Arch Linux

barney

Member

Registered: 2020-12-14

Posts: 130

Problems with center speaker in pipewire

I have switched from pulseaudio to pipewire, and I have problems with front center speaker. I have three audio cards, they are all recognized. I have used pavucontrol to setup default playback device to analog 5.1 surround of the card to which speakers are connected. I have used

 speaker-test -c 6 

to test the speakers. They all work.
When I play 6 channel audio files there is no problem, all speakers are working. The problem are two channel files. Pipewire is doing 4.1 upmix, all speakers are working except front center.
I have tried to use

sink-upmix-5.1-filter.conf in the ~/.config/pipewire/filter-chain.conf.d/

but the result is the same.
Output of pactl info:

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 164
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: barney
Host Name: dnevna
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.4.1)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_06_00.0.analog-surround-51
Default Source: alsa_output.pci-0000_06_00.0.analog-surround-51.monitor
Cookie: 5fa1:7a08

Output of wpctl status:

ipeWire 'pipewire-0' [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, cookie:1604418056]
 └─ Clients:
        32. WirePlumber                         [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, pid:2053]
        33. pipewire                            [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, pid:2054]
        34. Firefox                             [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, pid:1497]
        47. WirePlumber [export]                [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, pid:2053]
        81. Firefox                             [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, pid:1497]
        83. helvum                              [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, pid:8990]
        91. wpctl                               [1.4.1, barney@dnevna, pid:10930]

Audio
 ├─ Devices:
 │      48. Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] [alsa]
 │      49. CMI8738/CMI8768 PCI Audio (CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device) [alsa]
 │      50. Built-in Audio                      [alsa]
 │
 ├─ Sinks:
 │      35. Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958) [vol: 0.40]
 │  *   60. CMI8738/CMI8768 PCI Audio (CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device) Analog Surround 5.1 [vol: 0.97]
 │
 ├─ Sources:
 │      46. Built-in Audio Analog Stereo        [vol: 1.00]
 │
 ├─ Filters:
 │
 └─ Streams:
        76. Firefox
             77. output_RL       > C-Media PCI 2nd DAC:playback_RL	[active]
             78. output_LFE      > C-Media PCI 2nd DAC:playback_LFE	[active]
             82. output_FC       > C-Media PCI 2nd DAC:playback_FC	[active]
             85. output_FL       > C-Media PCI 2nd DAC:playback_FL	[active]
             86. output_RR       > C-Media PCI 2nd DAC:playback_RR	[active]
             89. output_FR       > C-Media PCI 2nd DAC:playback_FR	[active]

Video
 ├─ Devices:
 │
 ├─ Sinks:
 │
 ├─ Sources:
 │
 ├─ Filters:
 │
 └─ Streams:

Settings
 └─ Default Configured Devices:
         0. Audio/Sink    alsa_output.pci-0000_06_00.0.analog-surround-51

just4arch

Member

Registered: 2023-01-07

Posts: 125

Re: Problems with center speaker in pipewire

As far as I can tell, it depends on how/what plays, eg.
mpv: works
deadbeef with pipewire plugin: stereo only
Chromium: works with parameter

You can try to force some output to the center (channelmix.stereo-widen):

$ cat ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/40-upmix.conf 
stream.properties = {
    channelmix.upmix = true
    channelmix.upmix-method = psd
    channelmix.normalize = true
    channelmix.fc-cutoff  = 12000.0
    channelmix.stereo-widen = 0.6
}

Where you can adjust the value between 0 and 1.