16 ms·

PipeWire 1.0.0

218 points by shallow-mind 3y ago

lupusreal 3y ago
Much love for Pipewire for bringing "just werks" audio to the Linux desktop.
- patrakov 3y ago
  It "just works" in the default configuration on traditional hardware, where plugging the headphones in does not result in the need to move streams to a "different" sound card. I have slightly unusual hardware in the form of a Dell Inspiron 7415 laptop (with its internal microphone and the headset microphone presented as two separate SOF cards), and there are two trouble points: * The external microphone level is not saved/restored across the reboot, making the other party complain that my voice is clipping * The echo canceller configuration is static - once loaded, it does not react to the headset plug/unplug events and always uses the same microphone.
shmerl 3y ago
Good milestone. Switching to PulseAudio over Pipewire from stock PulseAudio fixed audio issues in Cyberpunk 2077 for me.
egamirorrim 3y ago
Shame my strix soar soundcard just stopped working when I switched to Ubuntu 23.10/pipewire Doesn't feel like a worth successor to pulse audio from here!
- shmerl 3y ago
  Just a guess, but Ubuntu might ship outdated pipewire packages.
  - ric2b 3y ago
    On 23.10 they use pipewire 0.3.79 which I think is the latest stable release before this brand new 1.0 release.
- imp0cat 3y ago
  I'd wait till the next LTS.
mrlonglong 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  You broke the site guidelines badly with this post, and started a huge offtopic flamewar by doing so. Please don't do that! If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. They include: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." Off-topic posts are fine when they're whimsical, but it's definitely not fine to jump ship to a classic-flamewar-topic. That's like getting sucked into the gravitational field of the nearest hell.
  - mrlonglong 3y ago
    Don't you see? Poettering's being incredibly divisive with his work that's still reverberating even today. Sorry.
    - dang 3y ago
      I don't know anything about that situation—I've never personally looked into it. All I know is that we need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, no matter how right you are (or feel you are) about the situation.
      - mrlonglong 3y ago
        Very good, I shall do that.
- ratsmack 3y ago
  But now, what are we going to do with systemd?
  - galcerte 3y ago
    Unlike PulseAudio, dbus, and other userland components, it is perfectly possible to have a Linux system which works with most software without systemd. runit and OpenRC are two of the most popular init alternatives, which are just inits, and nothing else, unlike systemd. You might argue you have to use logind and udev, but that has been spun off into elogind and eudev. There is also seatd as an alternative to elogind, which is quite big itself.
iscream26 3y ago
Truly the be-all-end-all for Linux audio servers. All the ease-of-use of Pulse without any of its issues.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  That pipe wire can often meet or beat pro-audio JACK for latency is so elegant & nice. Defeating that compromise of PulseAudio seems like the crowning achievement to me; there's not a lot of other faults or defects I felt with PulseAudio, and I say this as someone who has had sound servers with half a dozen audio cards (mostly USB) I've run off a system, as someone who has streamed PulseAudio from one system to another. The technical sophistication of PipeWire is almost purely made possible by Linux improving, by the availability of DMA-BUFs for shared memory inter-process work. This wasn't possible when PulseAudio (nee Polyp) was being created; the kernel couldn't do that then. On top of this modern base, pipewire has done a fantastic job generalizing it's architecture. It's also designed to pipe video. It could conceivably be used to pipe input events, or other arbitrary streams too. This is a cool upgrade that I hope we see more leaning into over time; I hope PipeWire someday becomes so pervasively used for so many reasons that it is even more known, tapped, used, & loved that dbus, the current inter-process nexus of FreeDesktop.
  - ahartmetz 3y ago
    > The technical sophistication of PipeWire is almost purely made possible by Linux improving I'm not sure about that. I guess improvements in ALSA have contributed. But PipeWire was created by none other than the guy who rearchitected GStreamer's foundations after GStreamer had been brittle and prone to crashing for years. I don't think that there was a better person in the Linux ecosystem to do it. It's the second system effect without featuritis, like when some of the Unix people created Plan 9. Personally, I was not happy with PulseAudio, and I'm very happy with PipeWire. Great, great stuff. I say that as both a user and somebody who created a prototype for a sound system for an embedded platform on top of PulseAudio that was, AFAICT, abandoned because it just couldn't deliver some things. PipeWire was on the radar at the time but too much in its infancy to use back then. That stopped being the case years ago.
GloomyBoots 3y ago
I don’t have anything bad to say about PipeWire. It's really been a breath of fresh air. And, as much hate as it gets, so was PulseAudio when it came out. Good to see things moving forward.
- ric2b 3y ago
  I did have some Bluetooth issues that made my headset unusable if I was using a Bluetooth mouse at the same time, but that issue seems to have resolved itself a few weeks ago so now I don't have any complaints either.
  - vonjuice 3y ago
    I had issues with audio production, but not anymore. I think this "not anymore" is the key takeaway. It may or may not be ready for everyone right now but it keeps improving.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  PulseAudio got hate because of the trouble it caused. PipeWire seems less likely to create gigabytes of logging without reporting issues. There are reasons that things get opposed. It isn't just some irrational juju feeling.
dither8 3y ago
Pipewire for the first time got Pulse and JACK to work together for me. Bravo.
sroerick 3y ago
10 or so years ago I spent a long time customizing a DAW workstation on Arch using JACK and Ardour and a lot of other utilities. It had a steep learning curve and a lot of configuration but I loved the freedom JACK granted to wire applications to each other. Is anybody using PipeWire in an audio engineering setup? Or would JACK still be the preferred method here?
- vonjuice 3y ago
  I was using JACK and tried switching to PW at various points and always encountered issues. Last year I took another chance and made a fresh Arch install on my laptop and went with PW (on previous attempts I tried to switch on an already running system). I had no issues, and in fact it solved some issues I used to have on jack. Then I did the same on my desktop. I had problems setting up my microphone, but I managed to solve it. Now I have two, very minor issues: sometimes bitwig takes a bit to start the audio engine, or I have to restart the program; and sometimes my audio stops working when I unplug my zoom h1n while the system is running. I rarely do the latter so it's barely an issue.
- jampekka 3y ago
  There are patchbays for PipeWire that allow for wiring like jack. qpwgraph seems to be the most functional. Can use pw-cli too. Actually it allows wiring also jack applications to pipewire applications and pipewire to jack. I use e.g. "pw-jack ardour" to run ardour and launch pw-jack jconvolver and route inputs and outputs with qpwgraph.
- tcrenshaw 3y ago
  I'm currently in the process of setting up pipewire in an audio engineering setting. Currently in the process of latency tuning, hovering around 9ms right now, would love to cut that in half. I'm using ardour (after the creator recommended I try it in another HN thread) on Debian with a realtime kernel for a 16 in by 8 out interface for eventual use as a FOH mixing console. After lots of tweaking, I haven't seen much improvement over the default pipewire-jack config, but I've only recently started tackling realtime priorities and modifying pipewire metadata for interfaces.
- 3y ago
zlg_codes 3y ago
I'll wait for software that's not built for Red Hat/IBM/GNOME, thanks. XDG has gone off the rails with 'portals' and other needless obfuscation of their desktop stack. If I had the financial security I'd write better alternatives, meant for communities instead of whatever Red Hat wants.
stuaxo 3y ago
Is pipewire ever coming to other platforms ? Had my bacon saved using a pulseaudio server on OSX for VM guest running Linux, but if worried that won't be possible in future if pulseaudio goes away and PW remains Linux only.

PipeWire 1.0.0

218 points by shallow-mind 3y ago

lupusreal 3y ago

Much love for Pipewire for bringing "just werks" audio to the Linux desktop.

patrakov 3y ago
It "just works" in the default configuration on traditional hardware, where plugging the headphones in does not result in the need to move streams to a "different" sound card. I have slightly unusual hardware in the form of a Dell Inspiron 7415 laptop (with its internal microphone and the headset microphone presented as two separate SOF cards), and there are two trouble points: * The external microphone level is not saved/restored across the reboot, making the other party complain that my voice is clipping * The echo canceller configuration is static - once loaded, it does not react to the headset plug/unplug events and always uses the same microphone.

shmerl 3y ago

Good milestone. Switching to PulseAudio over Pipewire from stock PulseAudio fixed audio issues in Cyberpunk 2077 for me.

egamirorrim 3y ago

Shame my strix soar soundcard just stopped working when I switched to Ubuntu 23.10/pipewire Doesn't feel like a worth successor to pulse audio from here!

shmerl 3y ago
Just a guess, but Ubuntu might ship outdated pipewire packages.
- ric2b 3y ago
  On 23.10 they use pipewire 0.3.79 which I think is the latest stable release before this brand new 1.0 release.
imp0cat 3y ago
I'd wait till the next LTS.

mrlonglong 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
You broke the site guidelines badly with this post, and started a huge offtopic flamewar by doing so. Please don't do that! If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. They include: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." Off-topic posts are fine when they're whimsical, but it's definitely not fine to jump ship to a classic-flamewar-topic. That's like getting sucked into the gravitational field of the nearest hell.
- mrlonglong 3y ago
  Don't you see? Poettering's being incredibly divisive with his work that's still reverberating even today. Sorry.
  - dang 3y ago
    I don't know anything about that situation—I've never personally looked into it. All I know is that we need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, no matter how right you are (or feel you are) about the situation.
    - mrlonglong 3y ago
      Very good, I shall do that.
ratsmack 3y ago
But now, what are we going to do with systemd?
- galcerte 3y ago
  Unlike PulseAudio, dbus, and other userland components, it is perfectly possible to have a Linux system which works with most software without systemd. runit and OpenRC are two of the most popular init alternatives, which are just inits, and nothing else, unlike systemd. You might argue you have to use logind and udev, but that has been spun off into elogind and eudev. There is also seatd as an alternative to elogind, which is quite big itself.

iscream26 3y ago

Truly the be-all-end-all for Linux audio servers. All the ease-of-use of Pulse without any of its issues.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
That pipe wire can often meet or beat pro-audio JACK for latency is so elegant & nice. Defeating that compromise of PulseAudio seems like the crowning achievement to me; there's not a lot of other faults or defects I felt with PulseAudio, and I say this as someone who has had sound servers with half a dozen audio cards (mostly USB) I've run off a system, as someone who has streamed PulseAudio from one system to another. The technical sophistication of PipeWire is almost purely made possible by Linux improving, by the availability of DMA-BUFs for shared memory inter-process work. This wasn't possible when PulseAudio (nee Polyp) was being created; the kernel couldn't do that then. On top of this modern base, pipewire has done a fantastic job generalizing it's architecture. It's also designed to pipe video. It could conceivably be used to pipe input events, or other arbitrary streams too. This is a cool upgrade that I hope we see more leaning into over time; I hope PipeWire someday becomes so pervasively used for so many reasons that it is even more known, tapped, used, & loved that dbus, the current inter-process nexus of FreeDesktop.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  > The technical sophistication of PipeWire is almost purely made possible by Linux improving I'm not sure about that. I guess improvements in ALSA have contributed. But PipeWire was created by none other than the guy who rearchitected GStreamer's foundations after GStreamer had been brittle and prone to crashing for years. I don't think that there was a better person in the Linux ecosystem to do it. It's the second system effect without featuritis, like when some of the Unix people created Plan 9. Personally, I was not happy with PulseAudio, and I'm very happy with PipeWire. Great, great stuff. I say that as both a user and somebody who created a prototype for a sound system for an embedded platform on top of PulseAudio that was, AFAICT, abandoned because it just couldn't deliver some things. PipeWire was on the radar at the time but too much in its infancy to use back then. That stopped being the case years ago.

GloomyBoots 3y ago

I don’t have anything bad to say about PipeWire. It's really been a breath of fresh air. And, as much hate as it gets, so was PulseAudio when it came out. Good to see things moving forward.

ric2b 3y ago
I did have some Bluetooth issues that made my headset unusable if I was using a Bluetooth mouse at the same time, but that issue seems to have resolved itself a few weeks ago so now I don't have any complaints either.
- vonjuice 3y ago
  I had issues with audio production, but not anymore. I think this "not anymore" is the key takeaway. It may or may not be ready for everyone right now but it keeps improving.
zlg_codes 3y ago
PulseAudio got hate because of the trouble it caused. PipeWire seems less likely to create gigabytes of logging without reporting issues. There are reasons that things get opposed. It isn't just some irrational juju feeling.

dither8 3y ago

Pipewire for the first time got Pulse and JACK to work together for me. Bravo.

sroerick 3y ago

10 or so years ago I spent a long time customizing a DAW workstation on Arch using JACK and Ardour and a lot of other utilities. It had a steep learning curve and a lot of configuration but I loved the freedom JACK granted to wire applications to each other. Is anybody using PipeWire in an audio engineering setup? Or would JACK still be the preferred method here?

vonjuice 3y ago
I was using JACK and tried switching to PW at various points and always encountered issues. Last year I took another chance and made a fresh Arch install on my laptop and went with PW (on previous attempts I tried to switch on an already running system). I had no issues, and in fact it solved some issues I used to have on jack. Then I did the same on my desktop. I had problems setting up my microphone, but I managed to solve it. Now I have two, very minor issues: sometimes bitwig takes a bit to start the audio engine, or I have to restart the program; and sometimes my audio stops working when I unplug my zoom h1n while the system is running. I rarely do the latter so it's barely an issue.
jampekka 3y ago
There are patchbays for PipeWire that allow for wiring like jack. qpwgraph seems to be the most functional. Can use pw-cli too. Actually it allows wiring also jack applications to pipewire applications and pipewire to jack. I use e.g. "pw-jack ardour" to run ardour and launch pw-jack jconvolver and route inputs and outputs with qpwgraph.
tcrenshaw 3y ago
I'm currently in the process of setting up pipewire in an audio engineering setting. Currently in the process of latency tuning, hovering around 9ms right now, would love to cut that in half. I'm using ardour (after the creator recommended I try it in another HN thread) on Debian with a realtime kernel for a 16 in by 8 out interface for eventual use as a FOH mixing console. After lots of tweaking, I haven't seen much improvement over the default pipewire-jack config, but I've only recently started tackling realtime priorities and modifying pipewire metadata for interfaces.
3y ago

zlg_codes 3y ago

I'll wait for software that's not built for Red Hat/IBM/GNOME, thanks. XDG has gone off the rails with 'portals' and other needless obfuscation of their desktop stack. If I had the financial security I'd write better alternatives, meant for communities instead of whatever Red Hat wants.

stuaxo 3y ago

Is pipewire ever coming to other platforms ? Had my bacon saved using a pulseaudio server on OSX for VM guest running Linux, but if worried that won't be possible in future if pulseaudio goes away and PW remains Linux only.