pipewire – Attempt to play audio just hangs

After a recent reboot my AlmaLinux 8 (with pipewire) host will no longer play audio. I have a USB attached audio card. The device is found as shown here:

 aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: CODEC [USB Audio CODEC], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

and here:

aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
sysdefault
    Default Audio Device
oss
    Open Sound System
pipewire
    PipeWire Sound Server
default
    Default ALSA Output (currently PipeWire Media Server)
sysdefault:CARD=CODEC
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    Front output / input
surround21:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0
    USB Audio CODEC, USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

but when I run a speaker test no audio is heard and it just hangs. Playing an audio file results in the same:

aplay -vv /data/sounds/intruder_alert.wav
Playing WAVE '/data/sounds/intruder_alert.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 22050 Hz, Mono
ALSA <-> PipeWire PCM I/O Plugin
Its setup is:
  stream       : PLAYBACK
  access       : RW_INTERLEAVED
  format       : S16_LE
  subformat    : STD
  channels     : 1
  rate         : 22050
  exact rate   : 22050 (22050/1)
  msbits       : 16
  buffer_size  : 11025
  period_size  : 2756
  period_time  : 125000
  tstamp_mode  : NONE
  tstamp_type  : MONOTONIC
  period_step  : 1
  avail_min    : 2756
  period_event : 0
  start_threshold  : 11025
  stop_threshold   : 11025
  silence_threshold: 0
  silence_size : 0
  boundary     : 6206523236469964800
##############################################   + | 97%

I’m not sure how to investigate this further…