Turned out to be the monitor after all. The monitor wouldn't
respond to the power button, after pulling its plug all is
back to normal.

I'd still be curious to know more about testing audio output
on the Pi.

Thanks,

bob prohaska

bob prohaska  wrote:
> While poking around on YouTube using the Chromium browser all
> audio output on my Pi3+ went away without obvious cause. Normally
> the audio comes out the HDMI port and is picked off at the headphone
> jack on the monitor, with no special setup that I'm aware of.
>
> The levels are not mute on both the browser and the system,
> the speaker system picks up hum when I touch the cable end
> where it plugs into the monitor. Chromium reports it is at
> Version 65.0.3325.181 (Official Build) Built on Raspbian ,
> running on Raspbian 9.6 (32-bit)
>
> Are there any other software switches or status that can be checked?
> It's possible the monitor's audio section quit, but software trouble
> seems a great deal more plausible.
>
> Is there a way to bypass the hdmi in the monitor to check for output
> directly at the Pi's audio jack?
>
> I've not yet tried rebooting, but will do that as soon as a running
> job completes.
>
> Thanks for reading, and any ideas!
>
> bob prohaska
>

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