[SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

kokoko3k · 2021-03-21 06:43:54

I've put on hold my kde archlinux installation and not upgraded it since a month or two.
I plan to upgrade soon and i'm concerned about pipewire interaction with the system, because i use it for audio/video conferencing and audio production via jackd.

I know pulse can in turn use pipewire, but Is using pipewire as *the* primary audio server mandatory now?
Are there apps that requires it to be running as the audio server (i know about pulseeffect)?

Thanks!

Last edited by kokoko3k (2021-03-21 11:41:11)

d_fajardo · 2021-03-21 08:27:13

I was just about to ask a similar question in the forum. There has been a lot of noise about pipewire lately.
I have jack2 as my principal audio server because it's easier to combine sound files from different sources and experiment with latency, bitrate, etc.. I use a pulse bridge for the apps that need pulse and I use mpd with jack as server as my main music playback.
To further on kokoko3k's question, is pipewire geared to replace pulseaudio in the future? If that is the case, how about the future of jack and pipewire?

V1del · 2021-03-21 10:04:06

It's only mandatory for pulseeffects currently which was an announced and known decision by the developer and can be worked around by using the pulseeffects-legacy variant. It's also something that "needs" to be done in this context for pulseeffects does a pretty invasive adjustment in the audio processing pipeline that couldn't be replicated via the pulse compat layer. Normal clients should ideally not care whether they run on pulse via pipewire and I doubt we'll see many clients mandatorily moving to pipewire in the near future.

There's nothing else that currently mandates pipewire's audio components. It's probably the general future yes, but I'd assume it to be a while till those become mandatory. But yes the general idea would be that pipewire replaces both jack and pulse and provides the combined needs for both of the clients of the respective API. But the questions of how that would generally happen and how pipewire makes this possible is probably best answered by reading the FAQ: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire … /wikis/FAQ

Last edited by V1del (2021-03-21 12:03:19)

kokoko3k · 2021-03-21 11:40:49

Thanks, V1del.
Very useful answer (as always!).

Morn · 2021-03-21 12:34:38

For me, it was a very easy and tempting switch to PW because PulseAudio had some problems in certain apps: Some audio crackling and bad performance in a Java-based emulator; occasional clipping when playing YouTube videos in Chrome. And getting JACK to work without massive XRUNs and crackling became more and more difficult in the past two or three years for me, no idea why. It used to work far better in the past.

So if your PA/JACK/JACK2 setup works flawlessly, then sure continue to use it. But in my experience, PulseAudio has always had some subtle or not so subtle bugs. And PipeWire massively improves on that situation.

Not everything is perfect with PW, e.g. if you run qtractor and then play audio in qmmp, qtractor will show an error message about the buffer size being changed and then crash. But apart from that glitch it seems to work far better than the PA/JACK combo has, at least in recent years.

kokoko3k · 2021-03-21 13:43:39

Good to know, thanks.
As for jack vs pulse, i just suspend the latter and start the former :-)

Morn · 2021-03-21 14:07:30

kokoko3k wrote:

Good to know, thanks.
As for jack vs pulse, i just suspend the latter and start the former :-)

It's very nice not having to do that any more with PW. Finally you can switch between YouTube and your DAW seamlessly. And now you can use e.g. qjackctl to route from anything to anything. Want to process audio from Python or your web browser via some Calf plugin? No problem at all.

Last summer I made a big ranty forum post on here how audio production on Linux had become terrible and unusable and that I had uninstalled all my DAWs, synths, etc. and moved to GarageBand on my Mac. Needless to say, the DAWs and synths are all back now, plus some more, so I am very happy with how the situation has improved.

Supposedly the impetus for PipeWire came from the automotive industry. Modern cars have all kinds of needs for shuttling audio and video around. So thanks for that car makers! Five stars out of five from me.

kokoko3k · 2021-03-21 20:25:36

Morn, to be fair, you can use pulseaudio atop of jack since some years with jack-dbus, and pulseaudio-module-jack or https://github.com/brummer10/pajackconnect

Last edited by kokoko3k (2021-03-21 20:25:49)

Morn · 2021-03-22 10:54:48

kokoko3k wrote:

Morn, to be fair, you can use pulseaudio atop of jack since some years with jack-dbus, and pulseaudio-module-jack or https://github.com/brummer10/pajackconnect

Yes, a few years ago I got this kind of setup working where PulseAudio apps like a web browser and a JACK app can run at the same time. But then a few months and PulseAudio software updates later it did not work properly anymore the next time I tried. So it was never a reliable system for me, unlike PW even though it is still very much in Beta.

For me, PulseAudio has always been a 90% solution that almost works correctly most of the time. Then you spend a week trying to fix its issues and it still almost works. It's like Tantalus-/Sisyphus-style torture because you can never get it to work 100% no matter how much you try. So I am very happy to see it go!

d_fajardo · 2021-03-22 14:23:41

So if your PA/JACK/JACK2 setup works flawlessly, then sure continue to use it.

My system currently works flawlessly so I think I'm going to sit this out until I have a pressing need to change but thanks for all the info.

Arch Linux

#1 2021-03-21 06:43:54

[SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#2 2021-03-21 08:27:13

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#3 2021-03-21 10:04:06

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#4 2021-03-21 11:40:49

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#5 2021-03-21 12:34:38

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#6 2021-03-21 13:43:39

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#7 2021-03-21 14:07:30

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#8 2021-03-21 20:25:36

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#9 2021-03-22 10:54:48

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

#10 2021-03-22 14:23:41

Re: [SOLVED] Questions about pipewire.

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