Shared Audio muting to call when muting laptop speakers

[buck123]

i'm having issues with a number of Windows 11 laptops where i'm not able to mute shared audio from coming out of the laptop speakers, without it also muting the shared audio to the zoom call. 

this was previously never an issue. meetings are being joined with or without audio and sharing audio for the video being played gives the same results. 

the laptop audio is being picked up on another device and causing feedback if not muted. 

[storyhub · Accepted solution]

As a recording and broadcast engineer I can tell you that computer audio is very complicated. Zoom's advanced share for audio only is still a "SCREEN SHARE". To "SIMPLIFY" share music is possible, but the audio needs to go thru the system as mic audio or run it on another device. This can be done by installing OBS studio, VLC, NDI ver 6, NDI ver 6 runtime, and the DistroAV NDI plugin for OBS Studio. Then launch NDI webcam which Zoom can link to for audio and/or video. OBS Studio can then run a VLC playlist of files stored on the computer. The host can then control which webcams are highlighted (to override Zoom's video follows audio function) by using spotlighting. I know it sounds complicated - and it is - but these tools provide versatility and lots of control including processing your voice input with compression, limiting, eq, gain, and mixing with music. These tools are free and widely used with lots of youtube how to videos out there.