Is this possible? Always output something (silence) - playbin3

Application Development
1

I am using playbin3, specifically for streaming audio only.
I want to be able to use this audio as a source for other “audio sinks” within the system. These sinks may not be gstreamer pipelines - so I use the jackaudiosink as part of the playbin3’s audio-sink.
This is all fine and dandy when the playbin3 has a valid uri outputting audio.
The problem is that when the playbin3 has no audio to output (for any reason, whether that is an invalid uri, etc), there will be no audio, and therefor no JACK output ports.
So, anything connecting to those JACK ports will not work properly. Even if the playbin3 starts putting out audio, the downstream JACK inputs won’t “reconnect”.
What I am trying to achieve is a playbin3 based pipeline such that there is always audio being output, e.g. silence.

I have been trying some things, but can’t seem to find any way to achieve this, and am wondering if anyone has any insights or input they could offer.

2

OK, so this is how I achieved this, though I think it is very inefficient and I would love to know if there is a better way.
My idea was to use audiomixer and audiotestsrc to provide a constant source of silence. The playbin3 also feeds the audiomixer. The problem is that since playbin3 is a pipeline, starting/stopping it will start/stop the silence.
I had to create two pipelines, the first of which is the playbin3, and the second is everything else (audiomixer, audiotestsrc, etc). The first uses a interaudiosink and the second uses interaudiosrc.
The final output always exists, and is silent if the playbin3 has nothing going on.
I don’t like having to create two pipelines with the interaudio plugins… if anyone has a better idea, please let me know!