Microphone problems

[WPCentral Question]

So I have a Lumia 1520 and after installing DP 8.1 my microphone stopped working. It doesn't work when making calls (people can barely hear me), it doesn't gather audio when recording video and Cortana doesn't "hear" anything I say. I have noticed that this isn't a "consistent" issue, but nonetheless there are a lot of people that have dealt with microphone issues following the installation of the DP. I did a hard reset initially and it did nothing. I recently jumped through all the hoops to get my phone back to the original WP 8 via Nokia's software tools. Even after doing that and installing the official WP 8.1 update my microphone still does not work. I haven't seen many direct answers to similar issues as mine, so I guess my questions are - What happened that would cause this? Because it occurred during my use of the DP does that mean I won't have any help in getting this fixed/repared? What is Microsoft doing - if they are even aware - about this issue and what steps should I take to have my phone working again?