PipeWire 0.3.57 Adds AAC Decoder, Opus For Bluetooth

[V1tol]

I tried to use PipeWire on Void Linux a few days ago but I noticed some serious shortcomings. When I start PipeWire on Void I have sound right away, but it plays on my laptop speakers.

I wanted to play a movie on our TV via the HDMI cable and send the sound to the TV. For Pulse you can of course use pavucontrol and select the HDMI output and it will work.

For PipeWire I started looking for GUI interfaces and something recommended is Helvum. I then installed this on Void but this app is completely useless as a GUI for PipeWire compared to eg pavucontrol.

Then I tried QjackCtl. I configured mpv to use jack, and I was able to play sound via PipeWire + mpv on the laptop speakers. But then when I selected the TV or any HDMI output in QjackCtl and I restarted Jack and it couldn't produce any sound in mpv. Although mpv seemed to be configured correctly because it could make sound via Jack, mpv and PipeWire on the laptop.

It seems PipeWire is currently having trouble sending sound to HDMI sources. And I don't think QjackCtl is as user friendly as pavucontrol.

You are overengineering things. I am using Pipewire as sound server and pipewire-pulse for apps. In this case pavucontrol can be used to switch outputs for generic apps like Firefox or mpv. For ALSA apps pipewire-alsa can be used - I use it for WINE mostly since their pulse implementation is just horrible. I have USB mic, headphones in 3.5 analog port, TV over HDMI and audio over optic SPDIF - everything is switching flawlessly using default KDE sound GUI.

[Classical]

Classical pavucontrol works with Pipewire.

On my default desktop I use FreeBSD so I can't test it right away.
I will try tonight to start PipeWire and then use pavucontrol.

[fallingcats]

Does this mean, that microphones are now supported for a2dp-profiles?

They always were. It's just that A2DP still does not work in both directions simultaneously.

[Wtay]

Does this mean, that microphones are now supported for a2dp-profiles?

I means that when pipewire is a receiver (acting like a bluetooth speaker) it can now also accept AAC encoded audio and decode and play it.

[anarki2]

Opus sounds friggin awesome, but is there ANY device out there that actually supports it?

[redgreen925]

I tried to use PipeWire on Void Linux a few days ago but I noticed some serious shortcomings. When I start PipeWire on Void I have sound right away, but it plays on my laptop speakers.

I wanted to play a movie on our TV via the HDMI cable and send the sound to the TV. For Pulse you can of course use pavucontrol and select the HDMI output and it will work.

For PipeWire I started looking for GUI interfaces and something recommended is Helvum. I then installed this on Void but this app is completely useless as a GUI for PipeWire compared to eg pavucontrol.

Then I tried QjackCtl. I configured mpv to use jack, and I was able to play sound via PipeWire + mpv on the laptop speakers. But then when I selected the TV or any HDMI output in QjackCtl and I restarted Jack and it couldn't produce any sound in mpv. Although mpv seemed to be configured correctly because it could make sound via Jack, mpv and PipeWire on the laptop.

It seems PipeWire is currently having trouble sending sound to HDMI sources. And I don't think QjackCtl is as user friendly as pavucontrol.

I click on the speaker icon in KDE and it offers up a selection of the four devices that will play the sound, my 5.1 Firewire, a usb device connected that outputs to headphone or inputs a mic, my HDMI TV and the internal sound card. All them devices work flawlessly for sound when selected. It seems you have a problem with choice of Desktop with its applications used on that desktop for outputting the sound, not Pipewire. And that piece of junk Pulse play any sound on my machine using it and within five minutes the machine needs a hard reset after the freezing of the machine, Pipewire has just worked from the first second I installed and and has never failed me since.

[Wtay]

Opus sounds friggin awesome, but is there ANY device out there that actually supports it?

No, of course not, it is a pipewire specific vendor codec for now. You can use it to stream between pipewire machines and people are free to implement the spec..

[polarathene]

Opus sounds friggin awesome, but is there ANY device out there that actually supports it?

Yeah, any linux to linux system using bluetooth with this version of pipewire?

Opus is not part any of the bluetooth audio standards IIRC, there was more details on Pipewire Gitlab merge request for the feature (I vaguely remember glossing over it a while back).

Who knows, maybe some products will eventually adopt it, not sure how it compares to LE audio with Bluetooth 5.2+ (LC3 codec I think?).

There's a few non-standard ones already in-use elsewhere. One company in particular produces a few USB dongle/adapter products with third-parties supporting their codec, so some vendors might be interested in adding opus support too. But other than using adapters, you'd need Windows/macOS/Android to add in support to see broader adoption I think?

[anarki2]

Yeah, any linux to linux system using bluetooth with this version of pipewire?

Opus is not part any of the bluetooth audio standards IIRC, there was more details on Pipewire Gitlab merge request for the feature (I vaguely remember glossing over it a while back).

Who knows, maybe some products will eventually adopt it, not sure how it compares to LE audio with Bluetooth 5.2+ (LC3 codec I think?).

There's a few non-standard ones already in-use elsewhere. One company in particular produces a few USB dongle/adapter products with third-parties supporting their codec, so some vendors might be interested in adding opus support too. But other than using adapters, you'd need Windows/macOS/Android to add in support to see broader adoption I think?

Uh, the only place where BT audio makes sense is device-to-speaker. For anything else you have better tools.

LC3 is just an Opus ripoff with royalty fees, btw.

I'd love to see some headphones adding support to this, but with the BT consortium being this corrupt, I have my doubts.

Still, great news, because we at least solved half of the chicken vs egg problem. Maybe some cheap Chinese knockoffs start adopting Opus to save on license costs or something.

[polarathene]

Uh, the only place where BT audio makes sense is device-to-speaker. For anything else you have better tools.

What's your better option for bluetooth / wireless mic?

Your device could be a linux system that plays audio over bluetooth on a speaker elsewhere nearby connected to a small / cheap SBC also running linux? But I get it, you'd likely have better options when you've got direct control of both OS like that. Maybe though one of those MCU products with bluetooth will come out with the support, I wouldn't be surprised to see it on one of the Espressif (makers of ESP32) products at some point, those are quite affordable (but those RPi Zero's are probably competitive beyond power usage for the same task?)

I use bluetooth headphones (audio only, no mic) and it works well enough (AAC). I don't know if I'd have an issue with a mic over bluetooth, but I don't see the quality of the mic hardware itself worthwhile (ignoring bluetooth audio profiles), they're just for convenience vs a proper mic.