Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

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oddy.o.lynx
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Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by oddy.o.lynx »

Bullseye has Pipewire integration and as with Buster PulseAudio respawns if killed. As Pipewire is still experimental at the moment prefer to not have it running in the background.

to stop Pipewire and PulseAudio we can use the following commands:

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systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.socket && systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service
systemctl --user stop pipewire.socket && systemctl --user stop pipewire.service
systemctl --user stop pipewire-pulse.socket && systemctl --user stop pipewire-pulse.service
however rebooting will restart these services/sockets and the commands would need to be run again

to disable Pipewire and PulseAudio from starting at login and to ensure that PulseAudio can be stopped without respawning create the following directory using the command...

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mkdir ~/.config/systemd/user/
then run the following...

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systemctl --user mask pulseaudio.socket
systemctl --user mask pipewire.socket
systemctl --user mask pipewire-pulse.socket

systemctl --user mask pulseaudio.service
systemctl --user mask pipewire.service
systemctl --user mask pipewire-pulse.service
at the next reboot the services/sockets will not be running at login
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by sunrat »

Good advice. I don't understand why Pipewire is in Bullseye, even the developers don't consider it complete yet.
Not sure you need to create the directory. I skipped that and the symlinks were created to /dev/null anyway:

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systemctl --user mask pipewire.service
Created symlink /home/roger/.config/systemd/user/pipewire.service → /dev/null.
I do use PulseAudio bridged to JACK so didn't disable that. My system doesn't seem to have pipewire-pulse.service installed at all. how did you install Bullseye and which DE are you using?
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by oddy.o.lynx »

I use Cadence to Start and Sop the PulseAudio bridge. Without masking PA though it will not shut down. When I am recording I prefer to have PA completely off. This hack allows that.

I also installed pipewire-pulse after the distro-upgrade to see if I could get it working... suffice it to say I am intrigued by Pipewire but still not impressed. :lol:

More documentation would be useful.
how did you install Bullseye and which DE are you using?
I did a distro-upgrade from Buster to Bullseye.

using KDE Plasma, have turned off notifications and unneeded eye candy, disabled akonadi server...
Last edited by oddy.o.lynx on Tue May 11, 2021 8:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by sunrat »

oddy.o.lynx wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 3:21 pm I use Cadence to Start and Sop the PulseAudio bridge. Without masking PA though it will not shut down.
I thought masking PA would prevent it from starting too.
I masked pipewire as you suggested and desktop and mouse froze after rebooting. After bailing out with Magic SysReq keys subsequent boots were back to normal.
using KDE Plasma, have turned off notifications and unneeded eye candy, disabled akonadi server...
Plasma in Bullseye is great IMO, best ever. I've used KDE for 15 years or so now and am rapt to finally have it working nicely again for audio. The old KX Studio distro with KDE4 was decent enough in its day but I used AVL for several years in between.
oddy.o.lynx
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by oddy.o.lynx »

I masked pipewire as you suggested and desktop and mouse froze after rebooting. After bailing out with Magic SysReq keys subsequent boots were back to normal.
that's really strange, I have not any issues of the sort....

was it the system that froze or when you logged into your profile... it could be profile corruption somewhere... I would recommend try to create a new user (test account) and mask PA and PW and see if it happens again

what happens if you do this...

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systemctl --user stop pipewire.socket && systemctl --user stop pipewire.service

and then

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systemctl --user start pipewire.socket && systemctl --user start pipewire.service
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by sunrat »

oddy.o.lynx wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 4:13 pm
I masked pipewire as you suggested and desktop and mouse froze after rebooting. After bailing out with Magic SysReq keys subsequent boots were back to normal.
that's really strange, I have not any issues of the sort....
It happened only the first reboot and not in subsequent reboots since so not a major issue. Just thought it was worth a mention. May not have even been the pipewire mask that caused it. I have a parallel multiboot test install so may try it some time on that.
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by puredyne »

Hi everyone! I had already disabled the pulse service with the MX magic tool. I tried following this guide on AVLinux (MX)...

Pulse audio seems disabled. MPD cannot play DSD files, that means pulse is enabled. iceWM plays PCM files terribly, while XFCE plays better. It usually sounds much more realistic iceWM via MPD.

The active Jack/pulseaudio bridge service is visible from the CADENCE (kxstudio/jackd) panel. By disabling the (disable) button… pulsejackbrige reactivates itself.

In the last 23 years I removed all pulse packages with synaptic so iceWM has always been the workstation with the highest audio quality and works divine playback of DSD/DSF 64/128/256 (tested) 1bit depth files and WAV/AIFF PCM 32 floats (64-bit equivalent).

Advice?

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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by Impostor »

puredyne wrote: Wed Apr 12, 2023 3:26 pm

Hi everyone! I had already disabled the pulse service with the MX magic tool. I tried following this guide on AVLinux (MX)...

Pulse audio seems disabled. MPD cannot play DSD files, that means pulse is enabled. iceWM plays PCM files terribly, while XFCE plays better. It usually sounds much more realistic iceWM via MPD.

The active Jack/pulseaudio bridge service is visible from the CADENCE (kxstudio/jackd) panel. By disabling the (disable) button… pulsejackbrige reactivates itself.

In the last 23 years I removed all pulse packages with synaptic so iceWM has always been the workstation with the highest audio quality and works divine playback of DSD/DSF 64/128/256 (tested) 1bit depth files and WAV/AIFF PCM 32 floats (64-bit equivalent).

Advice?

....wut....

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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by jean-emmanuel »

Looks like chat gpt got lost.

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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by Impostor »

jean-emmanuel wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 7:56 am

Looks like chat gpt got lost.

That's what I thought too. It's either a chatbot or an audiophile.

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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by asbak »

I was wondering the same thing. @sunrat informed me some days ago that there were chatbots active here and that they've had to delete some other posts.

By the way, can you spot the difference between a golden ears audiophile and a chatbot? I can't. :mrgreen:

Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

I am a chatbot. If you've ever been offended or enraged by anything I've said, remember that it's just an algorithm.

Author of BackupBand at https://sourceforge.net/projects/backupband/files/
My fans show their support by mentioning my name in their signature.

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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by asbak »

Rage Against The Machine - NPC Edition

j_e_f_f_g wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:46 am

I am a chatbot. If you've ever been offended or enraged by anything I've said, remember that it's just an algorithm.

Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
puredyne
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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by puredyne »

no European? fascism is forbidden in europe...

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Re: Disabling PulseAudio and Pipewire in Debian Bullseye

Post by asbak »

lolwut? Fascism is celebrated across much of Europe. :mrgreen:

puredyne wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:46 pm

no European? fascism is forbidden in europe...

Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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