The wiring plan reserved the mic target unconditionally first, so on a box
without VB-Cable the mic took the Steam Streaming Microphone — the only
working client-only loopback sink — and desktop audio fell to the
known-silent Speakers last resort: a headless Steam-only host streamed
SILENCE (the 2026-08 field case), and the installer's 'optional (mic
passthrough)' wording never warned anyone.
The mic may now hold the Streaming Microphone only while the loopback still
gets a preferred (non-last-resort) pick without it — another silent sink or
real hardware. Otherwise the loopback takes the endpoint and the mic falls
to a lesser candidate or is honestly withheld (Wiring::mic_withheld), with
the open error naming the trade and the remedy. An operator
PUNKTFUNK_MIC_DEVICE override is exempt: an explicit choice may still
strand the loopback on the last resort.
Also: the Steam-pair auto-install latch is now once per INF-state instead
of once per process — an attempt made while Steam was absent re-arms when
its driver INFs later appear (files are invisible to the endpoint-set
fingerprint, so nothing else would ever retry), and a withheld mic skips
the pointless reinstall (the pair exists; the plan gave it to the loopback).
enricobuehler
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