In recent weeks, I've been experiencing issues with VLC's audio playback. When playing a video, other system activity or load can cause the sound to stutter, which is normal. 

But fairly frequently, in recent weeks, instead of recovering audio/video synchronization VLC will drop the sound completely, and the video will continue playing in silence. Even pausing/unpausing doesn't restore the sound, seemingly because the sound continues to be catastrophically out of sync with the image. It's only once I seek the video forward or backwards that the sound is restored.

Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

Steps to Reproduce:
While I can't trigger the desynchronization reliably (and was waiting until it happened again to report the issue), once it happens the situation is unfortunately very stable. After the audio has cut out,

1. open VLC's Messages window
2. turn verbosity up to 1
3. Attempt to pause/unpause the video 

Actual Results:
A continuous stream of warnings like this is output:

main warning: playback way too late (341323): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-889960): playing silence
main warning: playback too late (170668): up-sampling
main warning: playback way too late (384008): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-879295): playing silence
main warning: playback too late (149333): up-sampling
main warning: playback way too late (490656): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-985943): playing silence
main warning: playback way too late (320004): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-1156579): playing silence
main warning: playback too late (149321): up-sampling
main warning: playback way too late (490624): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-900552): playing silence
main warning: playback too late (127992): up-sampling
main warning: playback way too late (469296): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-900549): playing silence
main warning: playback too late (149331): up-sampling
main warning: playback way too late (490656): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-1007193): playing silence
main warning: playback way too late (341340): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-1028490): playing silence
main warning: playback way too late (298666): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-975141): playing silence
main warning: playback way too late (319994): flushing buffers
main warning: playback way too early (-1145797): playing silence
main warning: playback too late (149331): up-sampling


Expected Results:
Audio is able to remain in sync with video.

Additional Information:
The output in VLC's Messages window seems to show that VLC's attempts to re-synchronize the audio with the video are only making the issue worse, as it swings back and forth between playing too early and too late, and as a result is never able to play any of the audio at all. Even after pausing and unpausing, the situation continues until seeking causes it to flush all of the video and audio buffers and start over again. Then the sound is restored.

While pausing and unpausing doesn't fix this issue, it will sometimes *cause* it, with the audio immediately stuttering and cutting out as soon as the video starts playing. But even that doesn't happen reliably, making it difficult to reproduce on demand.

I'm reporting this here, first, instead of to the videolan project (though I will probably report it to them as well), because I know that the upstream VLC hasn't changed recently (as evidenced by the fact that our package is at revision 19), but the issue is something that only started occurring within the past few weeks. 

It's possible it started after the Fedora 42 update on my machine.

It's also possible it's due to recent hardware changes on my part, since I only recently switched from a (very cheap and unreliable) external USB audio device, to the motherboard's similarly low-rent and outdated motherboard audio. (So, it could be a longer-standing issue that I've only recently started experiencing.)