No sound in browsers but works elsewhere

N

NelsonN

I'm a non-technical person running FreeBSD 13.2-STABLE on an ASUS Vivobook laptop. Up until recently I was able to watch YouTube videos, etc... with sound in Firefox. Today it has become apparent that sound no longer works from Firefox, and I tested it in Chomium too and it doesn't work there either. Obviously something has changed, but I don't know what. Mixer settings seem normal:
Code: 
Mixer vol      is currently set to  61:61
Mixer pcm      is currently set to 100:100
Mixer speaker  is currently set to   0:0
Mixer mix      is currently set to  74:74
Mixer rec      is currently set to  37:37
Mixer igain    is currently set to   0:0
Mixer ogain    is currently set to 100:100
Mixer monitor  is currently set to  67:67
Recording source: monitor

So does output of cat /dev/sndstat:
Code: 
Installed devices:
pcm0: <Realtek ALC897 (Analog 2.0+HP/2.0)> (play/rec) default
pcm1: <Intel Tiger Lake (HDMI/DP 8ch)> (play)
No devices installed from userspace.

I'm a total novice so I don't really know what else to check to diagnose the problem. Audio does seem to work in other applications, such as Telegram, which still makes notification sounds and plays video with audio. The last thing I was doing was trying to get Oracle VirtualBox to work, which I did, and I have a feeling I must have done something that messed this up but I can't imagine what. I work with women who insist on playing the radio all day, so regaining this functionality is crucial to my sanity.
 
When trying service sndiod restart I get:
sndiod does not exist in /etc/rc.d or the local startup directories (/usr/local/etc/rc.d), or is not executable

I tried adding sndiod_enable="YES" to rc.conf and restarting but it still gives me the same. I'm not sure how to go about adding whatever it needs to /usr/local/etc/rc.d, but I also fear (as someone who has no idea what they're talking about) that may be barking up the wrong tree, as it was working perfectly before, presumably without this service. Same thing with poking around in Firefox's config, since the problem appeared in both Firefox and Chomium. Nevertheless I am willing to try whatever people think will work, I just wish I had the know-how to narrow down where the problem actually is/what changed.
 
Okay, I might have found the solution. I found this thread which suggested going to about:config in the Firefox address bar like you mentioned, adding the field media.cubeb.backend and setting it to OSS. After doing this and restarting Firefox, sound has returned. The thread mentions that a possible cause of the issue is that "something pulled in pulseaudio as a dependency, which causes nothing but trouble..." If you scroll further down in that thread user "bsduck" explains in more detail. I haven't figured out Chromium yet (not that I personally need sound in Chromium), but I would imagine it's a matter of figuring out how to set the audio backend in Chromium and setting it to OSS there as well.
 
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