Pipewire no sound after Debian 12 upgrade

I’ve been performing in-place upgrades of Debian for years. Always some new problem to fix afterward. Debian 12 was no different.

Off-subject i was forced to apt purge, deborphan , dpkg --purge --force-depends on quite a few items before being able to fully perform upgrade/updates.

Problem: No audio after automated upgrade to Pipewire systems.

Solution:
Reference: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/2255

cd  /etc/alsa/conf.d/
sudo mv 50-pulseaudio.conf{,.bak}
sudo mv 50-oss.conf{,.bak}
sudo mv 50-pipewire.conf{,.bak}
sudo mv 50-jack.conf{,.bak}
sudo mkdir backup
sudo mv ./*.bak ./backup/

sudo apt reinstall pipewire pipewire-pulse pipewire-alsa pipewire-jack wireplumber
## internets recommended 'wireplumber' over 'pipewire-media-session'

history -a
reboot

# rejoice

You may choose to do it differently, but essentially, remove all 50-*.conf that deal specifically with sound, then reinstall the packages to recreate a proper 50-pipewire.conf.

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