PipeWire 0.3.77 (2023-08-04)
This is a quick bugfix release that is API and ABI compatible with previous 0.3.x releases.
Highlights
- Fix a bug in ALSA source where the available number of samples was miscaluclated and resulted in xruns in some cases.
- A new L permission was added to make it possible to force a link between nodes even when the nodes can’t see each other.
- The VBAN module now supports midi send and receive as well.
- Many cleanups and small fixes.
it’s amazing how rapid the development of pipewire into a “usable state” so that distro quickly put it as drop in replacement for “matured” pulseaudio
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I’ve read before that Pulse really had a difficult challenge, since it had to really resolve a lot of hardware vendor quirks that essentially would never be resolved. PipeWire gets the advantage of not having those early growing pains, because Pulse went through them. I’m not involved with the development of either to really know one way or another the truth behind that story.
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Sounds reasonable to me. The day only has so much hours. Software engineering is always a story of trade-offs, isn’t it?
Why do you think these issues have nothing to do with drivers? Apart from confusing controls, all of these can be attributed to hardware and driver quirks.
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All of the following is speculation on my side and just stated as fact for easier reading / writing.
Because through the years I never had problems with plain Alsa on the same hardware
Because it did not allow for the functionality that exposed those bugs (as in PulseAudio provided features that should work according to documentation, but didn’t)
I don’t have problems with pipewire either on that hardware.
Because these bugs got fixed after PulseAudio exposed them.
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I love pipewire for my audio.
True, and it’s fabulous for video as well.
Ow you are right. I wasn’t aware of the video part of Pipewire. Which allows very low latency video recording as well.
Fun fact: with the proper plugins, you can capture both the video and the output of a particular window / process in OBS, giving you a stream of exactly that and nothing else (which you can then mix with other sources). Very handy for streaming if you don’t want to include voice chat (for privacy reasons) or background music (DMCA takedown on VODs).
However, for capturing Vulkan games, I recommend the vkcapture plugin. It acts as a Vulkan layer and is very performant, plus I get the impression it works better with Freesync.
I hate OBS under Linux still doesn’t allow me to use the GPU (using AMD videocard) for encoding.
Don’t blame OBS, AMD’s video encoding is awful in a multitude of ways
owh…? I was hoping it was open-source. Some standard API. or something…
As someone said, there are ways to get it working in OBS.
Does it expose the full feature set using VA-API? I have no clue. I was never able to actually hit the bitrate I wanted.
Please note that cards until the RX 6000 generation do not support B-frames.
AMD’s encoders are garbage, but if you insist, you can use VA-API to get accelerated encoding in the output advanced settings.
Pipewire devs are real Chads.
Perhaps a shot in the dark, but does anyone know if this update does anything to change the sound issues on Samsung laptops? For example, I have a GalaxyBook3 Pro 360, and it doesn’t matter what distro I use; I cannot get audio working. I spent 8 hours one day just going through forums and trying various fixes but could never get anything to work.
Is it because of missing firmware? From the Arch wiki on ALSA:
sof-firmware is required for some newer laptop models (mainly since 2019) because they implement their drivers with firmware provided by the Sound Open Firmware project.
I swear I tried all of that and uninstalled the existing firmware, and pulled the newer files. I might give it another go, but I saw on a thread that this is a specific issue with Galaxy Book devices. Someone had a detailed step-by-step guide to get the audio working; I tried it, but it didn’t.
seems quite a precise topic. Id actually go the the github or gitlab an open an issue so the main devs answer you.
Yeah, it’s such a small percentage of users affected too. I have other laptops that run various distros of Linux without issues, but my Galaxy Book can’t get any audio unless I plug in speakers or headphones.
Thank you for the advice.
There’s a lot of love for it here, so I guess my experience isn’t typical. I updated to Ubuntu Lunar Lobster on my home media machine, which comes with PipeWire by default, and it’s utter shit. The vocals and some instruments in my music tracks only play nearly inaudibly from the center channel of my 5.1 surround system. It’s unlistenable, even with the center volume boosted.
Seriously, what am I missing? How can it do audio that poorly?
