Pipewire Finally Seems to Be Ready for the Masses

[@TheLinuxCast]

I'm aware that the audio on this video and the last is not the best. I thought the last one was a one off, but obviously something is going on. I'll figure it out. But I do apologize. Send all complaints by following me on Mastodon: fosstodon.org/@thelinuxcast

[@thingsiplay]

I am on Manjaro and don't know if I use Pipewire or not. Most people probably don't know. I feel like only KZbinrs have problems with Pipewire and OBS. Normal people don't. :D

[@TheLinuxCast]

Are you implying that I'm not normal? How dare you? 😂

[@thingsiplay]

@@TheLinuxCast You are a Nerd! Btw I checked it with `pactl info` and turns out my system uses pulseaudio. But whatever, it works 100% fine for me. And I don't care if it is Pipewire or Puleaudio in my case.

[@PurpleSpiritFoxFire]

True only those notice who want to something different or complex compared to others I actually think it's better than what windows has to offer🧐

[@dermond]

first time I installed Ubuntu 18.04 I had problems with pulseaudio so i'm not normal anymore :/

[@thingsiplay]

@@dermond 18.04 is 4 years old now (and the last Ubuntu i had installed too). My first was 8.4. Long time ago and there was a lot of audio problems. I used Ubuntu 18.04 until I switched to Manjaro in 2020 and don't remember having any pulseaudio related issues either. Not saying others could not have, just sharing my experience.

[@jimle22]

For me, your audio especially the music sounds just fine. Appreciate you knowledge and info on the subject of sound in Linux.

[@yamaddie]

started using linux full time in october and pipewire have worked like an absolute dream for me and I work with audio as my job and what I have a graduate in.

[@Rbourk252]

I feel your pain! Audio has always been a tricky experience between distributions. I went to and then from, and then back to Arch for instance on the same unchanged device and when I when installed it the second time, it failed to recognise audio through HDMI. I had no problem before! On rare occasions in the past I managed to fix the problem, but on that occasion, it was stubborn. Basically, updates had broken audio. This is not just Arch but other distributions too. The vast majority of users are eternal Linux nubes in the face of stuff like this but whilst I’m happy to do some internet searching for a fix, and Im pleased when I occasionally fix it, I do have a life! Something like audio should not demand technical expertise whether it’s pulse or pipewire. It’s just sound from a couple of speakers, not Elons sodding rocket! I went back to Mint and it all just worked on all of my devices. It has never let me down. Great! But why?

[@notimportant7682]

Pipewire for audio production in a musical sense works well. A lot of the software is still catching up though, because of the way jackd worked a lot of audio programs left out being able to choose sample rates and buffer rates from within the program. Even ardour only lets you choose a buffer rate but if you want to choose another sample rate you have to start it from the command line with some environment variables set. And there's a lot of programs that don't make default connections in pipewire and have to be manually routed in qpwgraph. Even so, not having to deal with jackd is heavenly

[@TheRealFrankWizza]

So how does this work, If I use something like guitarix which uses jack? Does it just work or do I need some kind of alsa plugin?

[@notimportant7682]

@@TheRealFrankWizzapipewire-jack is the only required package for running jack applications on pipewire, guitarix works, I wouldn't say it 'just works' because it didn't make default connections but it does actually have the ability to set the jack connections as well as the buffer size from within the program so there's no missing functionality there.

[@TheRealFrankWizza]

@@notimportant7682 Cool, thanks!

[@DrathVader]

I learned that I use pipewire by reading F34's release notes. It's been a really smooth transition for me. Though tbf, my setup is just a USB mic and USB DAC.

[@heroe1486]

I had problems with pulse audio on Arch, everytime I plugged/unplugged my headphones I had to go to pavu control to select the right device and activate it. . It fixed itself one time by updating but then few months after the problem happened again. Switching to pipewire recently fixed the problem.

[@korchevatel]

Funny thing, Pipewire is the only audio subsystem that caused me NO problems since I started using it (I started when it was ver. 0.3.9 or something). I have a USB audio interface (2 ins 2 outs) on my main rig and just your basic RTLsomething integrated audio in the laptop, and PW works with both like a charm. The only downside I can name is there is no graphical tool to configure it and you have to manually copy and edit config files. But compared to the BS that is JACK+Pulseaudio's configuration, I totally can live with that. Even funnier is that I use a Wayland session in KDE for like, I don't know, half a year now, and it's been a smooth ride so far. Granted, I have an RX6700 XT (and my laptop has an AMD processor with no discrete GPU, because I didn't want to suffer with Nvidia), so Wayland HAS to work correctly.

[@Ph42oN]

Pulseaudio has been so bad for me that i uninstalled it and just used alsa. It was crashing too much causing audio to stop working until i restart it. I hope pipewire can give extra stuff pulseaudio does without breaking all time.

[@Scott00]

I feel the same way about Wayland too, in my hardware and use cases I have absolutely 0 issues. As far as audio issues, Ive only had 1 single issue with Linux audio in the past 10 years, and that was with an emulator... Currently using Pipewire and Wayland on my Fedora install, absolutely no issues.

[@BoopyTheFox]

PipeWire for everything JACK for musicmaking (routing, low-latency) IT JUST WORKS

[@domportera]

pipewire uses JACK in the backend, no? I'm running pipewire and still use Carla to route my audio. i havent tested VST-intense music-making or multitrack recording on linux yet though

[@BoopyTheFox]

@@domportera To be honest, I didn't know that! Shame on me, gonna research it when I get home 😅

[@adjbutler]

Pipewire works pretty good on NixOS

[@scottb4029]

being an old theater tech, if your problem was analog I would say it sounds like a grounding problem(i . e. something is acting like an antenna or inductor) check your xlr cable to your mic. I bet it is in the mic cable or xlr connector. Something is loose. Just my 2 cents.

[@milutinke]

I've been using pipewire for a year, I have encountered the same bug where the output device was my microphone, but in this case I have audio passthrough and jack. Although I have encountered this bug only few times, no idea why it happened, I just open pavuctl and change it. All in all, it's really for the masses.

[@lkzMini]

When u said "unstable", what do u mean exactly? In my case, i have problems with clipping audio (distorts) while a "loud" sounds occurs. Even if the volume is low, it clips. Tried easyeffects to tune up the general sound (microphone and headsets) and it works fine (kinda). In the past, i had a script to open easyeffects at the start, but hidden. Now i have not idea how i did it. lol On the other hand... Ye, i noticed progress. Pulseaudio used to break pretty often for me (running on manjaro at that time). Now in Fedora, 0 problems (except for some Quality of life things).

[@TheLinuxCast]

When I say unstable, I just mean that it used to just stop working for various applications in the past.

[@tohur]

Pipewire for me has been great with the default Pipewire Media Session... wireplumber on the other hand can go burn in the pits of hell.. first thing I do on any fedora install is uninstall wireplumber and swap to the default Pipewire media session.. also on my arch install (main gaming rig) I use the default session and not the evil af wireplumber

[@ToroNero]

Same here. I thought the problem was pipewire but it was wireplumber all along.

[@tohur]

@@ToroNero Wireplumber is where 90% of the issues with Pipewire were for me. swapped to Pipewire media seesion and all the major issues for me with pipewire went away

[@lildarker4044]

pulse works for me, i can integrate in my apps using pacmd and pactl; instantiating loopbacks and virtual devices. pulseaudio volume control works with all audio i throw at it i just cant find a way to replace pa with pw, looking the now for a walktrhrough.

[@zaaac]

How's the audio latency problem with some video editors running on pipewire systems? I was using pipewire and it worked flawlessly, but once i needed to edit a video on Davinci Resolve and the audio was sooo out of sync with the video. Switching back to pulseaudio solved the issue, but i wish i could use pipewire...

[@TheLinuxCast]

I haven't noticed an issue with kdenlive, but then I don't do anything special with it.

[@MrCradleman]

Finally Matt!

[@pauldufresne3650]

On some computers, I had to used hdajackretask from alsa-tools-gui to force a change between output and input mode. Apparently, someone made hda-analyser in Python to help do such things. Would be worry to try this stuff on a high-value computer.

[@bobbyfried7478]

i run LMDE 5 and pipewire is default.i have no issues with it input/output..my mics and speakers work great. even the bluetooth speakers work great.

[@ketjr81]

Pipewire has been great, defaults to float32le and 48000Hz for me. Which is plenty for my desktop bose speakers. I used to create a config file and change things, but realized for my regular speakers the default settings just work.

[@leandrocerencio]

I am using Pipewire since Fedora 33. With Pipewire, Linux is better than Mac and Windows for audio production, in my opinion. The problem is hardware drivers and proprietary software. Funny part, Wireplumber is most sophisticated piece of software for audio. You can create Lua scripts for controling audio interfaces, sources and sinks. The sky is the limit.

[@ArniesTech]

If it SEEMS to be ready, it's not ready. If it works 100% it's still not ready. Only if it is 120% idiot, bullet, bomb and tornado proof, you can HOPE to throw it at the public user base. Not following this principle is amongst the most devastating mistakes made in and by the GNU/Linux world. 🙏

[@Winnetou17]

Yeah, if it didn't survived 2 nuclear bombs, 5 hurricanes and maybe one hour of use by Linus from LTT, then it's not ready.

[@RESPEKTOS]

pulseaudio sucks for volume levels, even at 100% on arch based distros its extremely soft. When I use ubuntu, sound is perfect and at 100% its extremely loud.... no way of fixing it because all the info is outdated, broken, missing parts.... and if you try uninstalling pulseaudio stuff it removes heaps of other junk and then it causes issues when updating in the future

[@bstar777777]

Why is it that every Linux KZbinr has audio latency problems?

[@framepointer]

Audio on Linux is an absolute mess. You need a low-latency kernel for real-time audio, for example for DAWs.

[@bstar777777]

@@framepointer I didn't realize that. I've struggled mightily with multitrack recording and just gave up. I use Logic on a Mac now (for recording and work) and it's pretty much flawless.

[@jejomac4370]

If you are using pipewire for this video is not working well

[@oalfodr]

Microphones can be speakers as well as speakers can be microphones.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I'm sure maybe that can possibly be true. But the microphones that I have are just microphones.