matyas wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 11:54 pmGMaq wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 11:42 pmLet's say your Distro comes with PipeWire in a good solid recent version, you are new to Linux and you want to try Ardour but your stems to import are all at 44.1Khz.. PipeWire's default is 48000Khz and Ardour is either going to blunt force convert the sample rate on import or it's going to accommodate on the fly which is a worse option so if you just want to get the system running at 44100Khz you're going to either have to bang open a terminal and incant some pipewire-metadata command which as a newbie you will neither want to open a terminal nor will probably have no idea what command to enter. Other than that unless your Distro ships a PipeWire metadata GUI (most don't yet) you're going to have to go into the system file tree with a text editor and then tell PipeWire you want 44100Khz in one of many obtusely named config files..
You brought up a really good point with that scenario, and it's one I hadn't yet encountered. Out of the box, it is indeed a giant pain to change sampling rates in PW. I started and Ardour session, selected JACK as my backend (which is really PW, since this system has never had real JACK installed), and it was locked to 48 kHz.
So looked around and found a simple graphical utility. With the 48 kHz Ardour session still running, I used the GUI I had downloaded to set the sampling rate to 44.1. Ardour complained that the sampling rate had changed during an open session, but it recognized and locked to the new rate.
So tools like this do already exist, but I'll admit that it is a problem that they're not shipping with standard distros or PW itself. This, I suspect, will change.
You've mentioned some front ends and different GUI's for pipewire. Can you make a list and maybe a link to the binaries for debian? (Maybe add some brief notes on features/pros/cons?
Pipewire came by default on my MX Linux 21 Wildflower box, I didn't do AVL this time because (*)I wanted to try pipewire. I went through a trillion settings I've read here to be applied on config files to adjust latency and nothing worked to lower it on my firewire RME fireface 800. So I uninstalled pipewire and totally abandoned that one machine since then due to my work schedule. Now pipewire it's going through .83 and I'd like to reinstall to see if anything has changed that would reduce my latency. I couldn't even play a keyboard or a guitar.
(*) I truly like the promise of pipewire and I'm bidding for its success even though it's in its earlier stages of development. Back in 2008 I used to set up computers for audio (at the time on windows) for my students and once a student brought a white 2006 macbook (it's all she had). I couldn't believe the features on this 1.83 mhz 2 gb of ram laptop. It ran on Snow Leopard and garage band would recognize my adding/removing USB keyboards on the fly and there was no latency I could notice when playing a keyboard and not discernible latency and great effect presets when plaiying guitar and my student could play a youtube video or a song on iTunes to play along and recording had automatic latency compensation. So, I thought, it's 2023, I'm using an i9 box with 128gb of ram and an SSD and... Oh well... That being said, I think no one has made it a goal in Linux to reach Apple's 2008's Coreadio simplicity and performance until now that pipewire is working on this. I totally hope it succeeds. I do get that for many, Jack does what it needs to do in their systems and respect the attitude behind "what's working should be left alone", but what matter here is the goals and my thought is that we should make as much noise as possible for it to also deliver for us as pipewire is getting adopted by several distributions. We need as much lobbying in the pipewire congress as possible so our real time audio priorities are pondered.
I love Linux and use it every day but I want to switch to my right side of the brain when I'm making music and let intuition do its thing. Music will typically sound too structured if it lacks the whimsy and is overpowered by intellectual workout.
Normally people who are too predominant on their left side of the brain would have to do like yoga to put all that aside and let their senses take over. All this config work is exactly the opposite. Maybe Johann Sebastian Bach could keep beauty and intellect neck and neck but I'm just a normal dude who would like to take advantage of inspiration when it hits.
Things that worked with Pipewire for me that wouldn't work with Jack:
Pipewire allowed me to play any DAW through HDMI. Why? Because if I simply wanted to listen to something I've done I wouldn't have to get behind my Yamaha's HS8s and bother my neighbor downstairs Jack would not play through HDMI no matter what I did. Pipewire allowed this out of the box.
Things I expected from Pipewire that didn't work as expected:
Latency was abismal though and configuration procedures to make latency changes were more complex than with Jack.
I was unable to figure out the supposed to be pipewire ZEROCONFIG module that's supposed to be included in pipewire to recognize my Apple Airport express devices which I can use to play music through an iMac I have in the kitchen with Snow Leopard, 1GB of ram and a 1.83 Ghz processor which cost me 12 bucks and works great as a wireless printer server. Apparently such module is not available in the installs that are available on MX-Linux.
Regards!