Squishy/Sticky Mute button in 3.0 64-bit version

Extreme newbie here. The new version of VLC I downloaded today seems to have what I can only describe as a sticky or squishy mute function. Pressing the hotkey 'm' or the little speaker icon would result in a crisp, semi-instant mute/unmute response in the next prior release. Now it is a tad slow. I have multiple VLC windows open simultaneously with an Autohotkey script that includes the mute hotkey. The slow mute response seems to be causing issues. I had adjusted timing in the script to no avail, it seems that sometimes the mute hotkey is not recognized causing mutiple videos to be unmuted simultaneously. Anyway, my problem aside, it does seem that the mute button 'should' be more responsive. At least the same as it was in the most recent version prior to this new official release.

BTW, this version seems to be vastly more able to handle multiple high data rate H.265 video streams. Takes a fair amount more windows to max out my i7 Quad Core. Thank you