Linux's USB Audio Driver Aims For Latency Reduction

With the upcoming Linux 5.14 cycle, the USB sound driver will ideally exhibit lower latency when starting playback.

Longtime Linux kernel sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE has been working on a clean-up to the kernel's USB-Audio driver and with an emphasis on latency reduction during audio playback.

Takashi acknowledges his patches are a bit intrusive but he's hopeful after with good results so far using PulseAudio, JACK, PipeWire, native ALSA, and other back-ends not showing any problems. These patches have been queued into the sound subsystem's "for-next" Git branch ahead of the Linux 5.14 merge window opening in a few weeks.

For those interested in the technical details, this patch in particular covers the attempt at reducing the latency at playback start for the USB audio code. That attempt is reverting a prior workaround and just impacts the playback latency but not capturing.

How's your Linux USB and wireless audio support been working out these days with recent devices and different desktops / audio back-ends? The situation is certainly much improved from in the past, but let us know in the forums if you are still encountering any Linux audio oddities.