Using live environment to test audio issues

systemd is the init system on Manjaro, as well as on most other distributions

This might help:

Manjaro KDE - After the last update replaces pulseaudio with pipewire, no more audio volume controls - #8 by nikgnomic

or search for disable pipewire or something similar here on the forum …

systemctl --user -l --no-pager status pulseaudio*

replace pulseaudio* for pipewire* … probably …

and then disable and/or mask the service to prevent it from starting