Broken Spotify, pa-applet among others?

Hey all!

So, I’ve got a problem:

  1. my Spotify and pa-applet are really slow to respond to commands. For example, I will press a button to change song, play a song, etc. and Spotify won’t respond immediately. Same with Pa-applet

  2. my volume control buttons have stopped working. They used to work

I assume it is related to a giant update I yesterday (or maybe day before?) In any case, I’m not sure where this issue belongs. I believe that it has impact on other software but I haven’t found any yet.

Spotify is installed via snap, and pa-applet is the “default” or from AUR

ha same problem here spotify is very slow and unoptimised what you can do is use the web side until it is optimised for linux

also try reinstalling
or an ssd can make your job easy.

The volume keys issue is mentioned on the AUR page for pa-applet.

This issue is new. It has been working fine on my end for a few years now

Ahh, gotcha, thanks. I thought the issue might be something else since my volume has also been funky (slow response)

Package pa-applet is not a default package for i3wm and has not been updated in Manjaro repository since 2018. Most of the code on the github page appears to be over 10 years old

For audio keyboard controls you might want to consider installing pulseaudio-ctl

For i3wm you might also want to install pulsemixer instead of the usual mixer pavucontrol

Manjaro i3 does not have PulseAudio installed by default, but many i3 users choose to install it later

PulseAudio latest update was released over a month ago. If you have been updating regularly PulseAudio packages would not have been changed by latest updates

please post system information

inxi -Fazy

and information about all running audio services

systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep -E 'pulseaudio|pipewire' | awk '{print $1,"- " $2}'
1 Like

I installed pulseaudio-ctl (but have not configured it yet), and installed pulsemixer. I tend to end up using pulseaudio anyways mostly because I can select various outputs, etc.


System Information

System:
  Kernel: 5.10.68-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10-x86_64 
  root=UUID=9e3b4943-484c-496a-96e5-f77332a5ee72 rw quiet 
  cryptdevice=UUID=356a892c-5faf-40ad-8390-87136197c78f:luks-356a892c-5faf-40ad-8390-87136197c78f 
  root=/dev/mapper/luks-356a892c-5faf-40ad-8390-87136197c78f apparmor=1 
  security=apparmor 
  resume=/dev/mapper/luks-3a10c31f-a484-4488-b766-df5682e3261f 
  udev.log_priority=3 
  Desktop: i3 4.19.1 info: i3bar vt: 7 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: MAXIMUS IX APEX v: Rev 1.xx 
  serial: <filter> UEFI-[Legacy]: American Megatrends v: 1301 date: 03/14/2018 
CPU:
  Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-7700K bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Kaby Lake family: 6 model-id: 9E (158) stepping: 9 microcode: EA 
  cache: L2: 8 MiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 67224 
  Speed: 4227 MHz min/max: 800/4500 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 4227 2: 4084 
  3: 3983 4: 2111 5: 2327 6: 4418 7: 1531 8: 4434 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
  Type: l1tf 
  mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
  IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode 
  Type: tsx_async_abort mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 630 vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel 
  bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5912 class-ID: 0300 
  Device-2: Sunplus Innovation AUSDOM FHD Camera type: USB 
  driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-7:5 chip-ID: 1bcf:2286 
  class-ID: 0102 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 compositor: compton driver: 
  loaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0 screens: 1 
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2") 
  s-diag: 582mm (22.9") 
  Monitor-1: HDMI-2 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 96 size: 509x286mm (20.0x11.3") 
  diag: 584mm (23") 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 630 (KBL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.2 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 200 Series PCH HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:a2f0 
  class-ID: 0403 
  Device-2: C-Media CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio] vendor: ASUSTeK CMI8786 
  driver: snd_oxygen v: kernel bus-ID: 05:04.0 chip-ID: 13f6:8788 
  class-ID: 0401 
  Device-3: Sunplus Innovation AUSDOM FHD Camera type: USB 
  driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-7:5 chip-ID: 1bcf:2286 
  class-ID: 0102 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.68-1-MANJARO running: yes 
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no 
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes 
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.37 running: no 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-V vendor: ASUSTeK driver: e1000e v: kernel 
  port: f040 bus-ID: 00:1f.6 chip-ID: 8086:15b8 class-ID: 0200 
  IF: enp0s31f6 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k 
  v: kernel port: f040 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:0030 class-ID: 0280 
  IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: <filter> 
  IF-ID-1: wg-mullvad state: unknown speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A 
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci v: 3.0 port: f060 
  bus-ID: 00:17.0 chip-ID: 8086.2822 rev: class-ID: 0104 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 953.87 GiB used: 182.48 GiB (19.1%) 
  SMART Message: Required tool smartctl not installed. Check --recommends 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 970 PRO 1TB 
  size: 953.87 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s 
  lanes: 4 type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1B2QEXP7 temp: 35.9 C scheme: MBR 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 919.51 GiB size: 904 GiB (98.31%) used: 182.48 GiB (20.2%) 
  fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0 maj-min: 254:0 
  mapped: luks-356a892c-5faf-40ad-8390-87136197c78f 
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 34.35 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 
  dev: /dev/dm-1 maj-min: 254:1 
  mapped: luks-3a10c31f-a484-4488-b766-df5682e3261f 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 36.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 280 Uptime: 3m wakeups: 0 Memory: 31.23 GiB 
  used: 3.22 GiB (10.3%) Init: systemd v: 249 tool: systemctl Compilers: 
  gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: 1316 pacman: 1295 lib: 318 snap: 21 Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 
  running-in: terminator inxi: 3.3.06 

My audio services

pipewire-media-session.service - enabled
pipewire.service - disabled
pulseaudio-x11.service - static
pulseaudio.service - disabled
pipewire.socket - enabled
pulseaudio.socket - enabled

Data in inxi appears to indicate that Pipewire is not running, but the 2 systemd services and the socket are shown as enabled in systemctl data

I suggest you disable the pipewire services and mask the pipewire.socket to prevent it restarting

systemctl --user disable --now pipewire-media-session.service
systemctl --user disable --now pipewire.{socket,service} && systemctl --user mask pipewire.socket