Continuing the jack/pipewire debate...

[bluebell]

I think it's the old "We make it better for new users" paradigm. This means that existing users don't count who put lots of efforts and time into configuring their system.

I don't feel like finding out if it's possible to run 2 audio interfaces with 2 different buffer sizes with pipewire.

[glowrak guy]

I haven't changed settings in qjackctl, or anywhere in /etc for many years. My hardware synths, guitar amps, daws, plugins, and standalones
are all ready to record when the Muse shrieks or whispers (yes, she's a bit moody these days ) The linux community has been infected
by futzititis by those who were born with it. But it's curable.

In defense of pipewire's potential, if Rui makes a pipewire gui fully matching qjackctl, with all the same options, settings choices, and capabilities, I'll give pipewire a serious prolonged test.
Cheers

[Audiojunkie]

If you sit someone down who has never used Linux for audio before, they will have an easier time with Pipewire as it cuts a lot of the crap out that either experienced users have got over or that caused people to uninstall and not bother. You don't have to have a way to switch JACK on, you don't have to run a script to connect pulse to JACK. Most people can't/don't want to deal with things like this and they will just go somewhere else. You don't have to care about that stuff at all with Pipewire.

Well, let's be honest, not really... PipeWire has some solid merits indeed but lets not put on rose-colored glasses..

Let's say your Distro comes with PipeWire in a good solid recent version, you are new to Linux and you want to try Ardour but your stems to import are all at 44.1Khz.. PipeWire's default is 48000Khz and Ardour is either going to blunt force convert the sample rate on import or it's going to accommodate on the fly which is a worse option so if you just want to get the system running at 44100Khz you're going to either have to bang open a terminal and incant some pipewire-metadata command which as a newbie you will neither want to open a terminal nor will probably have no idea what command to enter. Other than that unless your Distro ships a PipeWire metadata GUI (most don't yet) you're going to have to go into the system file tree with a text editor and then tell PipeWire you want 44100Khz in one of many obtusely named config files..

If you succeed in that the next launch of Ardour is still going to yell at you because your User doesn't have security limits permissions and as a new User you're going to have to figure out what that means, what 'groups' are and how to add yourself to a 'pipewire' group that Ardour's cryptic warning will not give you any clue of and you will not think of on your own..

Next you'll most likely want to screw down the latency which without a pre-installed GUI is also going to mean a trip to the terminal or a system-wide config mod at least at first.. Sure you can copy the configs to your Home folder but this again is not trivial for a new Linux User.

To be fair yes, perhaps a step or two less than configuring a JACK/Pulse system from scratch but a Ubuntu Studio or any other Production-ready OS will likely have most of that done.. As an example in AV Linux the base configuration of the ISO build is for everything to work and be fully routed as soon as the Audio device is selected.

PipeWire is capable of a lot of cool stuff, but please don't blow smoke that it's install-and-go for serious Audio work because it's just not..

There are at least 6-8 front ends available now for Pipewire for configuring all of those settings. You no longer even need to use the command prompt with Pipewire.

[Audiojunkie]

@GMaq

If you use ALSA mode with Ardour, you can change the project sample rate to what you like in the setting. When switching between sessions with different sample rates, the audio settings dialogue comes up again, click start and the project loads. No need to go into config files. The same goes for buffer settings.

If you use ALSA mode without a special environment prepended launcher to tell Ardour to specifically use 'pipewire-alsa' (another thing a Linux newbie will have no clue about having to create) then indeed you can hook into the Audio hardware at the driver level and set your parameters (this is how I always use Ardour) but then you are circumventing PipeWire and are into the age old problem of Ardour hogging the Audio device and neutering PipeWire as effectively as it neuters PulseAudio in the same situation..

Look I'm not trying to go full curmudgeon mode here... I agree if Distributions did a better job of setting up PipeWire's defaults and included some commonly required GUI tools it would be unassailable... My bone to pick is your supposition about it's defaults for Pro Audio work in the hands of a completely new Linux Audio User. To a new User it doesn't offer a meaningfully better 'install and use' experience and a far worse experience than most common Audio Dists..

I believe this is incorrect. IIRC, ALSA in Pipewire is emulated, and not just a pass through. I believe you can run multiple ALSA apps on Pipewire simultaneously without losing the multiplexing ability of Pipewire. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

I know you are trying to not go full curmudgeon mode here. I appreciate that. But I truly believe, with time, these problems will be done away with as well. There are already several GUI based controls for configuring Pipewire. The main configuring does indeed need to be done by the distro maintainers, so there's not much control for beginner users there, but I believe as time goes on, best practices will start to be used by distro maintainers. In the long run, I believe Pipewire is going to be much simpler than JACK. Let's give things a little time to see how it goes. Nothing is stopping anyone from using JACK. I'd be willing to bet that by the next stable Debian release, most frustrations and fears will be gone.

[glowrak guy]

obtusely named config files

If creating linux apps and configs with weird names was a fireable offence,
we'd need to raise taxes to cover the higher unemployment insurance costs

[glowrak guy]

Let's give things a little time to see how it goes.

As if there's a choice?

I believe Pipewire is going to be much simpler than JACK.

Audio is not simple. So I expect, indeed, need, some complexity in fully industry standard configurations, in whatever linux tools are at hand.
I'm fine with complex synths, effects, amps, racks, daws, and learning their working settings. But I've been to Missouri. "Show me" clear pipewire superiority, and I'll happily verify it here. Post the videos when it happens. Phoronix & friends should be on it, like ugly on an ape

(If you weren't faithfully finding and posting linux news, the world would have more disk-space. It's all your fault )

[sysrqer]

Just don't use it if you don't want to?

[matyas]

Let's say your Distro comes with PipeWire in a good solid recent version, you are new to Linux and you want to try Ardour but your stems to import are all at 44.1Khz.. PipeWire's default is 48000Khz and Ardour is either going to blunt force convert the sample rate on import or it's going to accommodate on the fly which is a worse option so if you just want to get the system running at 44100Khz you're going to either have to bang open a terminal and incant some pipewire-metadata command which as a newbie you will neither want to open a terminal nor will probably have no idea what command to enter. Other than that unless your Distro ships a PipeWire metadata GUI (most don't yet) you're going to have to go into the system file tree with a text editor and then tell PipeWire you want 44100Khz in one of many obtusely named config files..

You brought up a really good point with that scenario, and it's one I hadn't yet encountered. Out of the box, it is indeed a giant pain to change sampling rates in PW. I started and Ardour session, selected JACK as my backend (which is really PW, since this system has never had real JACK installed), and it was locked to 48 kHz.
So looked around and found a simple graphical utility. With the 48 kHz Ardour session still running, I used the GUI I had downloaded to set the sampling rate to 44.1. Ardour complained that the sampling rate had changed during an open session, but it recognized and locked to the new rate.
So tools like this do already exist, but I'll admit that it is a problem that they're not shipping with standard distros or PW itself. This, I suspect, will change.

[matyas]

Audio is not simple. So I expect, indeed, need, some complexity in fully industry standard configurations, in whatever linux tools are at hand.
I'm fine with complex synths, effects, amps, racks, daws, and learning their working settings. But I've been to Missouri. "Show me" clear pipewire superiority, and I'll happily verify it here. Post the videos when it happens. Phoronix & friends should be on it, like ugly on an ape

Look, networking is arguably much more complex than audio. (I can attest to this as I have done both for a living.) Do you worry about the software stack of your wifi adapter? Unless you're using Slack or something, it probably just works and you probably did absolutely nothing to configure it.

Say what you will about MacOS (and I have my beefs with it), CoreAudio is something they got right. You plug in an interface, and it does its job. It doesn't care if you're watching YouTube or mastering a record. None of this infernal tweaking that goes on in the Windows world.

Now you can complain that you don't want Linux to be like MacOS and have all the complexity abstracted away by default, but then please don't complain that people don't want to adopt Linux and manufacturers don't want to support it.

[matyas]

If you succeed in that the next launch of Ardour is still going to yell at you because your User doesn't have security limits permissions and as a new User you're going to have to figure out what that means, what 'groups' are and how to add yourself to a 'pipewire' group that Ardour's cryptic warning will not give you any clue of and you will not think of on your own..

This last bit is slowly being addressed by faster hardware and newer kernels. On my current machine, I didn't even bother to set up a pipewire group. Some apps complain about not being able to get real-time permissions, but everything runs anyway, and my latency is typically under 2 ms.

Now, I am running a fast i9, and I'm using PopOs, which has a custom scheduler.

[Gps]

Audio is not simple. So I expect, indeed, need, some complexity in fully industry standard configurations, in whatever linux tools are at hand.
I'm fine with complex synths, effects, amps, racks, daws, and learning their working settings. But I've been to Missouri. "Show me" clear pipewire superiority, and I'll happily verify it here. Post the videos when it happens. Phoronix & friends should be on it, like ugly on an ape

Look, networking is arguably much more complex than audio. (I can attest to this as I have done both for a living.) Do you worry about the software stack of your wifi adapter? Unless you're using Slack or something, it probably just works and you probably did absolutely nothing to configure it.

Say what you will about MacOS (and I have my beefs with it), CoreAudio is something they got right. You plug in an interface, and it does its job. It doesn't care if you're watching YouTube or mastering a record. None of this infernal tweaking that goes on in the Windows world.

Now you can complain that you don't want Linux to be like MacOS and have all the complexity abstracted away by default, but then please don't complain that people don't want to adopt Linux and manufacturers don't want to support it.

I started trying out Ardour a few days ago.
I am starting to get a headache, but have no clue yet if Ardour is to blame or pipewire.
I fear its pipwire though, who suddenly seems to decide, I want to use the sound chip on my vid card when I quit Ardour

WTF ?

I need to investigate, why this is happening.

[glowrak guy]

Now you can complain that you don't want Linux to be like MacOS and have all the complexity abstracted away by default, but then please don't complain that people don't want to adopt Linux and manufacturers don't want to support it.

I take a positive approach, encouraging people unsatisfied with their systems, that viable alternatives exist.
Likewise, I share encouragement with companies supporting linux, buy their software if it's great, and without attacking companies who
are entrenched and happy.

For the money it takes to run macOS across multiple hardware abandonments, ongoing OS abandonments, and an 'it sucks to be you ' attitude
towards faithful supporters finding expensive software purchases negated by support decisionmakers, they need to provide excellence.
For all their $$$billions$$$ in profit, they had better provide the best audio and video support anywhere in existance.

I suspect if you had a tiny fraction of their budget, that you could field a team to mop the floor with their coders, and take an early lunch.

[glowrak guy]

If you succeed in that the next launch of Ardour is still going to yell at you because your User doesn't have security limits permissions and as a new User you're going to have to figure out what that means, what 'groups' are and how to add yourself to a 'pipewire' group that Ardour's cryptic warning will not give you any clue of and you will not think of on your own..

This last bit is slowly being addressed by faster hardware and newer kernels. On my current machine, I didn't even bother to set up a pipewire group. Some apps complain about not being able to get real-time permissions, but everything runs anyway, and my latency is typically under 2 ms.

Now, I am running a fast i9, and I'm using PopOs, which has a custom scheduler.

A guitarist on stage at the 2ms distance from the amps(s) could pour his brain out from his ears by the end of the show
It's superior code that addresses performance, the latest $$$hardware$$$ just makes old spaghetti code more bearable.
Intel Corp might prefer chip sales, to efficient code prolonging the life of i3, i5 and i7 systems.
Cheers

[Kirtai]

Just a reminder that Pipewire isn't just an audio system but is also intended to allow hard real time work with video too.

Is this for things like Zoom or Skype etc..?

It's still in progress but as I understand it it's for multiple video and audio streams in professional video systems.
The way I think of it is that the current way video is handled is similar to how pulseaudio handled audio.
If you want professional grade audio, you use jack or pipewire, not pulseaudio.
If you want professional grade video, you use (the future) pipewire, not what we have now.

[All in One Wish]

Just a reminder that Pipewire isn't just an audio system but is also intended to allow hard real time work with video too.

I have read that but really don't fully comprehend what it means in daily use, As far as Audio playback through Media Players or Video Editors I've never had a sync issue and even recording a webcam with a screen capture program I've never had a sync issue, so I'm curious how people are using this function of PipeWire and how it is noticeably better..?

Is this for things like Zoom or Skype etc..?

I am on the same boat. Does anyone know how this feature: "allow hard real time work with video" is a departure from pre-pipewrire times? What were the challenges that pipewire resolved in that sense?