4 ms·

I'm curious about why pipewire is unfortunate.

aa-jv 2y ago
Its not perfect. Bugs, instability, crashing, latency .. compatibility issues, difficult to configure at first .. bluetooth audio is lower quality than it could be (AptX and LDAC codes unsupported) .. performance is not that great compared to pulseaudio and jack ..
- stncls 2y ago
  I'm ready to believe that pipewire is imperfect (although I have personally experienced no crash, and did not have to configure anything), but the sentence from the original post is: > Therefore, I naturally omit the use and configuration of additional audio layers in the form of a Jack server, PulseAudio or the unfortunate PipeWire from RedHat. I cannot understand this sentiment. I have used all three for years each. If I had to qualify one as "unfortunate", it would certainly not be PipeWire (nor would it be Jack for that matter). > performance is not that great compared to pulseaudio and jack .. Jack makes different trade-offs by default, so for some definition of performance, yes, one could see it as superior to PipeWire. But in my experience PipeWire is better than PulseAudio on all axes (at least: latency, CPU usage, resampling quality).
  - mouse_ 2y ago
    Right? PipeWire is the best.
    - eptcyka 2y ago
      Yeah, but it could still be better. I use it every day, and I wish it was better.
- dralley 2y ago
  > performance is not that great compared to pulseaudio and jack I'm aware that performance is not quite as good as Jack (but not by significant margins AFAIK), but how is performance worse than PulseAudio? That cuts against every datum I've ever heard about the two.
- struanr 2y ago
  > bluetooth audio is lower quality than it could be (AptX and LDAC codes unsupported) Not sure what you mean by this, aptX and aptX HD work flawlessly for my Bluetooth headphones with pipewire
  - qrobit 2y ago
    Can confirm for LDAC too
    - aa-jv 2y ago
      Which distribution?
  - aa-jv 2y ago
    Would be interesting to know your hardware setup, distro, etc. Not all pipewires' are considered equal.
- whalesalad 2y ago
  I am not sure what my system is running (debian 12) but I have aptX support with my bluetooth headset. https://i.postimg.cc/8PXzNzsS/Screenshot-20250206-094735.png https://i.postimg.cc/8PXzNzsS/Screenshot-20250206-094735.png Edit: pactl info | grep "Server Name" Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.65)
bluGill 2y ago
Lennart Poettering. That guy is smart and writes a lot of code. However he is also very controversial: anyone who loves Unix hates him because his ideas are very contrary to the "unix way". Poettering didn't create pipewire - he created pulse audio which pipewire closely emulates though, and so that will be unfortunate. The other issue is pipe wire had a very ambitious list of features they wanted to support and it took many years to make everything work according to their vision. Pipe wire has been out for several years before it was good enough that normal people could trust it. I've been running it for a couple years now, it is good now, but it wasn't. Pipewire supports video in ways users really want, and so there was pressure to put pipewire everywhere long before it was ready and so this is unfortunate. Today I will tell everyone to just use pipewire. It works and supports everything you really want to do.

Its not perfect. Bugs, instability, crashing, latency .. compatibility issues, difficult to configure at first .. bluetooth audio is lower quality than it could be (AptX and LDAC codes unsupported) .. performance is not that great compared to pulseaudio and jack ..

stncls 2y ago
I'm ready to believe that pipewire is imperfect (although I have personally experienced no crash, and did not have to configure anything), but the sentence from the original post is: > Therefore, I naturally omit the use and configuration of additional audio layers in the form of a Jack server, PulseAudio or the unfortunate PipeWire from RedHat. I cannot understand this sentiment. I have used all three for years each. If I had to qualify one as "unfortunate", it would certainly not be PipeWire (nor would it be Jack for that matter). > performance is not that great compared to pulseaudio and jack .. Jack makes different trade-offs by default, so for some definition of performance, yes, one could see it as superior to PipeWire. But in my experience PipeWire is better than PulseAudio on all axes (at least: latency, CPU usage, resampling quality).
- mouse_ 2y ago
  Right? PipeWire is the best.
  - eptcyka 2y ago
    Yeah, but it could still be better. I use it every day, and I wish it was better.
dralley 2y ago
> performance is not that great compared to pulseaudio and jack I'm aware that performance is not quite as good as Jack (but not by significant margins AFAIK), but how is performance worse than PulseAudio? That cuts against every datum I've ever heard about the two.
struanr 2y ago
> bluetooth audio is lower quality than it could be (AptX and LDAC codes unsupported) Not sure what you mean by this, aptX and aptX HD work flawlessly for my Bluetooth headphones with pipewire
- qrobit 2y ago
  Can confirm for LDAC too
  - aa-jv 2y ago
    Which distribution?
- aa-jv 2y ago
  Would be interesting to know your hardware setup, distro, etc. Not all pipewires' are considered equal.
whalesalad 2y ago
I am not sure what my system is running (debian 12) but I have aptX support with my bluetooth headset. https://i.postimg.cc/8PXzNzsS/Screenshot-20250206-094735.png https://i.postimg.cc/8PXzNzsS/Screenshot-20250206-094735.png Edit: pactl info | grep "Server Name" Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.65)

bluGill 2y ago

Lennart Poettering. That guy is smart and writes a lot of code. However he is also very controversial: anyone who loves Unix hates him because his ideas are very contrary to the "unix way". Poettering didn't create pipewire - he created pulse audio which pipewire closely emulates though, and so that will be unfortunate. The other issue is pipe wire had a very ambitious list of features they wanted to support and it took many years to make everything work according to their vision. Pipe wire has been out for several years before it was good enough that normal people could trust it. I've been running it for a couple years now, it is good now, but it wasn't. Pipewire supports video in ways users really want, and so there was pressure to put pipewire everywhere long before it was ready and so this is unfortunate. Today I will tell everyone to just use pipewire. It works and supports everything you really want to do.