Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

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Gps
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Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

Edit:
I need to do some investigating. When I look in the task manager I see:
pipewire media session and
pipewire

Looks like I already switched

(Post before edit)
I am wondering about pipewire, should I enable it ?

I am on openSUSE tumble weed, and if I get it right, its installed but not enabled.
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Pipewire

( that link is for opensuse in general so both leap (not rolling release) and tumbleweed (rolling release)

If I understand things right, I would then swicth LMMS from using Alsa to jack.

How can I tell however, if this is progress or not ?

Right now I am not using jack, not even sure if its installed and I do not know how to tell what my current latency is.
Would need to know this , if I want to compare it after starting using pipewire ?

Any thoughts on this ?


Looks simple enough, would I want to switch back.

Code: Select all

How to disable PipeWire?

To use plain ALSA do

systemctl --user disable --now pipewire.{socket,service}
rm /etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf

and to get it back later, do

zypper in -f pipewire
systemctl --user enable --now pipewire.{socket,service}
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

OpenSUSE forum is helping me , to find out if I am using pipe wire or not.

Code: Select all

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native 
Library Protocol Version: 35 
Server Protocol Version: 35 
Is Local: yes 
Client Index: 133 
Tile Size: 65472 
User Name: guus 
Host Name: linux-2ls4 
Server Name: pulseaudio 
Server Version: 15.0 
Default Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz 
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right 
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_08_00.3.analog-stereo 
Default Source: alsa_input.pci-0000_08_00.3.analog-stereo 
Cookie: 303f:263a 

Code: Select all

guus@linux-2ls4:~> ps -A|egrep "pipe|pulse" 
 1954 ?        00:05:12 pulseaudio 
 6199 ?        00:00:00 pipewire 
 6200 ?        00:00:00 pipewire-media-
Here I was thinking asking a simple question. :lol:

I am getting pipe wire updates for a while already, but if I understand that first code part right, I am not using pipe wire yet....

to be continued. :)
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

Update:

I will be trying pipewire (and jack), but I am not using pipe wire yet.

Some or most pipewire parts are already installed. ( not by me )


Two commands left:

Code: Select all

zypper se -s pipewire-pulseaudio pipewire-alsa pipewire-libjack-0_3

Code: Select all

systemctl --user enable --now pipewire-pulse.{service,socket}
Looks like the people from opensuse prepared tumbleweed already to make it easy to turn it on.
Probably will have to start yast and install jack too, but I need to do some more reading on that first.
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

Learning stuff.

Pipewire replaces pulse so if I want to install jack, I need to do a force install, ignoring the pulse audio dependency of jack.
This also goes for pavu control.

I have looked in LMMS, and I can set it to use jack.

The compatibility layer of pipewire should fool LMMS into it thinking it's talking to jack.

To be continued.....
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by folderol »

Jack has no dependency on pulse audio.
On my systems, the first thing I do is delete the pulse audio server - after which all is sweetness and light.
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

Thank you, I did say it wrong. :)

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Pipewi ... patibility
Warning: These compatibility packages are in conflict with PulseAudio and JACK, all the packages that have these two as dependencies can be forcefully installed on the system and they will just work but it can create dependencies issues during updates or on the long run if dependencies change
PipeWire can replace PulseAudio and JACK. The packages pipewire-pulseaudio or pipewire-jack will install compatibility libraries in place of the ones used by PulseAudio and JACK.

If I get this right we have two options.
Use jack and pulse audio, or use the compatibility layer of pipewire, or maybe a third option, force install jack but not pulse audio.

For now lets keep it simple and try the compatibility layer. :)
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

I have been thinking and reading about pipewire.

First conclusion, its not really what I thought it was, a way to easily use jack.

Its made to replace both jack and pulse audio.

The goal is lower latency for both audio and video.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire ... /wikis/FAQ

It will not fix X runs issues if you have those.
Is PipeWire Another JACK Implementation?
PipeWire has a very similar processing model as JACK but adds the following features compared to JACK:

Extensible communication protocol that allows new interfaces on objects to be added in the future.
Arbitrary formats can be negotiated between nodes. This allows us to handle video as well as compressed formats. This is important for sending compressed formats to the device (AC3 over HDMI or AAC over bluetooth, for example).
Negotiation of buffers. A pool of buffers can be negotiated between instances and the memory is exchanged with fd passing. This makes it possible to share hardware surfaces and make video possible.
Dynamic sinks and sources. Devices can be hotplugged. There is automatic slaving between devices similar to what a2j does when graphs are joined.
Dynamic latency, it adapts the buffer period to the lowest requested latency. Smaller buffer sizes use more CPU but larger buffer sizes have more latency.
Synchronous clients are providing data for the current processing cycle of the device(s). There is no extra period of latency.
Dynamic device suspend and resume. Unused devices are closed to save CPU.
Implemented with sandboxing in mind.
Some of the limitations of JACK are fixed. PipeWire has something similar to the JACK transport that also supports looping, trick modes and lookahead of the scheduled timeline.
PipeWire has a more generic control type that can be used to implement Midi and OSC natively. Midi similar to a2jmidid is built in.
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

Sometimes, I truly hate computers.

What's the problem?

I am trying to make my monitor make sound.

Getting help on openSUSE forum, so most likely will get it fixed.

If I understand the problem right, my video card is muted and I am not allowed to turn the volume up.

In pavu I see two audio devices, the onboard sound and the vid card.

Don' t we love computers?
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Toejam76 »

I had to set the recording device in pavu to "Monitor of" to get sound. The output device has be Duplex instead of just Stereo output in my case...
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

I am not sure if going into alsa mixer and selecting the hdmi output fixed it, but I am now able in pavu controll, to swtich between the headset and the monitor.

Some to me confusing stuff happened at first, like typing alsamixer did nothing. But after typing cnf alsamixer and then alsamixer, seems to have fixed that part.

(you need to have alsa utilities installed)

About the sound quality, its even worse as I expected. :lol:

Was not expecting hd stereo and happy it works, but there is no low end.

Need to do some testing, I saw my monitor has a headphone out, so I can compare the vid card and the onboard sound. ( which is better ?)

On my wish list still two studio monitors and an external dac.

Last night watched a vid of UNFA, were he switched to pipewire and it worked. He was positive about the latency which if I understand the vid right, he could set lower, then with jack. It did cause x runs when he tried how small he could set the buffer size. (I hope I am wording this right)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7XrrBXIzfg

So pipewire here I come. :P
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

Stupid question time.

I just figured out, I don't need to install, pipewire-jack nor pipewire pulseaudio for pipewire to work.

Do I understand things right when I say, I can't use pavu controll any more if I do this though?

If I want to use pavu controll I do need to install pipewire pulseaudio?

This to some extent confuses me. Will there be something like pavu controll for pipewire in the future?
Or should pavu control just work on pipewire in the future ?
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by porzione »

Gps wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 2:43 pm Do I understand things right when I say, I can't use pavu controll any more if I do this though?

If I want to use pavu controll I do need to install pipewire pulseaudio?

This to some extent confuses me. Will there be something like pavu controll for pipewire in the future?
Or should pavu control just work on pipewire in the future ?
At least in Arch you have to install and run pipewire-pulse because it provides PA compatibility layer and clients like firefox, pavucontrol, reaper - all have dependency on it. Only very few programs can work with pipewire directly without PA service.

Bitwig / Surge XT / Linux Studio Plugins / u-he stuff / TAL stuff

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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by Gps »

Thank you, now I am starting to understand the Arch wiki and the openSUSE page about pipewire.
Technically pipewire does not need those package but some programs do. :)

I did see Unfa try pipewire and he did install both pipewire-pulse and pipewire-jack.

For him it did work at first, but I have seen him contacting both the Ardour dev and the pulsewire dev.
Ardour did not like him changing some settings.

Ardour is one of the program used to test pipewire.
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by sunrat »

Unfa used Pipewire for a couple of months but switched back to JACK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvWgm6aZTQA
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Re: Pipewire, should I try it ? ( tumbleweed)

Post by porzione »

sunrat wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:58 am Unfa used Pipewire for a couple of months but switched back to JACK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvWgm6aZTQA
It looks like this is an Ardour issue, I use Reaper, Carla and some standalone synthesizers with jack emulation - the last two months since I switched to pipewire everything is fine. Only Tracktion Waveform still crashes and freezes but it always behaved like this :/
Last edited by porzione on Thu Dec 09, 2021 9:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

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