I'm stuck here, which is unusual.

On my X86_64 box, I can't get audio out in Zoom today. I had it yesterday, and nothing's changed. I can hear nobody on Zoom. In the settings I can't hear the "Test Speaker." I can hear just about everything else, videos in vlc, mp3s in mpg123.

I do, however, have a backup (Last taken when all was good) which I can boot as a second system, and as I just wanted to get a meeting, I booted that. That can hear nobody. In the settings I can't hear the "Test Speaker." I can hear just about everything else, videos in vlc, mp3s in mpg123.

The only thing shared between the 2 systems is the kernel, but not the modules. So, it isn't both zooms together, it isn't the soundcard, it isn't alsa or pulse, it's er .......

You see why I'm stuck?

Odd. Although if memory serves me right, you've got zoom troubles in the past too.

Slackware 15 or -current? Fully upgraded systems? What kernels (since you say they ar different on the two systems)? Which zoom version?

I had a zoom meeting earlier this week (Tuesday). Slackware64 -current, fully upgraded, pipewire and wireplumber, zoom-5.12.9.367 (built with the zoom-linux SBo script). No trouble at all with sound (BT headset). Obviuously, I don't know if any upgrades for -current the last few days might hav changed things.

Slackware64-15.0, Zoom-5.11.3. I'm not using any of the new features zoom had been stuffing in since 5.9.x. I have the one 5.15.63 kernel on /boot/efi that is used on both systems. It's the only piece the same, as they are on different disks.

Yes, I've had zoom issues in the past - who doesn't? The primary one is that pulse may not recognise sound from Zoom, and no Zoom stream appears in pavucontrol's playback menu for Zoom. When that happens, I run vlc which gets it's stream in pavucontrol, then zoom gets one when it is started.

But now I have no audio out in zoom on either system, but it works fine for everything else. In Zoom settings, the audio shows on the volume meter (beside the 'test speaker' button) but no sound comes out. All I did to cause this was to switch it off normally last night. Is that a crime?

EDIT: I wouldn't swear the systems are fully upgraded. I did grab a bunch of upgrades once and apply them. Upgrades are usually a security thing, not a 'that-didn't-work' thing.

Have you tried using pipewire (install from the Slackware repo, don't forget to run the pipewire-enable.sh script afterwards)?

I've found pipewire + wireplumber (buildscript on SBo) as a very reliable alternative to pulseaudio.

No I haven't tried pipewire. I have two of everything failing together? Don't think so.

I did update to zoom-5.12.6.??? and that worked. So I tried zoom-5.11.3.??? again, and that worked, but I spotted the difference.

I have 2 soundcards here

1. A sound chip named RX 6800/6800XT which is part of my RX6600XT Graphics card. It's Audio out only, to the hdmi. That's my only audio out.
2. A Starship/Matisse sound chip on the motherboard which I only use as input. Audio out gets grabbed by the video card.

In the 'settings' tab of zoom, I was seeing 'Same as System' for the audio out. The 'Same as System' setting can mean either card. It's an ambiguous term. I didn't see an option for the 6800XT or I would have selected it. It was swapping zoom versions that gave me the 6800XT. There's nothing wrong with anything - there is ambiguity. I have very little choice in the sound config. The video card grabs the output, I get inputs through the Starship/Matisse, and zoom can't get it's head around it because "SYSTEM" is undefined.

There seems to be no garbage collection either - I counted 18 processes in zoom yesterday on my RazPi 4B.

I'll update to 5.12.6. There's extra junk I'm not using, but it's got a nicer icon and just may be less unreliable.

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