Has anyone experimented with Pipewire yet?

I see semi-regular updates to Pipewire getting released (latest I see is version 0.3.15, not yet considered feature complete, but enough that the developers are asking for feedback now from normal users).
Has anyone around here tried using it yet? It seems promising, the developers seem to understand the problems around Pulse for production use, and claim Pipewire can be used as a replacement for both jackd and pulseaudio, but I don’t think it is very smoothly integrated with any distributions yet, it still takes a little effort to setup as a replacement for both. I am behind on enough household chores that I can’t convince myself to spend time on this yet, but I’m curious if anyone else has jumped in already.

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Hi,

Well my feeling is that using PulseAudio on it’s own or JACK on it’s own is already not ideal and that combining them to work takes either understanding of Dbus… or 3rd party tools like Cadence or the specialized Ubuntu Studio Audio controls… or a specialized script like pajackconnect w/ Qjackctl… I can’t imagine what Pipewire could possible bring to the party without muddying the waters even further…

I love the free aspects of Linux but the freedom to reinvent a wheel 400 times without making it completely round is maddening as hell for the end user and worse for the distributors…

Whats next…? Pipewire gets forced on you by the Desktop Environment like PulseAudio is, or the Web Browser ditches all other Audio servers in it’s builds and suddenly you have no sound unless you install Pipewire?

I admittedly don’t know a lot about Pipewire at this point but how about we improve JACK or PulseAudio first instead of introducing another Audio server… :roll_eyes:

Yes I’m grumpy…

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A few on #ardour IRC have tested it successfully.

To Ardour it looks just like a running JACK server and that part already works well.
It also emulates an ALSA device that Ardour can use (to Ardour it also looks like an actual hardware device) but that part is not yet complete.

There is hope that pipewire will unify the fragmentation, and we can eventually retire jackd and pulseaudio servers, and existing applications will not have to be modified.

However it’s still very much a work in progress and it will likely be a while until distros will adopt it, replacing the default pulse (and jack) servers.

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Pipewire also has a bigger scope than pulse or jack. It includes other things such as video. It’s the only way (that I’m aware of) that you will be able to share your desktop for presentation in web/chat/etc applications under wayland.

I’m currently using it, no issues.

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I tried it and found it to be less stable than JACK. You can read about my experience with it here

Since that experiment I’ve written off experimenting with it until I buy another laptop and can install Manjaro on there and set it up exclusively to work with PW.

It is likely that pipewire will replace pulse where ever it is used as pretty much a drop in replacement. It is also likely it will replace jack for a lot of people (those who use jack so they can hear desktop audio while using Ardour or who like to use USB mics) or act as a jack client for those who wish to run jack separately for more esoteric uses or just cause they want to.
If things work out as I hope, Studio-controls will either go away or become a pipewire controller.
The only thing I am not sure of with pipewire at this point, is that with pulse there is only one set of outputs that (with a jack bridge) is static. This allows connecting the output of pulse into something like IDJC to use skype without having to connect it after the skype call is connected. Or to use audacity without having to look for what it’s input is called each time record is started.
Don’t be grumpy, pipewire is still a ways away from being the default in the big distros.

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I hope that we’ll get a feature that syncs Ardour audio to a video stream. I’m currently learning Ardour and will move to it for film audio production. But I’ll wait for PipeWire before using it in production as it disabling all my other audio is just not an option.

I’m aware of XJADEO but that only seems to work under X11 as far as I can read on their website.

On Linux, Ardour only works “under X11” also.

Ardour is already perfectly capable of being used for film audio production, Pipewire is not going to change that in any substantial way. We are not going to add video editing to Ardour, which drastically reduces the scope of the problems.

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Also, xjadeo is not some random 3rd party tool. It was written by one of Ardour’s primary developers, and comes bundled with the versions we distribute.

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I did not know that. What does that mean for the future? Are there plans to move to Wayland or will Ardour always rely on a compatibility layer (I think it’s called xWayland or something like that)?
I’m afraid no native Wayland support will result in a terrible experience on HIDPI monitors where UI elements become blurry when one uses fractional scaling.

I mean, I might be wrong. I’m not really that familiar with all these stuff besides what I read here and there and issues I discover here and there.

Of course not! I was not saying that. Nor would I ever use that. I was thinking more about integration with other software like Resolve, Blender, probably Olive one day… Done of course by an interested third party.

Yes, I’m aware of that. I haven’t tested it yet, mea culpa on my part.

On point one, you’re wrong. Ardour already works fine on HiDPI and Wayland/X11/Wayland is not going to change that. Remember that we also run on macOS and Windows with completely different GUI backends, and different HiDPI support.

On point two: you can already use Blender and Ardour with sample-accurate sync thanks to JACK Transport. Pipewire is not likely to change this mechanism. I have no idea whether or not Resolve supports this, or has plans to, but there’s no need for a new mechanism.

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Thanks for taking the time to answer me.
I’m always glad to be proven wrong b/c that usually means there is no issue or there is a workaround.
So yeey for that!

Also thanks for all the hard work you and other devs are doing. I first opened Ardour 10 years ago and didn’t open it again since a few months ago. To say that I was amazed would be an understatement, I was shocked beyond belief at the progress. So yeah, great work!

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