I’m running CarPlay, not Android Auto. The mute thing still happens for me even with daily soft reset, plus the music stops even without CarPlay connected. I’ve had it cut out on Bluetooth and even on the built-in Spotify app. I get the cell antenna idea and will have them look at that. Thank you for the idea, truly appreciated.
Normally, I’d say audio just plain stopping would be a connection issue. It buffers the file as it streams, and if it loses connection, it just plain stops when it runs out of buffer. But you are experiencing this on both the native car apps and in CarPlay. So that would mean both your phone AND the car are losing connection. Plus the microphone drops, which sounds like a deeper connection issue.
Are you in a remote place where you often lose cell phone signal? I know a lot of us live in places with poor reception.
When you get these dropouts, have you noticed if the signal bars from CarPlay or the car itself are showing 1 or 0 bars?
And when the audio drops for the media you are listening to, do you lose other sounds as well? Some of us have experienced the total audio loss bug, where even turn signals, alerts, etc all end up silent.
The other thing with CarPlay is that now you have an extra variable: the phone itself. Apple has been known to have issues with connection in recent versions of CarPlay. For some users in certain places. So it could be the phone, not the car, at least in those instances.
I know you reboot the car a lot. Have you rebooted your phone recently? Just a suggestion.