another audio device in mid-playback. I have tried different devices, different drivers for these devices, all the regular means of troubleshooting sound issues or driver issues but it seems to all come down to some issue with DTS or Windows sound improvements altogether. But there is no way to remove DTS from the system in general, there is also no way to permanently disable the sound improvements as with every restart or re-connection of another audio device, it will automatically re-enable itself and switch back to DTS:X Ultra in my case, regardless of what I set prior. So in the current state of things, any kind of media playback is entirely broken without any obvious solution as any dirver-side fixes don't remove the issue and older drivers aren't compatible with 20H2 anymore and Windows just refuses to give me any kind of option to permanently remove the screwed up DTS system unless I try to somehow forcefully break the drivers, which I have not yet tried.

Obviously, I'd much rather prefer a more elegant solution. I haven't been able to find much on the issue from others so far, but it occurs on my HP Notebook as well as on my Lenovo Thinkpad without any shared components or software other than Windows in the current 20H2 version (and only since the update), so there has to be an issue there that is Windows related. 

Thank you in advance for any suggestions on how to fix this!