Hello hello!
I'm trying to setup pipewire for the first time, as in, I'm vaguely aware of PulseAudio and JACK, but don't have anything set up for those yet (relevant because every tutorial and explanation for config that I've seen are about moving from one of those to Pipewire, whereas I have a new setup of Fedora 41, which already comes with Pipewire by default.
I'm reading through the two sites of documentation for Pipewire, and am utterly confused about the difference between using context.objects factory = adapter null-audio-sinks, info found here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire ... figuration compared to the context.modules libpipewire-module-loopback, info found here: https://docs.pipewire.org/page_module_loopback.html and when/why you'd do one versus the other.
From what I can see they can both do..."take an input, and give an output?" The docs mention something about connections via session manager for loopbacks (i honestly don't know how the session manager relates to the default setup for Fedora or how to check that, I'm guessing wireplumber is running somehow, as I don't have to launch anything else when I boot), but it also says you can use a loopback as a Virtual Sink and Virtual Source? Is there really just multiple ways to do the same thing in the .conf file (null-audio-sink with media.class Audio/SourceVirtual OR libpipewire-module-loopback with capture.props Audio/Sink and playback.props Audio/Source ), or am I missing something entirely?
What I'd like to setup is several virtual sinks(?) for inputs and outputs that I can keep connected with their filter chains via Carla (or maybe targeted with the pipewire config? not sure which makes more sense), and then the physical hardware won't cause problems if there's any disconnects, and the software outputs/inputs always have somewhere to go to/come from. Here's a rough block diagram, with the plan being the filters setup via Carla.
For more context, I'm coming from a windows background, where I was using Voicemeeter Potato, Virtual Cables, and Cantibile for a patchbay, as those gave me relatively-familiar setup to what I'm used to from the hardware audio world. I'm not sure what I'll be using for mixer controls yet, possibly connecting my MIDI CC's into a gain filter via Carla? Voicemeeter had a similar setup with an additional program that could learn by listening to MIDI controls. Although I'm limited on faders so a way to switch between 'level send to headphones output' vs 'level send to main output' vs 'level send to speakers out' would be needed. Open to any suggestions for that also.
Thanks so much in advance for helping me sort this out. I think I'm dancing around a solution, but can't seem to figure out quite enough from the two docs pages to know which to configure things as.
