pipewire -pulse -alsa -jack, all provide same latency?

[talby]

Do I understand correctly that, when using pipewire, the latency is the same for using (connecting to) any of the pipewire compatibility interfaces (pipewire-pulse, pipewire-alsa or pipewire-jack)?
For example, if my DAW offers me to interface to the Linux audio system either via PulseAudio or JACK, then, concerning latency, it doesn't make any difference anymore which of these options I choose?

[Axel-Erfurt]

What is your DAW?

[talby]

I am using Tracktion Waveform 13 Pro. Would be great if there is even a specific answer regarding this DAW!

Still, not targeting a particular DAW but looking only at the design of pipewire, I am also interested to find the information if handling of all streams passing those interface APIs (-alsa, -pulse, - jack) is designed and supposed to process them without any priorities towards the one or the other.
After hours of research I couldn't find a clear statement about this. Pointing me to relevant documentation would also be appreciated, but maybe someone here knows about this already and can confirm my believing that there indeed is no priority ranking, or correct me please.

[Audiojunkie]

Do I understand correctly that, when using pipewire, the latency is the same for using (connecting to) any of the pipewire compatibility interfaces (pipewire-pulse, pipewire-alsa or pipewire-jack)?
For example, if my DAW offers me to interface to the Linux audio system either via PulseAudio or JACK, then, concerning latency, it doesn't make any difference anymore which of these options I choose?

My understanding is that the latency for each can be set independently. So, it would depend on to what latency they were configured for. Also, I would imagine (at least theoretically) ALSA could potentially be lower, since Pipewire resides on top of ALSA. Also, JACK should be lower (just above ALSA) because of the IRQ scheduling (provided the Pro Audio profile is being used). PulseAudio should potentially be the slowest.

[Axel-Erfurt]

In Tracktion Waveform 13, where did you look? At the latency monitor?

[magill]

Pipewire devs did some testing: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire ... ce#latency

[talby]

In Tracktion Waveform 13, where did you look? At the latency monitor?

By now, I simply considered the Device Settings dialog and wonder about the general expectations if going to use pipewire instead of the classic Linux audio system interfaces having been direct/ALSA, PulseAudio/ALSA and JACK2:

Screenshot_20250329_014542.jpg (40.9 KiB) Viewed 254 times

[talby]

Pipewire devs did some testing: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire ... ce#latency

Oh! Kind of what I was searching for! Thanks a lot.
Obviously, at a first glance, these measurements state: "it depends...." . Will study them to more detail, and am afraid that I have to figure out how to perform my own measurements for my own particular situation, then. Didn't really expect this. Thought the answer could be much more general. But those are the current facts then, real measurement data, real results, ... real eye opener that it much depends on the particular situation.
I now need to consider if the differences would indeed impact my musical works, or only affect my nerdy technical (Linux) interests.

[magill]

jack_delay is a tool to measure latency yourself: https://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org/linuxaudio/ It will work with Jack and Pipewire. For Alsa, you could use Ardour as it has a tool for that. I would expect Alsa do perform the best. Jack and Pipewire shouldn't be far behind.