Wireplumber Takes Pipewire To The Next Level!

[@kj_sh604]

I remember around 2014-2017, Pipewire was really just a concept and it was just getting its start. It's really amazing to see it now, in the flesh, working as proper as it can be 😌. I haven't really used anything other than PulseAudio, jack2, or ALSA, but seeing how functional everything is now. I might just give Pipewire a go, tonight 😌

[@unfa00]

I was recommended to install Wireplumber replacing Pipewire-Media-Session and it fixed some issues for me. For example mono audio files played in the left channel only. I never touched the Wireumber configs, and it just does a better job out of the box. I think it should be the default for any Pipewire metapackages.

[@ravencole2740]

You did a video at the end of last year saying it wasn't ready yet because of some problematic anomalies. I'm curious to see a 'Round 2' evaluating Wireplumber and maybe a guided install/config if it meets your approval this time around.

[@unfa00]

@@ravencole2740 Pipewire has been really solid for me in the past half a year. One known issue is latency reporting - I believe software like Ardour can't do latency compensation with Pipewire yet because of that. I have been using it regardless and I forgot it's there, which is the best thing I could say.

[@oraz.]

I wish they would use a config file method more like the pipewire config. I use some old wine stuff so I will probably want to change alsa headroom. It's weird having seperate lua files and their documentation makes it seem they have to be in /usr is some places, you can specify diffent locations but their docs on config are split into many pages and it's kind of hard to understand.

[@ulterno1665]

I actually prefer the long names by default. It helped me know what kind of audio device it was before even thinking about trying. It was fun to know those when even the motherboard documentation doesn't include it.

[@jeffreygreen7860]

Pipewire is very nice in its feature set however some of its advertised features fall a bit short still. I'm thinking here about the JACK extension that subs for the actual JACK install. I've recently been trying to get the sound working on Rosegarden and coming up short. Not sure who's coming up short on the development side, are the rosegarden developers doing a few risky things with JACK (or the design of JACK is prone to mishaps), or is the JACK extension in pipewire still a bit incomplete? In any case it's a typical linux story, moving forward also usually means moving backwards. So I hesitate in going further into the pipewire world until things settle down.

[@oraz.]

I find the distinction between the session manager(s) and pipewire itself completely mysterious. I use wireplumber as it's recommended, but the separate config system from how pipewire does it is also pretty confusing and it's split among many pages of docs.

[@BekoPharm]

Using pipewire for quite some time and doing all mixing in software using null sinks and combined sinks. Tip here: setting device.icon_name will also get you a fancy icon in e.g. pavucontrol or whatever is used for audio settings :) The default icon is sometimes… lacking.

[@raphaelboily9117]

I love pipewire, it solved most of my audio problems when it got released, but I do not understand the advantages of the wireplumber session manager over systemd services/daemons. (Maybe I should simply move my shell scripts to wireplumber configs, but then it wouldnt dynamicly patch to to my usb sound card when plugged in..?)

[@artihlec]

If you wanna have working media-keys and volume control notification - pulseaudio can be installed. If you don't need the functionality using just alsa is enough.

[@prgnify]

I've been using wireplumber + pipewire for a loooong while. They are SO user friendly, not to mention they just work - with alsa, pulse, jack etc etc etc.... Amazing system. Also, in the last video you mentioned how your kernel was 5.18 or something? And I think I was already on 5.19 for a while, with no problems whatsoever... Is Arch slower in general than OpenSUSE tumbleweed? I honestly did not think so.

[@alexdub37]

Hi, last Arch kernel update is 5.19.2

[@prgnify]

@@alexdub37 Thank goodness. Order is preserved in my head. When I switched from an Arch based distro (Apricity, way back when) to Tumbleweed it was because I didn't want to 'bleed'. I'm running 5.19.1-1, have no idea if this is the latest available here on the green side.

[@mariusgggg]

Hmm... Any ideas on how to create LUA file to enforce specifc move of sink, aka ``` pactl move-sink-input ``` ? It would be really cool to ensure that specific app audio goes to specific sink. In my case it would be Spotify > EasyEffects. Maybe someone has examples with similar thing done?

[@virkony]

What's so crazy about ALSA? I thought that PulseAudio (and probably PipeWire) are nice mostly for things where you connect a lot of stuff, multi-user and for some sandboxes (I think Flatpak). I went through ESD/Artsd, then mostly were using ALSA. At some moment I never had to fiddle with dmix and it just works.

[@outfl1595]

Have been using ALSA for years aswell, but then some program dropped support so i conceded and went for pulse.

[@gireeshmarathi2796]

Everyone is having good time with wireplumber except me, when using Bluetooth device i am facing wierd issues like microphone not working with google meet, one core reaching 100% usage, i can no longer control audio with Bluetooth headphones etc.

[@xllvr]

I don’t really see the point of doing this in particular because I’m not bothered by it but it’s a good idea to have an implementation like this

[@jnx4803]

I have Turtlebeach Z60 headset with USB card, and Linux doesn't give a f..., it just keeps outputting audio via Mic channel, and so far I haven't found a way to fix it. On Windows, you just assign each channel with literally 2 clicks, and it always works.

[@fmetall07]

arch installs wireplumber as the default session for pipewire now, im using it on 2 machines and it's working fine

[@hermannpaschulke1583]

Fedora does the same

[@phylwx]

Second time around trying pipewire and this time I've had 0 issues so far, so im gonna tinker a bit. Gotta go fast and break stuff.

[@JoeyLindsay]

I can’t seem to get it to work

[@kxuydhj]

so, uhh... what's with the desktop wallpaper? can i have the source? for research purposes of course...

[@chrisdanger-godlike3048]

can i set perm id for usb headset? see with "pw-top". i want that my alsa headset output always have the same id, but if i reboot or unplug usb. i need a solution for short key with the command wpctl set-default ,because as like as not works ;/

[@nothingmemorable486]

This is great thank you....... However I cant seem to get wireplumber installed on my Ubuntu 23.10. I follow the quite simple instructions but it wont let me copy the files to the local/shared directory. I am not a linux pro and really dont plan on even desire to become a terminal wizard, I just want to install the software | need.... I am switching because I need to run multiple audio interfaces and I dont want to buy a mac and I'm sick of windows chewing up my resources amongst other things. What is helvum??? Is it a replacement for wireplumber or do we need both?? Some basic vids highlighting exactly what we need for audio would be so useful for new converts like myself....

[@manw3bttcks]

I wish someone would cover how to do remote network sound on pipewire and wireplumber. Suppose I have a remote linux pc that's plugged by USB into a DAC/amp and some speakers. Now suppose on another PC I have firefox playing a video, how can you stream that audio to the remote PC/dac to play on those speakers? I would love this because in my work room I have really nice speakers on the opposite wall, I can have a small pc there and plug that into a dac and into the speakers (self powered speakers). I want to direct my desk PC Firefox to play the audio to those speakers.

[@AshnSilvercorp]

when wireplummer took over pipewire media session from a depreciation in update, it fixed some major bugs for me. Now my only question... will Pipewire eventually fix mixing so surround actually gets properly mixed to channels in recorders? Cause as of right now, trying to use OBS records to stereo channels, and it forces 5.1 into 2 channels, destroying the mix quality.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

4:16 systemd manages its dependencies based on relationships like “wants” and “wantedby”, not based on arbitrary numbering.

[@zeebpc]

is pipewire much less "plug and play" than pulseaudio?

[@human__________]

yeahhhhh i'll just wait for a gui editor lol really annoying thing about my system is that linux always makes my usb mic the default output 🙄. It's for the most part a non issue though. In a DE i just switch between my headphones and tv as needed and in a WM I just use PAVU control and set outputs by application.

[@prgnify]

Also, it was funny the way you talked about LUA, cause, you know, in LUA the only data structure is a table. So I guess you are correct on the terminology? LOL

[@BrodieRobertson]

As I said, not a Lua programmer I know enough to configure tools like this

[@arimcbrown]

Is there a graphical UI in the works for this? Looks like everything could have been done in JSON as well? I've been looking for this for quite a while.

[@BrodieRobertson]

What I was doing was fairly basic, but it supports full LUA programming

[@arimcbrown]

Since the data structure already looks so familiar. Are there other app-interfaces that are able to generate LUA script for this purpose? I mean, don’t get me wrong. You did a great explainer. But it’s still quite cumbersome to setup. I have to switch usb devices on my laptop sometimes. (Depending on what dock I’m connected to) Well, it’s still a lot easier then what it was before. 🙂

[@manw3bttcks]

On Fedora there's qpwgraph, which is a similar tool to qjackctl but more specifically for pipewire instead of jack. You're able to see a graph diagram of all the sources and sinks and you drag connections between what you want.

[@eriklundstedt9469]

@@arimcbrown I'm working on one written in fennel, which is a lua-entangled dialect of lisp. But I'm planning on using fennel itself for the wireplumber config, as I prefer it over standard lua The main upside to using Lua or some other language instead of json is that you can have logic in the config file, like, you could have it behaving different depending on hostname for example

[@arimcbrown]

@@eriklundstedt9469 wow that’s amazing! However, json is basically just that right? A huge config file…. Structured object notation. Worked a couple of times with LUA before, easy to work with, but it does have some limitations. I honestly don’t really understand the whole trend of people moving to YAML based notations. One (invisible) indentation wrong and everything breaks. Or the various styles you can use. Yes, it’s readable, to create it’s easy, but when you add or update to it after a while, it’s a(/my) nightmare. 🤣 Sorry, I’m rambling. Where can I find more about your project?

[@hiru92]

I installed pipewire on Linux Mint Work fine... pactl show pulsaudio on pipewire.

[@insu_na]

Been using Pipewire for a while now, and recently it started running my audio devices at the wrong settings... Kinda annoying, but I know it'll get fixed eventually...

[@thanqol]

Handling multiple removable audio devices is (still) a very big problem with Pipewire. Defaults are not remembered, and replugging devices does not activate them. Pipewire is still a long way from being production ready.

[@exodous02]

Linux sucking at audio was the only reason I bought a mac mini, it only runs OBS, nothing else, and I use Linux for everything else. Linux was annoying because every----single-----time I rebooted/turned on my computer I would have to set up audio in OBS. It was just too much of a headache for me. Everything else worked great, video capture was great, recording was spot on, my capture cards work great, I edit video in blender, but the audio is garbage. I'd sell my mac mini if the audio got fixed in Linux. I play games in Linux so every now and then I'll try OBS.

[@Omnifarious0]

systemd does not use the number convention. That's antithetical to the philosophy. A the time it was created, automatic parallelization of startup was a huge deal. Spurious ordering was anathema. All ordering must be specified by dependencies. Fedora (my distribution of choice) dropped Pulseaudio for pipewire, and I'm very pleased. The less Lennart Pottering software on my computer, the better.

[@4Nanook]

I had pulseaudio running PERFECT, even with an eight core kernel compile, no stuttering. Now Ubuntu 23.04 introduced pipewire and audio stutters BADLY with nothing else running except wine / Winamp as audio source. And this on an 8core i7-9900k clocked at 4.9ghz with 32GB of RAM and a WD 2TB SSD nvme, ought to be more than sufficient resources for the task and with pulse it was. I thought nobody could possibly write more fucked up code than Poettering but the authors of pipewire have no dispelled me of that belief. Of course if there were some documentation showing how to increase buffer sizes to stop the underruns that might be helpful but there is a total dirth of documentation.

[@nyxalexandra-io]

true

[@HowToLinux]

I saw your patreon tier list, it is jsut about tee :DDD i love black tee like the polish saga. Do you have any recommendations for me?

[@HosnyAbdElRahmanHosny]

Thank you for great content, will try to grasp it more later new linux user, I have first known pipewire from and since installing. It is a game changer solved all my audio problems. But can you do a noise cancelation video tutorial on it how to configure it correctly for all of us how do a lot of online meetings.

[@kajoma1782]

pipewire : wireplumber.

[@Axacqk]

Just switched to wireplumber and can't play youtube videos. No time to debug. It's 2023 and I expect sound to Just Work. Switching back to pipewire-media-session, because it works.

[@elmariachi5133]

I have had nothing but trouble trying to pass through AC3 from movies to SPDIF using Pipewire for many months.. sometimes it worked, sometimes it would stutter, sometimes it had extreme lag, sometimes there was a painful noise trying to kill my speakers, sometimes it was completely mute and so on. Just purely chaotic randomness, utterly unreliable. Tried hundreds of configuration changes in the configs and in the players .. it was an immature or half assed at best experience. The whole system being hyper complex (and thus: complicated) it still could not cater for basic needs. Now I finally ditched the idea of watching movies from my Linux notebook and am using an Android set top box instead.. which is a very unsatisfying defeat. Linux still is not ready for multimedia - which about 30 years too late! :(

[@feschber]

what do you mean by pass through? I'm watching movies with AC3 codecs no problem via my SPDIF output.

[@ardishco]

Hey Brodie, I noticed that you haven't updated your dotfiles in 2 years. Could you please update it? I really like your polybar config!

[@etopowertwon]

Honey, wake up, new sound system dropped, which will fix all the issues of the old one. AGAIN I heard it before. Several times. I miss (not) the time packages like "alsa-oss" that work 99% of time, except 1% is the app you personally use.

[@BrodieRobertson]

You're a bit late to having an issue with Pipewire, it's already heavily being adopted as the default

[@heroclix0rz]

Gonna be honest, pipewire and wireplumber being two separate programs with their own config directories and formats only makes sense to developers. And it still doesn't make sense to me where qpwGraph fits in the stack, how it does what it does, or who is to to blame when I get unexpected behavior. To a normal user, this is all a confusing mess. I know pipewire is still new, and I know it is great at what it does, but we need a front end that masks all this complexity away and makes configuration straight forward.

[@djvar94]

Couldn't agree more. The average user doesn't want nor does it care about going in to change and create configuration files and putting puzzle pieces back together to make it work. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that that wouldn't be helpful to learn. That's why Linux as an OS is so great letting the user the freedom to tinker and tweak every single aspect of the operating system to the point where they can actually break it beyond repair etc. But don't just give the users 1 way of doing things. Let them have a GUI as well should they prefer to use that instead of manually going around and writing config files and reading up huge documentations.

[@alphaomega154]

the problem is with linux community, they are so far gone into the whole linux tinkering thing that NOBODY actually makes anything to be as user friendly as it should for the common people wanting to switch to linux. for example is this wireplumber thing, i want to install it to replace my pipewire media session, and there is NO SIMPLE WAY TO DO IT. one tells me i have to COMPILE the damn thing, the other describing a super long and confusing steps involving "wiring" and configuring things in codes etc. insane. common people like me only cares about, how the fuck do i install it like any simple app? and can they simply just work out of the box once installed? in windows, if i want to EQ my system-wide audio i only need to use the built in EQ in windows. in linux, i have to get calfjackhost (which i still dont know how to install it) and then some other app, and then wiring it by configuring some files that shown in LINE CODES, and so on and son. insane. this is what keeps people FROM ever moving to linux.

[@intelligenceservices]

still don't even know what pipewire does, except add another program name for me to remember.

[@aeebeecee3737]

pipewire is sound service program, you install it to get working audio input and output for other program

[@intelligenceservices]

@@aeebeecee3737 at the time it started to enter the mainstream in the distribution i was using, i had a lot of issues with various things, but since it's integrated from the installer stage now, i don't notice it, and it's nice to not have to mess around with pulse etc.

[@felipec]

Pipewire all the way. I can't wait for the moment I run zero Pottering software.

[@baguettedad]

I know it's off-topic, but has neofetch died??

[@simpilotadamt1012]

*imagine not using pfetch*

[@baguettedad]

@@simpilotadamt1012 i do use pfetch, but i'm building a new operating system and you've gotta know that the most important part is the *fetch, so we already have a tiny logo for pfetch and started working for uwufetch, but as soon as we finished neofetch we noticed the project was kind of abandoned, which kept us worried

[@altermetax]

@@simpilotadamt1012 pfetch doesn't show as much stuff as neofetch does

[@codychan4992]

Try fastfetch, "Like neofetch, but much faster because written in c.", I've been using it for quite a while, it is much faster than neofetch.

[@BrodieRobertson]

I've used pfetch for so long I couldn't tell you

[@anon_y_mousse]

Not that anyone will take this comment well, not that anyone will read this comment, not that I care, but programming languages shouldn't be used for configuration files. I've tried doing this in the past with my own programs, and I kind of hated configuring things that way, and I'm sure end users hate it more. Most people don't understand programming, even my fellow programmers often fail at this, so asking an end user to understand the configuration, which is already somewhat arcane, is asking too much. Further, Lua sucks.

[@BrodieRobertson]

I read this comment

[@djvar94]

This is utter rubbish. Wireplumber completely and utterly sucks! Doing this has completely broken my audio on my system, the only way to restore it the way it was (working) was to delete the configuration files

[@Error_4x5]

Why do you need to clean them up when you obviously know what hardware the long names represent? You tampering with files for know reason other than making a video.

[@BrodieRobertson]

Why do you need to clean your desk when you where everything is? Because I want things to be a bit less cluttered

[@killistan]

I just use alsa and don't think about it; it just works. I'll probably give pipewire another shot, in a few months; I do have some hope for it... But it's got to be good. I want it, or something like it, to work as well as just alsa; on a potato. ...I suspect, we would need to replace alsa itself, to get what I really want. That's probably not going to happen, and I wouldn't want to lose backward compatibility for it.