PipeWire 0.3.81 (2023-10-06) This is the first 1.0 release candidate that is API and ABI compatible with previous 0.3.x releases.
PipeWire 0.3.81 (2023-10-06)
This is the first 1.0 release candidate that is API and ABI compatible
with previous 0.3.x releases.
Highlights
jackdbus support is now enabled by default.
IRQ based scheduling in ALSA was improved and enabled by default for
Pro-Audio profile. It will also link the pcms together to get lower
latency. This now matches what JACK does and results in equal latency
for Pro-Audio profiles.
Support both old and new versions of webrtc-audio-processing to make
the transition easier.
Forced quantum changes by nodes or metadata will now also force a
suspend and resume of the graph, like the rate changes to make sure all
nodes adapt to the new quantum. This is important for Pro-Audio nodes
that need to reconfigure the hardware to a new period in IRQ based
scheduling.
Fix a regression in regex parsing.
Many bugfixes and improvements.
PipeWire
Jackdbus is by default enabled now. The idea is that when jackdbus is
installed, the real libjack.so is in the path and we can become a
real JACK client.
Forces quantum changes by nodes or metadata will now also force a
suspend and resume in the graph, like the rate changes to make sure all
nodes adapt to the new quantum. This is important for Pro-Audio nodes
that need to reconfigure the hardware to a new period.
The stream now has an EARLY_PROCESS option that can be used to implement custom buffer fill levels. (#3480)
Fix a regression in regex parsing. (#3528)
Fix a bug in position reporting in the driver node. (#3189) (#3544)
Destroying a link will now recalculate the graph correctly.
Fix the rate comparison for finding the best rate in the graph.
Use malloc_trim() when available to release memory. (#1840)
Tools
pw-cat now supports DFF DSD files.
pw-cli avoid some NULL derefs in some cases.
Modules
The RAOP sink has seen some cleanups and improvements. It will now ask
for feedback every 2 seconds to keep some devices alive.
A bug in filter-chain was fixed where it would fail to apply the gain
when mixing just one source.
The filter-chain can now pass the stream volume to a control in the
filter-chain graph. (#3434)
Improve volume handling in RAOP sink.
Pulse-server
Some cleanup in the pending_stream handling.
Fix a regression in the event emission code where it failed to emit
a changed event when a node was linked. (#3522)
Lower the realtime priority of pulseaudio clients.
Support both old and new versions of webrtc-audio-processing to make
the transition easier.
The ALSA driver now does the sync of all followers directly from the
wakeup event. This results in more stable rate matching.
IRQ based scheduling in ALSA was improved and enabled by default for
Pro-Audio profile. It will also link the pcms together to get lower
latency. This now matches what JACK does and gives equal latency for
Pro-Audio profiles.
GNU/Hurd support was added.
Some improvements to passthrough handling.
Bluetooth
Improvements to the codec handling when PipeWire is used as Audio
Gateway.
Adapt to new Bluez API for BAP devices.
JACK
When the jack library is set in the default library path, avoid using
LD_LIBRARY_PATH because this can cause confusion.
Handle clearing the latency on a port.
jack_property now always manages to actually change the metadata because it waits for a roundtrip before exiting.
It’s a drop-in replacement to the Pulseaudio and JACK audio systems, with the hopes of making audio handling decent within Linux with as low latency as they can.
Pulseaudio has been replaced by PipeWire for quite some time in fedora. Since Fedora 34, released in April 2021, apparently.
According to the wiki page, PipeWire originally came about trying to improve video handling on Linux, the same way that pulseaudio improved audio handling.
They then wanted to try and handle audio streams, with the idea of converging use cases for both consumer and professional audio users. Namely, they wanted a single audio system that supported both pulseaudio and JACK, whilst remaining as low latency as possible.
On top of this, because it was a modern reimplementation of audio and video handling in Linux, they designed it to work with Flatpak, and to provide secure methods for screenshotting and screencasting in wayland via the compositors.
It's not so much anything missing, but more of a complete rewrite of the audio stack to create a more stable system with as low latency as possible. Both of which were needed.
Been using it now since it hit Fedora Silverblue as an option. This is very "it works on my machine", but I've rarely had any problems with it - like even in Jack2 bridge mode. Recently I've noticed nothing. It's just there, working in the background, doing what it's supposed to do.
To clarify, it was on my workstation laptop that I also use for leisure.
It's the audio framework behind most modern Linux systems nowadays. It performs much better than previous ones and provides greater consistency and expectations for end users. Basically... if you've ever been frustrated by audio configuration on Linux, this project is probably working on fixing it.