pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

pezz · 2026-05-16 08:54:13

Just posting in case anyone else runs into it, but if you use a localhost pulse server for audio output between different users, pipewire 1.6.5 seems to really break it for some reason and I haven't worked out why.

Downgrading to 1.6.4 and blocking the updates made things good again.

 -> libpipewire: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-alsa: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-audio: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-jack: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-pulse: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-session-manager: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)

If anyone knows how to make 1.6.5 happy, would like to know.

Cheers.

Last edited by pezz (2026-05-22 23:16:34)

pezz · 2026-05-16 09:03:44

Done some more investigating, this seems to be affecting mpv exclusively.

VLC and a bunch of other audio / video apps are fine.

WorMzy · 2026-05-16 12:20:23

Please don't post PSA-style topics. If you want some help diagnosing the issue, please modify your topic title accordingly.

Mod note: moving to Multimedia and Games

Last edited by WorMzy (2026-05-16 12:21:02)

seth · 2026-05-16 14:46:22

mpv -ao pulse thunderstruck.mp3
mpv -ao pipewire thunderstruck.mp3
mpv -ao alsa thunderstruck.mp3

Does this affect all of those?

pezz · 2026-05-17 08:27:29

Apologies for the hyperbole, sorry mods.

It's ao=pulse with a network output defined (e.g. 127.0.0.1 server for multiuser).

Everything else is fine.

janp · 2026-05-18 11:18:21

I have this problem too. I play xonotic under X under an user different from the display owner and I got a totally garbled audio. I managed to obtain an acceptable output by tweaking the pipewire config files, in particular I added 44100 rate inside the pipewire.conf file.

default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 ]

But the overall result is still not optimal as the sound is a bit cracking.

pezz wrote:

Just posting in case anyone else runs into it, but if you use a localhost pulse server for audio output between different users, pipewire 1.6.5 seems to really break it for some reason and I haven't worked out why.
Downgrading to 1.6.4 and blocking the updates made things good again.
 -> libpipewire: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-alsa: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-audio: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-jack: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-pulse: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
 -> pipewire-session-manager: ignoring package upgrade (1:1.6.4-1 => 1:1.6.5-1)
If anyone knows how to make 1.6.5 happy, would like to know.
Cheers.

seth · 2026-05-18 14:53:58

Does changing the default sample rate to 44100 achieve anything?
Sanity check, you're using pipewire-pulse are are not running pipewire and PA concurrently?
Do you have https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/rtkit/ (working)?

pezz · 2026-05-22 23:16:03

Modified the topic, not sure whether to mark as solved, but it works for me.

Trying a bunch of config options and pulse-latency-hacks=no in my mpv.conf has done the trick:

ao=pulse
pulse-host=127.0.0.1
pulse-latency-hacks=no

Last edited by pezz (2026-05-22 23:18:39)

seth · 2026-05-23 06:17:52

https://man.archlinux.org/man/mpv.1#pulse~4 actually points that out.
Let's see whether janp can confirm this.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mpv#Fi … from_pause might need an update.

Arch Linux

#1 2026-05-16 08:54:13

pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#2 2026-05-16 09:03:44

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#3 2026-05-16 12:20:23

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#4 2026-05-16 14:46:22

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#5 2026-05-17 08:27:29

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#6 2026-05-18 11:18:21

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#7 2026-05-18 14:53:58

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#8 2026-05-22 23:16:03

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

#9 2026-05-23 06:17:52

Re: pipewire 1.6.5 + pulse + mpv issue

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