system audio in meetings - important feature broken for music teaching

[Winslowyerxa]

The *one thing* that for me has distinguished Zoom from other online teaching apps is now broken, and the recommended solutions, both from Zoom and third parties, don't work.

When I'm teaching music online, I need to be able to use the MIDI keyboard connected to the appropriate app, play backing tracks from other apps, and play back snippets of recordings of material the student is working on. Whatever I hear through my headphones from the system (and *not* through external speakers, which I don't use) should be audible to the person the other end of the connection.

All this *used* to work in Zoom, but it no longer does. And it's a deal breaker for me, especially as Zoom has a hefty price increase coming for when I re-up.

Why, if the app no longer does the things I need the most?

I'm running Zoom 6.0.1 on a Mcintosh using MacOS Ventura 3.6.7

The workaround used to be to create a multi-output device for sound and use that for the system. Simple and effective. Until it stopped working about a month ago.

The Zoom advice is to set up systems sound sharing is here:

Sharing background music or computer audio on Zoom

It *doesn't work.*

Also, when I try to set it up, it asks for a specific file to play back. I don't have a specific file for all times and situations. I need to simply have audio work so that I can move around among apps, sound clips, and the MIDI keyboard during a lesson. I don't want to have to drill through irrelevant menus for screen sharing, either. It should just be there by default all the time once I've set it up, and not require setup for each meeting.

Is this ability truly broken, or am I somehow failing in my careful attention to the recommended procedures for enabling this ability?