Currently, the skype-4.3.0.37 ebuild only has the dependency: pulseaudio? ( media-sound/pulseaudio ) This does not work on amd64 if app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-soundlibs is not installed and media-sound/pulseaudio is compiled *without* ABI_X86=32: It seems that the 64 bit pulseaudio simply is not recognized by the (apparently 32 bit) skype binary - no sound is available. I guess the correct way would be to add an additional dependency of the type amd64? ( pulseaudio? ( || ( >=app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-soundlibs-${EMUL_X86_VER} >=media-sound/pulseaudio-5.0[abi_x86_32(-)] ) ) ) (optionally, this may be shifted either into the existing amd64? (...) brace or into the existing pulseaudio? (...) brace...)
skype-4.3.0.37 should have a hard dependency on pulseaudio because alsa support has been dropped. http://blogs.skype.com/2014/06/18/skype-4-3-for-linux/ "This version dropped support for direct Alsa support; please install PulseAudio [...]"
(In reply to NP-Hardass from comment #1) > skype-4.3.0.37 should have a hard dependency on pulseaudio because alsa > support has been dropped. No, this would have the consequence that skype could no longer be installed on systems without pulseaudio. It can still be used on such systems for functions not needing sound, e.g. for chat.
Fixed, thanks for reporting.