No audio in most apps: ALSA error: snd_pcm_open failed: No such file or directory

[nikgnomic]

@postcd

i have suspection that this misery may among other be caused by VLC process hanging and not closing properly

VLC is know to have a bug and not close properly
But it is not a major problem if VLC is set to use PulseAudio and share audio streams

pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio --start; not helps

you are correct - those commands usually make things worse

@nikgnomic

pulseaudio -k may appear to restart pulseaudio ok, but it will break some pulseaudio functions

• the systemd pulseaudio.service may fail
• some of the pulseaudio modules will not get re-loaded correctly
• GUI controls in KDE may not work (because pulseaudio does not have module-device-manger loaded)
• network audio device may not work (because two X11 modules are not loaded)
• audio devices may get muted or suspended

suggest use this command to check if pulseaudio is ok

systemctl --user --full --no-pager status pulseaudio.{socket,service} 

and this to restart pulseaudio

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio