Pulseaudio and Zoom audio incompatibility : Possible Bug in Program

[SimonJames]

After upgrading from Zoom 5.6 to Zoom 5.7+. I have noticed a problem on my Linux machine. (Manjaro - that uses Arch Linux)

When hosting a meeting I attempt to share my sound and a video (I tick the appropriate boxes). Those that are viewing the meeting report that the sound is of a lower quality and is "crackly" When I open the linux audio mixer I find that the video's sound is not playing through the normal system "built in analog" setting but is playing " zoom_combine_device" setting. When I then manually change the setting back to "built in analog" The sound returns to normal. The problem is that everytime I play a new video the sound system resets to the "zoom_combine_device" and the problem returns and I can only fix the problem while the video is running. I have Pulseaudio sound server installed that is the regular sound server for Linux machines.

Specs of Machine:

OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
Host: HP Pavilion Laptop 15-cc0xx
Kernel: 5.15.50-1-MANJARO
Resolution: 1366x768
WM: Xfwm4
CPU: Intel i3-7100U (4) @ 2.400GHz
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 620
Memory: 3453MiB / 7835MiB

[UK_Dave]

I have the same problem in Linux Mint even after upgading to the latest v21 XFCE.  It took me a while to work out that Zoom was re-routing the Voice engine output from the speakers to the Zoom combine input which feeds back into the voice engine causing a howl round.  I have sympathy for the Zoom coders, the Pulse audio system inputs and outputs are really confusing!  Happy to test any fixes for you guys, thanks for creating Zoom it helped a lot of support groups grow during the pandemic. 💜

[toddy_engineer]

@SimonJames @UK_Dave could you try the new 5.11.9 package ? some audio sharing logic changes in this version.

[UK_Dave]

Thanks toddy, I'm now on 5.12.0 and it is fixed! Sorry for not getting back sooner, this is really appreciated.  Pass on my thanks to the guys 🙂

[HadMatter]

Still seeing this error in 5.15.3.