My 14-inch MacBook Pro M3 Pro's audio just fails at times. What do I do?

[u/BranchNo7991]

This is more of a whole syndrome than a disease, but I feel it centers on the speakers. I'll do my best to describe it.

One day, I was watching a YouTube video with a desert scene, where there was a lot of wind noise. Out of nowhere, my laptop started to rattle, and the left main speaker started emitting this grinding sound, sort of like rain on a tin roof. This rattling would come back any time I played any noisy or 'grainy' audio. My left main speaker has since been operating at a diminished volume and quality. Then I updated my Mac to the new OS (Sequoia), and the rattling went away. But the left speaker still contributes little to the volume and gives out these popping sounds if you listen closely.

But the worst part is this: my laptop goes through this 'no audio' syndrome at random times. It is characterized by the following symptoms. It refuses to play any audio or video file. For example, if I try to play a YouTube video, it just shows a loading circle for a while, and sometimes eventually tells me to restart the computer. However, restarting does NOT fix the problem. Additionally, sometimes, even the attempt to play a song/video overwhelms my laptop, and it just restarts. I've noticed that my laptop randomly shuts down and restarts when I keep the lid shut and keep it in sleep mode. (I get a notification saying it shut down unexpectedly, and some apps also ask me if I want to keep the recovered files). It can go through these random shutdowns even when the lid is open, but rarely ever when I'm actively using it (unless, of course, I try to use anything related to audio).

Luckily, I have found something that does fix the problem. If you try a few times (ranging from twice to around a dozen times), the audio starts working again, most of the time. The way I do this is by either pressing the space key to start and stop playing a video a couple of times, or by opening the microphone and attempting to make a recording a couple of times. This works almost all the time. But a couple of times a month, my laptop just refuses to do anything involving audio, and no amount of attempts such as those described above helps. No amount of restarting helps either. I just have to wait until my laptop is in the mood again.

A few caveats I've noted over the months.

1. The audio or videos always play if I use earphones. So this might be a hardware issue?

2. I said restarting doesn't help. But when restarting, I can always hear the restarting sound effect. This means that it is capable of playing audio, but doesn't want to. So this isn't purely a hardware issue?

3. The audio NEVER stops working while I'm playing something. It only ever stops functioning when I'm not actively playing something. However, it often fails if I am playing something, pause it for a couple of minutes, and try to play it again.

PS: I don't have AppleCare, and I live in a country without any Apple Stores. This is a grey market product, but it doesn't appear to be compromised in any way. As for why I waited this long before doing anything, it's because this is fixed within a few seconds in most cases, and I've gotten used to it. I know I was irresponsible. Please cut me some slack.