Pipewire - is it better or just different?

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Tossing up whether to install Pipewire and get rid of JACK…I’d like to ask for some user experiences with doing that, or indeed, Pipewire in general.

Thanks

EDIT: and as a supplementary question, which is the best Pipewire package to install, or are they all the same?

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I dont do anything fancy and just replaced pulseaudio with pipewire some while back … and dont notice a difference. But, again, I havent done anything with it besides just using the attached speakers or plugged headphones - no bluetooth etc.

Just install manjaro-pipewire - it should give you everything you need (and conflict with what you dont).

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thanks -I’ll be doing some fairly intensive audio work on this system (via Reaper) and the general consensus I am reading is Pipewire all the way,but those comments are not in the Manjaro XFCE context…

via CLI or add/remove programs?

Been reading a linked tute on the AUR and how the apps there can break the system, and that adding via CLI method is safer??

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I would say ‘doesnt matter’ … except I view pamac as inferior … so …

sudo pacman -Syu manjaro-pipewire

et voila

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Yes well you have proved to be accurate on other matters so I’ll go with you on that as well.

oooh, now here’s a choice Pipepire Media Session or Wireplumber - will need to research…thanks again for your help cscs

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pipewire-media-session is deprecated … go with wireplumber

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Pipewire developer Wym Taymans recently posted a comment on linuxmusicians forum that suggests there are now three options for software sound servers

My masterplan was to replace pulseaudio and JACK in one go. That needs some more work and now I’m introducing an intermediate phase, so:

  • pulseaudio → module-jackdbus → JACK
  • pipewire → module-jackdbus → JACK (at which point jack becomes a driver in pipewire)
  • pipewire (jack driver implementation included into pipewire itself)

I had attempted to include jackdbus (something equivalent) support earlier in the development but it failed. I think we’re on the right track again now.

So users can replace PulseAudio without replacing JACK

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As someone working with more than just consumer audio (mainly Ardour, but also Hydrogen and LMMS as I badly play keyboards and drums, so I prefer to generate them digitally), I can give my experience and perspective.

Basically, Pipewire eases your life with one audio solution for all. It implements both Pulse and JACK interface so it can act as a drop-in replacement. Moreover, you don’t need to tinker with multiple routing mechanism, it’s all handled within one service. Lastly, despite useless to me (no serious recording uses wireless), you can now record/play using bluetooth devices in JACK aware apps, which wasn’t possible with true JACK server (the only audio server having bluetooth implementation besides Pipewire is PulseAudio, and it’s implemented at PulseAudio level, not ALSA, so it’s PulseAudio exclusive). It has similar flexibility to configure latency and such, albeit in a more coding way as it uses Lua scripts instead of plain text config files.

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