WirePlumber 0.4.9 Fixes Surround Sound For Some Linux Games

[phoronix]

Phoronix: WirePlumber 0.4.9 Fixes Surround Sound For Some Linux Games

WirePlumber is the increasingly used session/policy manager for PipeWire for audio/video streams on the Linux desktop. Out this weekend is WirePlumber 0.4.9 with some important fixes and improvements...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=WirePlumber-0.4.9

[schmidtbag]

This very well could be the thing that gets me to switch to PW on my gaming PC. Surround sound was the main reason I've held off doing so.

[GraysonPeddie]

I am the one that reported the issue and this is the final result!

https://odysee.com/@GraysonPeddie:6/...-ffxii-1080p:d
https://odysee.com/@GraysonPeddie:6/...proton-1080p:0

Also, it deals with Steam's Proton, which is based on Wine. Previously, before the release of Wireplumber 0.4.9 I replaced Pipewire-Pulse with PulseAudio that will give me 5.1 surround sound with Proton. This involved installing Pipewire-Jack and I have the following configuration that will give me 5.1 with a PulseAudio package installed.

gpeddie@epcotcenter
~
$ cat .pulse/default.pa
load-module module-native-protocol-unix
load-module module-jack-sink channels=6
load-module module-jack-source channels=1
load-module module-null-sink
load-module module-stream-restore
load-module module-rescue-streams
load-module module-always-sink
load-module module-suspend-on-idle
set-default-sink jack_out
set-default-source jack_in

Now with 0.4.9 of Wireplumber, I don't need that config file anymore, but I decided to keep it just in case I want to switch back to PulseAudio and PulseAudio-Jack in the future. Sure, Pipewire-Pulse is a drop-in replacement, but I will never know until I have a reason for switching to PulseAudio.

schmidtbag, give Pipewire with the latest version of Wireplumber 0.4.9 a try.

And thank you Michael for the article.

[GraysonPeddie]

The issue is now closed. Every Proton/Wine game that makes use of surround sound should work now.