Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

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Capoeira
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Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Capoeira »

https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/09/ ... date-2020/

not sure how this will work. will Pipewire provide the driver for ours soundcards?
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Gps »

I am lost too, even though I found out openSUSE tumbleweed does install pipewire.

There is no gui though, and I am very worried about messing things up.

From want I read about it, it sound great though, it should become much easier to use jack.

The programs will think they still talk to jack or alsa as far as I understand it.
So alsa provides the drivers.
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Capoeira »

Gps wrote: Wed Oct 14, 2020 1:07 pm I am lost too, even though I found out openSUSE tumbleweed does install pipewire.

There is no gui though, and I am very worried about messing things up.

From want I read about it, it sound great though, it should become much easier to use jack.

The programs will think they still talk to jack or alsa as far as I understand it.
So alsa provides the drivers.
It was beeing installed as depedency for new KWIN (KDE) version here on Arch.
I just don't understand how it realy works, not sure if it is a pure soundserver (using alsa drivers), or if it provides drivers itself

EDIT: ok, it will use the alsa basics: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire ... /wikis/FAQ

EDIT2: I think the main advantage for us will be that we can use it for pro-audio and it should work perfect for all software, wether it uses pulse, alsa, jack or pipewire itself.
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Michael Willis »

I think pipewire would be fantastic even if it did no more than replace both pulse audio and JACK. I do have to admit that I dismissed it as vaporware and haven't really followed it's development at all.
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Gps »

That link is very helpful, I am a bit less lost now.

To use it though , it seems I need to set up a profile in Pipewire.
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Capoeira »

I see a couple of advantages for my use-case:

1) bitperfect output: with Jack you are forced to one fixed samplerate

2) I run a couple of plugins (convolvers/loudness-compensation) in my playback chain which require a larger buffer. With PiWi I wont have to switch back and fourth sound-server buffers anymore

2b) because of playback chain mentioned in 2) I have to manualy delay video for movies and youtube and stuff. PiWi will do this for me

3) alsa-jack plugin sucks (loopback solution even more). with PiWi alsa only software will behave like a normal client. also I don't use Pulseaudio; with PiWi I will finaly be able to use aplications that work better with PA then Alsa (Spotify,Skype,....)

4) Sometimes I just don't want to switch on my whole soundsystem to just watching a simple youtube video, and instead throw the sound to my TV speakers. I have a jack profile for this, but sucks to have to switch it on; and when I have it autostarting it suck to switch profiles when I want to use my main system. With PiWi I will be able to route my audio on the fly
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Gps »

Your point 4 is exactly why I gave up on jack.

( besides it was not stable, but that was many years ago, I do not know how stable it is now.) :)
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by uns4ph3 »

Capoeira wrote: Wed Oct 14, 2020 3:27 pm found a user who got it running: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/com ... k_sort_of/
That was me.

Pipewire is usable as a JACK replacement if you download the drop in packages (these need to be built from source) but otherwise it is a PITA to get going. I have not tested it much since then because i don't want to set it up on my production machine and i don't have a spare machine to set it up with - hoping here in a hot minute i can buy a cheap laptop to set up as a development and test machine.

My general observations there on Reddit stand:
- it is beta software. Do not install on a production machine
- it isn't the most stable or useable software yet. The periods/buffer setting changes depending on the app and then the whole system defaults to the lowest buffer setting, which resulted in xruns from chromium running at 256 periods and zero ability to use a gui to change this. It would require falktx to redesign their patchbay programs so individual apps can have their periods/buffer set once it's a little more stable.
- it has enormous potential to basically end all use cases with JACK, and make a rally nice platform for streaming video and audio - allowing you to pre-process audio before it goes into the streaming service of your choice is the nicest use case I've seen for my life so far. Not sure about pipewire replacing netJACK tho.
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Capoeira »

uns4ph3 wrote: Wed Oct 14, 2020 9:46 pm
Capoeira wrote: Wed Oct 14, 2020 3:27 pm found a user who got it running: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/com ... k_sort_of/
That was me.

Pipewire is usable as a JACK replacement if you download the drop in packages (these need to be built from source) but otherwise it is a PITA to get going. I have not tested it much since then because i don't want to set it up on my production machine and i don't have a spare machine to set it up with - hoping here in a hot minute i can buy a cheap laptop to set up as a development and test machine.

My general observations there on Reddit stand:
- it is beta software. Do not install on a production machine
- it isn't the most stable or useable software yet. The periods/buffer setting changes depending on the app and then the whole system defaults to the lowest buffer setting, which resulted in xruns from chromium running at 256 periods and zero ability to use a gui to change this. It would require falktx to redesign their patchbay programs so individual apps can have their periods/buffer set once it's a little more stable.
- it has enormous potential to basically end all use cases with JACK, and make a rally nice platform for streaming video and audio - allowing you to pre-process audio before it goes into the streaming service of your choice is the nicest use case I've seen for my life so far. Not sure about pipewire replacing netJACK tho.
I can't confirm what you experienced. I think you need the pipewire-alsa and pipewire-pulseaudio packages too to make it work.
I had no audible x-runs (though qjackctrl counted 6). But it seams periods was fixed to 1024 (?). I tried launching apps with lower period but didn't seam to have effect. Actualy I have no clue how to monitor this. It is what qjackctrl shoes in messages box when I start it up.
nevertheless. it is not realy usefull for me personaly since the alsa driver for my firewire interface is broken (glitches)
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by uns4ph3 »

Oh yeah, I forgot to say those because I assumed they're a given. The complete list of stuff you need if you want to test pipewire:

- pipewire
- pipewire-alsa
- pipewire-jack
- pipewire-pulse
- pipewire-pulse-dropin
- pipewire-jack-dropin

After installing, pull a Windows throwback trick and reboot your machine. In that reddit post someone pointed out the CLI commands for setting the periods for each program. My general experience is that Pipewire does not respond to the GUI commands to reset the periods per buffer.

Curious to hear what other people have to say about it.
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Capoeira »

uns4ph3 wrote: Thu Oct 15, 2020 3:42 pm Oh yeah, I forgot to say those because I assumed they're a given. The complete list of stuff you need if you want to test pipewire:

- pipewire
- pipewire-alsa
- pipewire-jack
- pipewire-pulse
- pipewire-pulse-dropin
- pipewire-jack-dropin

After installing, pull a Windows throwback trick and reboot your machine. In that reddit post someone pointed out the CLI commands for setting the periods for each program. My general experience is that Pipewire does not respond to the GUI commands to reset the periods per buffer.

Curious to hear what other people have to say about it.


I tried "PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=128/48000 <jack app>" but it didn't seam to have an effect. but as I said, you don't realy see what periods the programs are running. let's hope FalkXT will get interested in this
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by christobal »

I just tested it quickly on a manjaro virtual machine.

Installed easily enough there. Was also struggling with the whole "setting bitrate" etc. No response through qjackctl.
But in Ardour, when I opened the audio window there and manually changed the jack bitrate it changed system wide.

Carla is a bit messy though, when changing bitrate it crashes, and when closing apps they remain connected to nothing on the canvas as others have said.

Might spend some days testing it out on a full install when I'm eventually migrating again.


Generally pretty excited by it and the possibility of getting closer to something ala coreaudio on macos.
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by christobal »

So I installed Arch and added the testing repo to try out pipewire. It has now completely replaced pulse (its not even installed anymore) and generally works fine with pulse related stuff.

As for jack replacement it's not fully there but getting closer. Setting buffersize is a bit tricky as you have to do it in the host app (Ardour, Guitarix, etc), and the standard is 48k / 1024.
I've noticed some instabilities when setting buffer below 256, especially through Ardour - it worked better through guitarix standalone - where it worked perfectly fine at 256.

Carla works decently, the odd crash here and there when patching - expected from early software tbh. Most plugins I have tested runs fine.

I do love the modularity of all apps with audio showing up in carla by default though.

qjackctrl and cadence does not work (qjack shows jack as running but setting it up with a different buffer changes nothng)

Setting 256 buffer in Ardour however gives me tons of accumulating xruns.


Regular non pro-audio use seems to works pretty well for now.

I'm gonna keep running it to test it for a little while anyway as my computer is not the production computer in the house (i'm more of the mad lab assistant) ;).
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Re: Pipewire called for testers. Anybody tried it out?

Post by Capoeira »

christobal wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 2:40 pm

qjackctrl and cadence does not work (qjack shows jack as running but setting it up with a different buffer changes nothng)
that is expected when you run pipewire as a replacement for jack. buffers and stuff are set app per app. the drop-ins are there to be able to connect stuff. apps that don't have to option are set with

Code: Select all

PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=<num/denom> to configure latency as a fraction. 10/1000 configures a 10ms latency. Usually this is expressed as a fraction of the samplerate, like 256/48000, which uses 256 samples at a samplerate of 48KHz for a latency of 5.33ms.
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