Pipewire

Pipewire is the new sound system on Linux, meant to replace Pulseaudio.

Links

• PipeWire - Debian Wiki.
• PipeWire - ArchLinux
• PipeWire on HackerNews
• PipeWire repo - GitLab

• PipeWire issue trackers
• PipeWire (old) configuration docs

Speak about Pulse network transport:

# Setup server with
pipewire-pulse -a tcp:4713
# Connect to it with
PULSE_SERVER=tcp:<ip>:4713 pactl info

• WirePlumber - documentation

References

Configuration files:

• /usr/share/pipewire
• /usr/share/wireplumber

Commands

# View status
systemctl --user status pipewire

# Use PipeWire instead of JACK
pw-jack SOMEAPP

# PipeWire process viewer (quantum usage...)
pw-top

# Setup sinks, sources, audio devices
pw-link
qjackctl         # Graphical tool, leveraging on JACK
qpwgraph         # Alternative, pipewire native

# Get settings
pw-metadata -n settings

# Set settings
pw-metadata -n settings 0 clock.rate 48000
pw-metadata -n settings 0 clock.allowed-rates '[ 48000, 96000, 44100 ]'

# Command line
pw-cli
> info all

Troubleshooting

Setting and keeping bluetooth profile for headset

We want to use the profile sbc sbc_xq for our BT headset Sony WH-1000XM3.

Set the profile manually - profile should be persistent on reboot / reconnect.

• In principe WirePlumber should remember the last selected profile.
• See [1]

# See available profile and device id with 'pactl list'
pactl set-card-profile bluez_card.38_18_4C_4B_6A_3A a2dp-sink-sbc_xq

Configure profile

• When using pipewire-media-session, the default profile could be selected in bluez-monitor.conf, but this file no longer exists with WirePlumber.
• (UPDATE - Archlinux - Pipewire) Edit /etc/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/51-bluez-config.lua (or ~/.config/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/51-bluez-config.lua):

bluez_monitor.properties = {
  ["bluez5.enable-sbc-xq"] = true,
  ["bluez5.enable-msbc"] = true,
  ["bluez5.codecs"] = "[sbc sbc_xq]",
}

Crackling / Stuttering audio

This applies in a VM. Not sure these apply when PipeWire is run on the host.

• https://superuser.com/questions/1646216/fedora-34-vmware-workstation-vm-upgraded-from-fedora-33-has-audio-crackling
• https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/469

Enable multi-user audio

References

• Multi-user audio sharing with PipeWire - archlinux forum
• PipeWire issue 847

Currently PipeWire support sharing through network using Pulse, but auth-anonymous is always turned on (auth-ip-acl not implemented).

• On the main user, edit pipewire-pulse.conf (from Template:File/usr/share/pipewire, or any system or user-local equivalent file) in the context.modules section:

context.modules = [
    # ...
    { name = libpipewire-module-protocol-pulse
        args = {
            # the addresses this server listens on
            server.address = [
                "unix:native"
                "tcp:4713"                          # IPv4 and IPv6 on all addresses
            ]
        }
    }
]

On the secondary user, export the following env variables:

export PULSE_SERVER=tcp:127.0.0.1:4713

Note: make sure the port is allowed in the firewall as well.

• Another method it seems is to start the daemon manually [2]:

# On the server
pipewire-pulse -a tcp:4713
# On the client
PULSE_SERVER=tcp:SERVER_IP_ADDRESS:4713 pactl info