[Solved] How to automatically route Zoom meeting (Workplace) inputs and outputs to Ardour?

[catherder]

I am trying to get Zoom meetings (now called Workplace) to work with Pipewire (ubuntu studio 24.04). I want its inputs and outputs to be connected to Ardour buses for mixing and recording. My problem is that Zoom does not show all virtual devices (the Ardour ports) in it's settings, and the "Zoom VoiceEngine" only pops up when active and has it's own ideas where to connect to. I tried to configure Pipewire to offer two virtual duplex sinks for the Zoom connection. They show up in Zoom and it works fine with the speaker output. Even when I restart Zoom it automatically connects to that specific virtual device. The microphone input is the problem. It always falls back to a hardware port and I have to disconnect it and reconnect it manually to Ardour.
Is there any Pipewire GUI that "enforces" a specific routing layout so that when a new device (Zoom) pops up, unwanted connections can be immediately automatically disconnected and new ones created?

[sunrat]

You could try qpwgraph or a new utility called Cable which has been mentioned recently in this forum. These can do PW patching but I'm not familiar with using them for automatic setups, although they can save patches IIRC.

[catherder]

You could try qpwgraph or a new utility called Cable which has been mentioned recently in this forum. These can do PW patching but I'm not familiar with using them for automatic setups, although they can save patches IIRC.

Thanks for the suggestions. Qpwgraph is already on the system and I’ll definitely give Cable a try. That looks promising.

[catherder]

Further testing found a solution: Qpwgraph is the way to go. Activating a patchbay (preset) and enabling "Exclusive" does exactly what I was looking for: Zoom tries to connect it's microphone input to the hardware and Qpwgraph immediately disconnects and establishes the wanted route.