PipeWire 0.3.39 Brings Libcamera Plugin Improvements, Better Compatibility For JACK Apps

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PipeWire 0.3.39 Brings Libcamera Plugin Improvements, Better Compatibility For JACK Apps

PipeWire 0.3.39 was released on Thursday as the newest update to this audio/video stream solution for Linux systems that continues proving itself capable of replacing the roles of JACK and PulseAudio, among other use-cases...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PipeWire-0.3.39-Released

[SkyWarrior]

Just experienced the wireplumber this morning. Debian sid update removed the media session package completely but I guess wireplumber may be made default for the upcoming releases. Thanks to the maintainer I got a response very quickly.

[You-]

The LD_Preload for v4l2 is interesting. I always thought it would be a big issue to replace all existing code accessing v4l2 directly with the poral, but if this is made to work well (the notes say it doesnt work in chrome yet), it could be another transparent update of the underlying mechanisms like it is for pulseaudio and Jack.

[ssokolow]

The LD_Preload for v4l2 is interesting. I always thought it would be a big issue to replace all existing code accessing v4l2 directly with the poral, but if this is made to work well (the notes say it doesnt work in chrome yet), it could be another transparent update of the underlying mechanisms like it is for pulseaudio and Jack.

It's similar to previous things for retrofitting OSS apps, like aoss and padsp... though, nowadays, with OSS not being the hardware layer (unlike V4L), the device node paths are free to be implemented in userland via osspd and CUSE.

[birdie]

PipeWire is already miles better than the old classic PA server but the question remains

Why there are no graphical user-friendly utilities to configure either?

Say the average Joe wants to configure the default sample rate of his sound card or change resampler quality. Why should one edit highly cryptic files located God knows where and expect nothing to break?

[RahulSundaram]

PipeWire is already miles better than the old classic PA server but the question remains

Why there are no graphical user-friendly utilities to configure either?

Say the average Joe wants to configure the default sample rate of his sound card or change resampler quality. Why should one edit highly cryptic files located God knows where and expect nothing to break?

Not that a GUI wouldn't be nice to have but calling either PulseAudio or PipeWire configuration as cryptic or that one have so much trouble locating or be subjected to breakage is really a huge stretch. Average users aren't the one tweaking these settings anyway.

PulseAudio

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf
default-sample-rate = 16000

PipeWire

/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf
default.clock.rate = 192000

[birdie]

Not that a GUI wouldn't be nice to have but calling either PulseAudio or PipeWire configuration as cryptic or that one have so much trouble locating or be subjected to breakage is really a huge stretch. Average users aren't the one tweaking these settings anyway.

In Windows it's five mouse clicks away. Also, there's no need provide highly cryptic text files to me - I've been using Linux for more than two decades and I can configure everything perfectly, thank you very much.

The question was about the average Joe who doesn't even know how to express his desire. They surely don't know what "the sampling rate" is but they've heard that 192KHz is better than 44100Hz for his audio/sound card and you can't blame them.

Also, for some reasons you assume not only people can properly ask such questions, they can edit the appropriate files and revert the changes in case something breaks.

Too many assumptions in 2021 when everything the average Joe faces in his mundane life should be configurable via GUI. I've not even begun to ask hard questions like: how to allow/deny certain applications access to the Internet (that's trivial under Windows using a graphical firewall) or allow/deny applications to run (equally trivial via Group Policy Software Restrictions Policy).

[RahulSundaram]

The question was about the average Joe who doesn't even know how to express his desire. They surely don't know what "the sampling rate" is but they've heard that 192KHz is better than 44100Hz for his audio/sound card and you can't blame them.

If someone speaks directly for their own experiences, I would consider that far more credible than clearly not average users making assumptions on behalf of them and speaking about what they cannot do or have trouble with.

[bple2137]

Why there are no graphical user-friendly utilities to configure either?

Feel free to create one if you've got some ideas on what could it be, or even mock it up so somebody could implement it. I don't think that's their goal and I believe it shouldn't be.

The question was about the average Joe who doesn't even know how to express his desire. They surely don't know what "the sampling rate" is but they've heard that 192KHz is better than 44100Hz for his audio/sound card and you can't blame them.

Please, tell me how the "average Joe" is manipulating his sampling rate on Windows/MacOS not even knowing what this is. I'm being serious, I didn't use anything but Linux for 16 years now (apart from 15 minutes please VM give me what I need and vanish) and I switched when I was 13 years old. I don't really know how it is easier on other OSes.

Anyway, it's unbelievable how advanced this thing is already and I'm daily driving it being absolutely pleased even when jamming on my guitar and drums, having it all so accessible within one audio thingy. Audio on Linux just got big big upgrade.

What blew my mind recently is:
I accidentally run Ardour while talking to my friend without thinking what I'm doing, and I set it up so the guitar sound came from my multi-effect external sound card input through USB, but monitor was on my regular motherboard sound card. I set the buffer size to 128 and the latency was about 5ms and I jammed like it was just guitar connected to an amp. I didn't even know it's possible! No xruns

[You-]

PipeWire is already miles better than the old classic PA server but the question remains

Why there are no graphical user-friendly utilities to configure either?

Because any other sound configuration GUI works. Including all those aimed at pulseaudio and JACK.

• pavucontrol
• Easy Effects
• Helvum
• qjacktl
• Carla

But most users dont need these. We just want good audio by default. For those that do are have more "pro" needs, the features are available from within the DAW software (eg ardour) they use.