Please to Help Resolving Quirky Audio Issue running on Debian 12 32-bit

I recently installed Debian bookworm on my tablet and I thought the installation went smoothly - Wi-Fi was detected out of the box, so when the installer told me that it needed Intel Firmware to install, it did so automagically when it was able to connect to the internet during installation to access the missing files that were not available in the installer.

I am planning on using this tablet as a developmental device for an application I have been working on, written almost entirely in C, with some ASM inserted here an there, but when I was finally able to build and run my code, there was no audio output whatsoever. My app is utilising the SDL2_mixer library to facilitate audio output.

I then dashed to the sound settings and in Sounds, I had the volume scrubber, and that didn't do much. I had a vague recollection with the PulseAudio app, and from just that point, everything semed okay. I then performed some quick research and I discovered these things:

I can play and listen to music playing from Audacious, which is my first choice go-to app under different operating systems. Music plays just fine

I can watch videos and listen to the audio via FirefoxESR through Youtube.

Music can play simultaneously from audacious and firefox

If I am playing music using Audacious, or watching and listening to a video from Youtube under FirefoxESR, the audio cuts out abruptly as soon as I run my app.

and resumes as soon as I kill my app.

to compare , and to prove that my app was not the primary cause of this no sound problem, I used app to install the game Burgerspace, which does not play any sound and does the same comparing the two apps that can actually play sound

Here's the output regarding my audio hardware:

asus@debian:~$ pactl list | grep -E "\s\s+output:"
output:hdmi-stereo: Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 5900, available: no)
output:hdmi-stereo-extra1: Digital Stereo (HDMI 2) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 5700, available: no)
output:hdmi-surround: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 800, available: no)
output:hdmi-surround71: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 800, available: no)
output:hdmi-surround-extra1: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI 2) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 600, available: no)
output:hdmi-surround71-extra1: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI 2) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 600, available: no)
asus@debian:~$ aplay -L ?
null
Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
lavrate
Rate Converter Plugin Using Libav/FFmpeg Library
samplerate
Rate Converter Plugin Using Samplerate Library

speexrate
Rate Converter Plugin Using Speex Resampler
jack
JACK Audio Connection Kit
oss
Open Sound System
pipewire
PipeWire Sound Server
pulse
PulseAudio Sound Server
speex
Plugin using Speex DSP (resample, agc, denoise, echo, dereverb)
upmix
Plugin for channel upmix (4,6,8)
vdownmix
Plugin for channel downmix (stereo) with a simple spacialization
default
Default ALSA Output (currently PipeWire Media Server)
hw:CARD=Audio,DEV=0
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=Audio,DEV=1
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=Audio,DEV=0
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=Audio,DEV=1
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
Hardware device with all software conversions
sysdefault:CARD=Audio
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
Default Audio Device
hdmi:CARD=Audio,DEV=0
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
HDMI Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=Audio,DEV=1
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
HDMI Audio Output
dmix:CARD=Audio,DEV=0
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=Audio,DEV=1
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio, Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi
Direct sample mixing device
usbstream:CARD=Audio
Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio
USB Stream Output
hw:CARD=bytcrrt5640,DEV=0
bytcr-rt5640,
Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=bytcrrt5640,DEV=1
bytcr-rt5640,
Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=bytcrrt5640,DEV=0
bytcr-rt5640,
Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=bytcrrt5640,DEV=1
bytcr-rt5640,
Hardware device with all software conversions
sysdefault:CARD=bytcrrt5640
bytcr-rt5640,
Default Audio Device
dmix:CARD=bytcrrt5640,DEV=0
bytcr-rt5640,
Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=bytcrrt5640,DEV=1
bytcr-rt5640,
Direct sample mixing device
usbstream:CARD=bytcrrt5640
bytcr-rt5640
USB Stream Output

asus@debian:~$aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Audio [Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio], device 0: HdmiLpeAudio [Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Audio [Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audio], device 1: HdmiLpeAudio [Intel HDMI/DP LPE Audi]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: bytcrrt5640 [bytcr-rt5640], device 0: 3 []
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: bytcrrt5640 [bytcr-rt5640], device 1: 4 []
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
asus@debian:/etc/pulse$

So, I've been continuing my research, and through the various apps I've been testing and monitoring the activity within the PulseAudio Application, it appears that the Audacious music player is playing directly through ALSA with the pipewire intermediary, and Firefox is just using the audio stream. my app and the BurgerSpace app are also using these audio streams, which is curious, because no sound is heard through my app and the BurgerSpace app, but is heard through the Firefox and youtube playback. I found this link here, which provides an alternative method of telling ALSA to use PulseAudio for the default output, but the post creator also explained my frusturation that pulseaudio seems to be so amazing and excellent, but doesn't provide any troubleshooting help or show any error output when things go wrong. If I could have seen some realtime output for all audio streams this wouldn't have been much of an issue. in my opinion. Here's the link that I am referencing: https://superuser.com/questions/1157...utput-via-alsa

I don't know how to view how audio is being processed to diagnose the issue. nothing is showing me any errors. nothing is telling me why audio is not playing. It's just not playing.