Is pipewire worth it?

[truekaiser]

I, rather late though, saw the news about pipewire, but all the information i find is that it's still highly in development and not 'stable'.
So am i missing something? the pulseaudio setup i have works fine but the gentoo mail says to run a mixed environment?

Is this going to be another python 3.6 situation where one is removed so quickly that un-resolvable @preserved-libs will persist due to no packages?

[CaptainBlood]

The only thing I've likely lost is the usability of media-sound/jack2.
I may be missing something in this respect...

Thks 4 ur attention, interest & support.
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[flexibeast]

It has been for me. i've got an old Moshi burger speaker i've been trying to get to work with Bluetooth for ages; it never worked even vaguely with PulseAudio.

i set up PipeWire in a "play around and check it out a bit" sense, but i've ended up actually using it. From my perspective, it's already "a better Pulse than Pulse". The burger now works with mpd, without issues. It doesn't work for audio coming from Firefox for some reason; i've tried doing some research into why this might be (including reading possibly-relevant stuff on the Arch wiki), without success. By "doesn't work" i mean, it's extremely choppy, and even that output rapidly gets too quiet to be heard.

i've been working on the PipeWire wiki page to try to make it easier for people to transition from Pulse to PipeWire. Currently on my TODO list is to update the page to reflect this comment by u/ahferroin7's on r/gentoo.

[Goverp]

[Anon-E-moose]

I've been running pipewire/wireplumber for a couple of months now (previously straight alsa, no pulse)
and it's working well, it does require a little playing to get it tuned properly, but it's working fine now.

I haven't added either jack or pulse replacement, but from what I ran across when looking for tuning data, pulse seems to work fine
for many people with bluetooth working in pipewire for many that could never get it to work properly with pulseaudio.
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[Syl20]

[arnvidr]

Still no need for pulseaudio for firefox, although it might require apulse, not sure.

I can't move to pipewire until it can completely replace jack, as I need that, but am I reading this thread right that I can experiment with using it for all those apps that play through ALSA?
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[Anon-E-moose]

Firefox needs either libpulse or apulse (cut down version of libpulse) for sound.

Pipewire can replace either the pulseaudio server or the jack server, because it uses the libraries for either respectively
it just doesn't use either server. Not sure about 100% feature compatibility for either one, but if curious

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/ -- src

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/home
https://pipewire.pages.freedesktop.org/wireplumber/
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UM780, 6.12 zen kernel, gcc 13, openrc, wayland

[Syl20]

[pjp]

[Anon-E-moose]

Yes the tuning is with pipewire & wireplumber (since I'm augmenting alsa).

I started with a general config for each and then starting fine tuning, parms, things needed, etc.
I've gotten the best sound by leaving pipewire's config alone, and modifying wireplumbers instead
since some of the stuff seems duplicated between them.

Most older threads about pipewire might mention pipewire-media instead of wireplumber, as wp replace pm server.

I can't speak to how robust the pipewire/wireplumber part is re. bluetooth as I haven't installed that part yet.
But most of the threads that I've looked at that mentions bluetooth stuff say it works well,

As far as device recognition, it didn't have a problem with my setup.

And even with pw/wp installed you can still go directly to alsa.
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UM780, 6.12 zen kernel, gcc 13, openrc, wayland

[mike155]

I use ALSA. No Pulseaudio, no Pipewire. That's all I need. I'm happy with it.

Firefox still works with ALSA. apulse is not required.

[pjp]

@Anon-E-moose,

Thanks. I don't remember having to fiddle with Alsa to get it working, so that seems like a step backward with pipewire.
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[Anon-E-moose]

Alsa typically works in the default config, which uses the dmix mod, giving the ability for many sources to play (at once if desired)
but the sound quality needed tuning for me. I turned off dmix and just let sound pass straight through to the device without resampling/mixing/etc since I'm piping it to the stereo. This is all alsa. Although for many years I used ossv4 because of the better sound quality.

If one has not tuned alsa (default setup) then pipewire should just work the same.
The tuning is more for my preferences, all with dealing with sound quality.

Step backwards, step forward ... I guess it all depends on what ones needs are.

Edit to add: I'm not trying to push anyone in any particular direction, just giving my experieces based on the OP's question.
Pipewire is mature enough (for me), I haven't tried many of the features video, bluetooth, streams, etc but what I do use works well
and I (personal opinion) think that pipewire will replace both jack and pulseaudio, at least as far as the server aspect for many users
and it's the direction that things are heading. So I don't mind playing with it, in the early stages of it's life.
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UM780, 6.12 zen kernel, gcc 13, openrc, wayland

[asturm]

I've got 1 DP and 4 different, dynamically (dis-)connected bluetooth devices. Try configure that without pipewire.

[saellaven]

In trying to play Rimworld, I couldn't get sound out of just ALSA. Despite having ALSA tuned to make my onboard audio the default device, Rimworld insisted on pushing it out to my non-existent HDMI speakers. I installed pipewire just to see if it would fix it, and the default install did.

Like others have stated, the configuration of audio on Linux is a nightmare (including pipewire) if you have to change anything from the default. I really miss the old days with my Sound Blaster (hardware mixing) with OSS drivers. It just worked. ALSA has been a mess from the start.
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openrc-0.17, ~vanilla-sources, ~nvidia-drivers, ~gcc

[pjp]

[Anon-E-moose]

Alsa won't go away, wireplumber uses alsa underneath it, and bluez for the bluetooth stuff.

And as I said, even with pipewire/wireplumber installed and even running you can still use alsa directly,
just don't try and use alsa and pipewire at the same time, since they don't know each others running state.

The good news is it's workable now, and should get better (more reliable, features, etc) in the future.
And if it works as claimed it should help to consolidate the audio part of linux.
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UM780, 6.12 zen kernel, gcc 13, openrc, wayland

[pjp]

Hah! I'm sure the complexity soup is necessary, but yikes. When it comes to areas I know little or nothing about, I try to not break them :)
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[enhaced]

[stefan11111]

What does pipewire achieve that alsa doesn't?
Unless you have some program that only works with pipewire.
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[asturm]

[gorg86]

I just accepted the fact that soundservers will never work properly on Linux, I keep an old crippled version of Pulseaudio on my system (v16.0 every useflag disabled, no daemon) because it's a hard dependency for Cinnamon. Once that package becomes too old and causes trouble in portage I will switch to XFCE and unmerge that crap completely.

[stefan11111]

[gorg86]

I could do some hacky stuff, but I don't want to. Installing Cinnamon was a bad idea anyway.