Arch Linux

johnahnase

Member

Registered: 2023-07-09

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Low volume using Pipewire

I have just installed arch for the first time, and I find the max achievable audio volume to be unreasonably low. I chose pipewire while installing using the arch-install command, and at the moment I have some alsa and wireplumber packages installed. Many packages appear related to audio, and I have no idea which ones might be important.

I just started going through https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire and I appear not to have the pipewire-pulse.service user unit available, or I don't know what it is or therfore how to start it. It should be a systemd service, right? That doesn't exist, and I've reinstalled the package called pipewire-pulse to no avail.

Volume controls work for instances of mpv, but there's no way I've found to control volume globally, if that info helps. The volume is just silly low, playing many videos and audio tracks, though some are alright.

Am I missing some package? What's the deal with the pipewire-pulse user unit thing? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Last edited by johnahnase (2023-07-31 09:19:56)

Miuzore

Member

Registered: 2022-10-14

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Low volume using Pipewire

$ systemctl start --user pipewire-pulse

Are you using this or a similar command to start the pipewire-pulse service? Since pipewire services run on user level, you have to use the --user flag, else they won't get found.

As for low volume, go to alsamixer and check if the sound levels are set correctly. Check multiple sound cards as well with F6, there could be a possibility that one of the bars responsible for actual audio levels is set really low.

johnahnase

Member

Registered: 2023-07-09

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Low volume using Pipewire

Thank you, I was missing alsa-utils. alsamixer now allows me to raise the volume like a beast.

wondertx

Member

Registered: 2018-08-10

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] Low volume using Pipewire

Also, I didn't have `pipewire.service` after install pipewire. Anyone knows why?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 22,132

Re: [SOLVED] Low volume using Pipewire

Don't necrobump solved topics that have no relation to your question.

Pipewire is an user service not a system service, you query the user daemon by running systemctl --user as your normal user: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/User