My Macbook Air's audio keeps cutting out

hi, i'm having problems with my macbook air's audio. whenever i try to watch videos and pretty much anything else with my macbook connected to my airpods, occasionally the sound cuts off periodically and comes back. but as it keeps doing that it gets worse, with the audio being silent for minutes at a time. a few days ago it was silent for 3 minutes straight, with occasional sound heard for half a second or more. i kept configuring my sound settings and restarted my computer, and sometimes it would work for the rest of the day but it came back today. i run a macbook air 13' from 2017 and using macos monterey. i think the problem may be the bluetooth device but i am not completely sure.