To start, The Digirig was working perfectly. I purchased the unit (digirig mobile)
approximately a year ago (I think) but didn’t use It at all until two days ago, when I got my
amateur license. It was working great, I was able to send an email with winlink using PAT (open source winlink client) and direwolf on my linux box, and I was able to connect to bulletin board nodes on ax25 using direwolf as the modem and paracon as the UI.
So now onto the problem 
which is unfortunate. The digirig still shows up as a sound device, can still key the PTT. I wasn’t using it to TX audio to begin with, but it can do that as well (I am using a QYT kt-8900d. (audio into the radio is a btech aprs cable on the splitter accessory from btech that has a rj45 port, plug, and k1 port on the front. I was recieving audio from the radio to my computer using 3 lead trrs cables on the back port (data + audio in + audio out) and also using that for the ptt (with the digirig). Kinda a bootleg setup but I didn’t have any 4 lead trrs cables available so I made do with what I had lying around. I also tested it with my baofeng uv5r and non-homebrew stock digirig cables. Which was working fine before as well but wasn’t anymore either. So what I need to know, is this a hardware issue with the digirig? Both radios worked before with this digirig mobile unit and now both do not. I also tested both radios off of two different linux PCs as well just to be sure it wasn’t a PC hardware/pipewire-pulse software issue. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you! TL:dr When the radio recieves audio the mic interface of the digirig goes quiet and does not decode packets.
Not an expert, but with any troubleshooting, the aim is to first reduce variables and reproduce the problem.
You have tried the stock cables with a baofeng and you have tried with a different computer. The next step is to try with a different digirig. The results of that will determine what the issue is.
Sorry, I feel really bad for taking so long to follow up. I know longer think it is a digirig issue but wrather a direwolf/pulseaudio issue. Sorry. I will be purchasing another digirig soon however and hopefully I can get it worked out so I won’t have to switch to windblows. (on at least one of my old laptops that is) direwolf just won’t operate ax25 connections…
I’m working on a pure python based packet radio protocol. It won’t need direwolf or fldigi or any of the others. Just python. I’ll leave a link when I make the first version public. Probably a few months out still.