OK, on up-to-date Zorin 17.2 pro I've just started experiencing a very weird (to me at least) audio problem:
I've got a fairly modern AMD desktop used with either bluetooth headphones or speaker and an nVidia card (mentioned because nVidia drivers seem such a source of issues - and also, below)
Initially, it was just that in the last couple of days I've got no audio on e.g. youtube videos but, thanks to a Ponce-de-Lyon post, i downloaded pavucontrol and could see that the firefox and chrome defaulted their audio output to HDMI (nVidia) output and, as my monitor has no speakers, I've got no sound. Why would it suddenly do that? Anyhoo, pavucontrol allows that to to be changed back to bluetooth and sound is back, hurrah!
However, on the standard Zorin Sound control panel I've still got weird behaviour: Attempting a 'Test' gives no sound at all on either headphones or speaker. Also at the bottom of the Sound panel it's possible to change/test the alert sound but only the default 'beep' works.
Something has clearly changed in the last few days, any suggestions how to diagnose what's going on?
Ah, nVidia, dontcha just love it. Experimenting a bit further with pavucontrol I see I can set the HDA nVidia profile to "Off"... And all of a sudden the audio issues seem to have gone away.
Speaker test function and funky alert sounds back in action.
Happy to delete this thread or keep it live for anyone else with this issue.
Note to self: check all the options before I post next time
OK. By default these days GNU/Linux detects HDMI first and so decides to make that a priority source. I would create a blacklist.conf file using my tutorial as a guide:
That is the best option.
I hope you don't mind, I have amended the title to reflect the problem and marked your post #2 as Solution, for future reference.
Solution, for future reference.