pulseaudio -> pipewire

[Frank Elsner via users]

Hi,

I'm a podcaster and therefore I need a functional audio environment.
Currently I use pulseaudio on a Fedora 33 system. Works for me.

Will this also work if I upgrade to Fedora 34?

Is there an equivalent to pavucontrol? I need it to adjust
the level of my external audio interface?

I'm heavy interested in any experience - especially pitfalls - before
I start the upgrade.


Thanks in advance,
Frank
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[Ed Greshko]

Post by Frank Elsner via users
Hi,
I'm a podcaster and therefore I need a functional audio environment.
Currently I use pulseaudio on a Fedora 33 system. Works for me.
Will this also work if I upgrade to Fedora 34?
Is there an equivalent to pavucontrol? I need it to adjust
the level of my external audio interface?
I'm heavy interested in any experience - especially pitfalls - before
I start the upgrade.

pavucontrol is compatible with pipewire.  I've not seen any difference in how my upgraded
system performs.

--
Remind me to ignore comments which aren't germane to the thread.
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[Tethys]

On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 9:16 AM Frank Elsner via users

Post by Frank Elsner via users
Is there an equivalent to pavucontrol? I need it to adjust
the level of my external audio interface?
I'm heavy interested in any experience - especially pitfalls - before
I start the upgrade.

I've had mixed success. pavucontrol continues to work. However,
alsamixer and amixer (both of which I relied on in various places)
don't. The switch to pipewire has not been a pleasant experience for
me.

Tet

--
I saw cout being shifted "Hello world" times to the left and stopped
right there. — Steve Gonedes
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[Tethys]

Post by Tethys
I've had mixed success. pavucontrol continues to work. However,
alsamixer and amixer (both of which I relied on in various places)
don't. The switch to pipewire has not been a pleasant experience for
me.

I'd also say that they've significantly heavier weight than pulseaudio
was. Between then, pipewire and pipewire-pulse are consistently using
10% of my available CPU time between them, which is insane.

Tet

--
I saw cout being shifted "Hello world" times to the left and stopped
right there. — Steve Gonedes
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[Frank Elsner via users]

Post by Tethys

Post by Tethys
I've had mixed success. pavucontrol continues to work. However,
alsamixer and amixer (both of which I relied on in various places)
don't. The switch to pipewire has not been a pleasant experience for
me.

I'd also say that they've significantly heavier weight than pulseaudio
was. Between then, pipewire and pipewire-pulse are consistently using
10% of my available CPU time between them, which is insane.

That doesn't sound good. Is there a chance and way to stay with pulseaudio?


--Frank
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[Kseniya Blashchuk]

I use pulseaudio at the moment with fedora 34, tried pipewire but had much
headache with bluetooth headphones. However I should admit that HSP/HFP
profile started working with pipewire (did not work with pulseaudio at
all). Still it is quite unstable, so I had to switch back to pulseaudio and
use internal laptop microphone with bluetooth headphones.

On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 4:11 PM Frank Elsner via users <

Post by Frank Elsner via users

Post by Tethys

Post by Tethys
I've had mixed success. pavucontrol continues to work. However,
alsamixer and amixer (both of which I relied on in various places)
don't. The switch to pipewire has not been a pleasant experience for
me.

I'd also say that they've significantly heavier weight than pulseaudio
was. Between then, pipewire and pipewire-pulse are consistently using
10% of my available CPU time between them, which is insane.

That doesn't sound good. Is there a chance and way to stay with pulseaudio?
--Frank
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[Frank Elsner via users]

Post by Kseniya Blashchuk
I use pulseaudio at the moment with fedora 34, tried pipewire but had much
headache with bluetooth headphones. However I should admit that HSP/HFP
profile started working with pipewire (did not work with pulseaudio at
all). Still it is quite unstable, so I had to switch back to pulseaudio and
use internal laptop microphone with bluetooth headphones.

How did you switch back?
My update command requires --allowerasing to complete.


--Frank
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[Kseniya Blashchuk]

Yes, either pulseaudio or pipewire can be installed, from my history:
1137 | install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth --allowerasing
| 2021-05-19 14:33 | E, I | 2
1136 | install pulseaudio --allowerasing
| 2021-05-19 14:32 | E, I | 3 EE

Post by Frank Elsner via users

Post by Kseniya Blashchuk
I use pulseaudio at the moment with fedora 34, tried pipewire but had

much

Post by Kseniya Blashchuk
headache with bluetooth headphones. However I should admit that HSP/HFP
profile started working with pipewire (did not work with pulseaudio at
all). Still it is quite unstable, so I had to switch back to pulseaudio

and

Post by Kseniya Blashchuk
use internal laptop microphone with bluetooth headphones.

How did you switch back?
My update command requires --allowerasing to complete.
--Frank

[Tom Horsley]

On Thu, 27 May 2021 14:04:28 +0100

Post by Tethys
I'd also say that they've significantly heavier weight than pulseaudio
was. Between then, pipewire and pipewire-pulse are consistently using
10% of my available CPU time between them, which is insane.

I just tried playing a youtube video while running top
and the max I saw pipewire hit was 1.7%, it was normally at 1.3%.
I didn't see pipewire-pulse at all (isn't that only needed if
you want a pulse compatibility layer running?)

I don't do any exotic audio usage, but the only difference
I've seen is that it no longer takes audio a second or two
to start working again if I pause a youtube video for a while
then come back later and start it up again. I used to always
miss a second or so with pulse.
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[Tim via users]

Post by Tom Horsley
I don't do any exotic audio usage, but the only difference
I've seen is that it no longer takes audio a second or two
to start working again if I pause a youtube video for a while
then come back later and start it up again. I used to always
miss a second or so with pulse.

This sort of thing always gets me. We have gigahertz CPUs, and
megahertz other things on board, yet various bits of hardware take
incredibly long (relatively speaking) amounts of time to get started.

--

uname -rsvp
Linux 5.11.21-100.fc32.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri May 14 18:03:50 UTC 2021 x86_64

Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted.
I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list.

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[Matti Pulkkinen]

Post by Frank Elsner via users
Hi,
I'm a podcaster and therefore I need a functional audio environment.
Currently I use pulseaudio on a Fedora 33 system. Works for me.
Will this also work if I upgrade to Fedora 34?
Is there an equivalent to pavucontrol? I need it to adjust 
the level of my external audio interface?
I'm heavy interested in any experience - especially pitfalls - before
I start the upgrade.
Thanks in advance,
Frank

I'm sure my use of audio is nowhere near as complex as that of someone
who needs to record a podcast, but I thought I'd throw my two cents in
anyway. After moving from F33 to F34, I've found my own audio
experience to be either the same as before in some parts and improved
in some other parts. I use two different laptops, one with bluetooth
headphones and the other with a USB headset. I also use a desktop
computer with headphones connected through a 3.5 mm plug.


The same:
Listening to music, watching videos, and other basic stuff like that
works exactly the same as before. Using Zoom for work and school works
fine, as it did before. I've found no issues when recording game
footage or screencasts with OBS, with or without a microphone. Over
bluetooth, there is still a slight delay before audio output begins
after it has been paused for a time, but this is probably to do with
some kind of power saving feature somewhere rather than pipewire.

Just like before, I sometimes still get a crackling noise in Steam
games, and to fix that I need to add PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=100 %command%
to the launch options for those games to get the crackling to go away.



The improved:
I don't know if this is to do with pipewire, the kernel, or whatever
manages bluetooth, but I've found that my bluetooth headphones work
better than before. Before, they would sometimes either not play audio
at all, or play it very choppily, if the headphones were connected to
more than one device simultaneously; this is no longer an issue. As an
aside, even just connecting the headphones over bluetooth seems to work
much better now.

I've noticed a clear improvement in the audio experience on my desktop
computer. Previously, sometimes the normal audio output would not
become active at all. It's not even that it wouldn't be selected as the
default, but it just wouldn't even show up as an option in the audio
settings. I would also sometimes get this weird problem where the
output was selected correctly, and the meter was moving when audio was
being output, but nothing could be heard through the headphones. I've
experienced none of this so far with F34.



The different:
I have noticed something that may have broken in the switch from
pulseaudio to pipewire: when I went to share my screen in Zoom the
other week, I noticed there was a bit of text in the bottom of the
window that said something about pulseaudio version this-or-that being
required for sharing desktop audio over Zoom. I can't remember ever
seeing this before, but in any case I've never had a need to share
desktop audio over Zoom, so I haven't taken the time to test whether
that works or not.


--
Terveisin / Regards,
Matti Pulkkinen


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[Matti Pulkkinen]

Post by Matti Pulkkinen
I would also sometimes get this weird problem where the
output was selected correctly, and the meter was moving when audio was
being output, but nothing could be heard through the headphones. I've
experienced none of this so far with F34.

It appears I spoke too soon, as I happened to run into this problem
again just now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


--
Terveisin / Regards,
Matti Pulkkinen


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[Frank Elsner via users]

Post by Frank Elsner via users
Hi,
I'm a podcaster and therefore I need a functional audio environment.
Currently I use pulseaudio on a Fedora 33 system. Works for me.
Will this also work if I upgrade to Fedora 34?
Is there an equivalent to pavucontrol? I need it to adjust
the level of my external audio interface?
I'm heavy interested in any experience - especially pitfalls - before
I start the upgrade.

Thanks to everyone who replied. the answers were very helpful.
So i will dare to upgrade.


--Frank
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[Steve Underwood]

Post by Frank Elsner via users
Hi,
I'm a podcaster and therefore I need a functional audio environment.
Currently I use pulseaudio on a Fedora 33 system. Works for me.
Will this also work if I upgrade to Fedora 34?
Is there an equivalent to pavucontrol? I need it to adjust
the level of my external audio interface?
I'm heavy interested in any experience - especially pitfalls - before
I start the upgrade.

When I upgraded from F32 to F33 pulseaudio changed from something with a
few quirks, to something very troublesome. The main issue was I had to
restart pulseaudio several times after logging in before it would
actually find my audio devices. I found the cure was to switch to
pipewire. The main long term quirk I had with pulseaudio was that
sometimes starting an app, particularly chrome, would make the sound
distort, and pulseaudio had to be restarted to recover from this. I
haven't seen this problem since changing to pipewire. pipewire does seem
to show up in a "top" report as using a bit more CPU. This might be
because it is mixing in floating point, or because it just hasn't been
that well optimised so far, but its CPU load is only a few percent.

I have not used the jack side of pipewire. I have no idea how well that
works.

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[George N. White III]

Post by Steve Underwood

[...]

When I upgraded from F32 to F33 pulseaudio changed from something with a
few quirks, to something very troublesome. The main issue was I had to
restart pulseaudio several times after logging in before it would
actually find my audio devices. I found the cure was to switch to
pipewire. The main long term quirk I had with pulseaudio was that
sometimes starting an app, particularly chrome, would make the sound
distort, and pulseaudio had to be restarted to recover from this. I
haven't seen this problem since changing to pipewire. pipewire does seem
to show up in a "top" report as using a bit more CPU. This might be
because it is mixing in floating point, or because it just hasn't been
that well optimised so far, but its CPU load is only a few percent.

You don't mention how capable a CPU you have. There are tradeoffs.
Modern processors often have "spare" CPU cycles that are used to
advantage, e.g., by measures that reduce memory usage, add
features, etc. Many people have vastly overpowered CPU's for
their workloads, so developers may be tempted to add features that
would not have made sense a few years ago.

With linux, they who develop software chose tradeoffs. Most of them
are unlikely to have access to bottom-end hardware for testing It is
inevitable that some use cases will suffer collateral damage. This
might include your issues with pulseaudio on F34. Collateral damage
can occur when drivers are modified to use new capabilities, or when
legacy quirks needed to support older modules are removed when a
new module eliminates a legacy problem.

[Steve Underwood]

Post by Steve Underwood

[...]

When I upgraded from F32 to F33 pulseaudio changed from something with a
few quirks, to something very troublesome. The main issue was I had to
restart pulseaudio several times after logging in before it would
actually find my audio devices. I found the cure was to switch to
pipewire. The main long term quirk I had with pulseaudio was that
sometimes starting an app, particularly chrome, would make the sound
distort, and pulseaudio had to be restarted to recover from this. I
haven't seen this problem since changing to pipewire. pipewire does seem
to show up in a "top" report as using a bit more CPU. This might be
because it is mixing in floating point, or because it just hasn't been
that well optimised so far, but its CPU load is only a few percent.
You don't mention how capable a CPU you have.  There are tradeoffs.
Modern processors often have "spare" CPU cycles that are used to
advantage, e.g., by measures that reduce memory usage, add
features, etc.   Many people have vastly overpowered CPU's for
their workloads, so developers may be tempted to add features that
would not have made sense a few years ago.
With linux, they who develop software chose tradeoffs. Most of them
are unlikely to have access to bottom-end hardware for testing  It is
inevitable that some use cases will suffer collateral damage.  This
might include your issues with pulseaudio on F34. Collateral damage
can occur when drivers are modified to use new capabilities, or when
legacy quirks needed to support older modules are removed when a
new module eliminates a legacy problem.
--
George N. White III

I have no issues with the CPU power that pipewire is taking. Someone
else mentioned that it uses more than pulseaudio, and I concur that this
is the case. Since its only a few percent of one core, I don't really care.

Steve

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[Ian Chapman]

Post by Frank Elsner via users
Hi,
I'm a podcaster and therefore I need a functional audio environment.
Currently I use pulseaudio on a Fedora 33 system. Works for me.
Will this also work if I upgrade to Fedora 34?
Is there an equivalent to pavucontrol? I need it to adjust
the level of my external audio interface?
I'm heavy interested in any experience - especially pitfalls - before
I start the upgrade.

For me the only issue has been constantly switching to another audio
output device other than my monitors' audio over displayport when they
go into power saving or sometimes on boot.


--
Regards,
Ian Chapman
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