Hi all,

in 23.10 the following issue occurred:

The audio system has been installed "out of the box", and every device
like headset, internal speaker and microphone were accessible.
Except my external microphone, "Sandberg USB 126-07", which I often use
for video conferences, was shown in pavucontrol, but the signal level was
not shown, and audacity hung when trying to use this as input.

After all, I removed every package with "pipewire" in their name, to have
only alsa and pulseaudio left.

Then it worked, but I am wondering, what pipewire is good for at all. And,
what side effects I have to expect, now, that pipewire has been removed.

Does anyone know? -- Thanks!

Best regards,

Markus

On 11/25/2023 3:45 AM, Markus Robert Kessler wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> in 23.10 the following issue occurred:
>
> The audio system has been installed "out of the box", and every device
> like headset, internal speaker and microphone were accessible.
> Except my external microphone, "Sandberg USB 126-07", which I often use
> for video conferences, was shown in pavucontrol, but the signal level was
> not shown, and audacity hung when trying to use this as input.
>
> After all, I removed every package with "pipewire" in their name, to have
> only alsa and pulseaudio left.
>
> Then it worked, but I am wondering, what pipewire is good for at all. And,
> what side effects I have to expect, now, that pipewire has been removed.
>
> Does anyone know? -- Thanks!
>
> Best regards,
>
> Markus
>

I don't know if anyone has written a good perspective on "the History of Linux Audio",
but it is deserving of a treatment. Instead, we can use comments in Wiki
articles, to fill in some of the gaps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture

"ALSA is part of the Linux kernel, while PulseAudio is middleware,
a part of the lower levels of the desktop stack. So is SDL"

"Open Sound System version 4 is able to emulate ALSA." <=== at one time, this might have
been a succession plan, until
PulseAudio came along and ruined
the plan. The distraction of PulseAudio
ensured OSS4 was kicked to the curb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire

"Taymans wanted to support both consumer and professional audio use cases,
and consulted Paul Davis (Jack developer) and Robin Gareus (Ardour developer)
for advice on implementation for professional audio. At this time, the
name PipeWire was adopted for the project."

"Reception

PipeWire has received much praise, especially among the GNOME and Arch Linux
communities. Particularly as it fixes problems that some PulseAudio users
had experienced, including high CPU usage,[25] Bluetooth connection issues,[26][27]
and JACK backend issues.[28]"

So I guess that's another middleware. A middleware intended for professional
computer audio users, rather than just for you.

When you see comments like some of the ones in that Wiki Pipewire article,
you have to take that with a grain of salt. We all know that Pipewire
was invented, just to kick PulseAudio out. PulseAudio does not work today,
the way it did when it was invented, so some of its "crimes" were
tamed by subsequent development. At first, PulseAudio used to run
RT, and in a Virtual Machine environment, that guaranteed
"years and fucking years", of broken audio. Today, running RT
is not part of the plan.

You would need a person who actually knows how to use Ubuntu Studio
properly, to give us a perspective on this. Why we need Pipewire
on ordinary end-user computers. To convince us this has some
value to every user, and not just to three guys using patch panels
in their moms basement.

Let's hope that the "transition process" causes less damage this time,
than some of the efforts in the past.

Like, if someone breaks my audio again for nothing,
the walls will be on fire from the expletives :-/

I want to see the "base use case" for audio to work,
when a new technology is to be delivered. We shouldn't
have to keep reinventing the wheel, with every middleware.
A persons audio should "just work", end of story. I should
not have to be in constant "test mode".

Paul