/g/ - PipeWire and (especially) WirePlumber are garbage - Technology

Anonymous

05/25/26(Mon)04:21:00 No.108901200

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Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:21:00 No.108901200 Archived

PipeWire and (especially) WirePlumber are garbage shit software that deserve to fucking burn. I know FOSS audio is infamously difficult, but how the fuck are THESE the "modern" alternative? Yes I'm fucking mad!!! I just spent an entire fucking day trying to do what should be the simplest fucking thing in the world: Create a virtual 'microphone' device and get it to play whatever's playing on my default audio sink.

SIMPLE RIGHT?????????
YOU'D EXPECT THERE'D BE SOMETHING LIKE A `pw-cli create-device "MyMic"`, RIGHT??
THEN YOU'D JUST CONNECT THE TWO WITH WIREPLUMBER - THE SORT OF THING THIS PIECE OF SHIT WAS MADE TO DO - SO IT SHOULD ALSO BE SUPER SIMPLE, RIGHT???????????

No, it's all fucking GODAWFUL.
And the real cherry on top of this dogshit pile? THEY ARE EXTREMELY POORLY DOCUMENTED. **ESPECIALLY** WirePlumber. The WirePlumber docs are functionally useless, they have PAGES on the format of the config file (b/c apparently they're the only program on earth to switch AWAY from lua and BACK to simple .conf), and then some pages on some obscure little features some guy added 3 years ago, and an entire dissertation on the internal design of the software, undoubtled written as some guy's software engineering final project.
You know what the docs don't have?
A LIST OF CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
Instead, you get a fuckton of """examples""" for obscure garbage dumb shit like getting a bluetooth device to connect to your turntable.
No, you've got to look through the code to figure that shit out. And even THEN you can't figure any shit out because the code is a goddamn spaghetti mess and is as poorly documented as anything else with this garbage.

Except wpctl (piss weak), and pw-cli (low-level) ALL the utilities that come with in this bundle are absolute shit. `pw-loopback` sounded like exactly what I needed, but guess what? It functions like something a guy vibecoded in an afternoon. Feature incomplete, extremely unhelpful, ZERO logging, NOTHING.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:26:05 No.108901230

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:26:05 No.108901230

Yeah and audio also distorts when two applications start playing audio.
>Isn't that normal.
Not on Windows I don't remember system sounds distorting when playing music.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:26:18 No.108901233

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:26:18 No.108901233

What I ended up doing is using pw-link (itself pretty bad) in a shell script to manually connect and disconnect links in PipeWire whenever I run the program I need.
You know, THE SORT OF THING THAT A SESSION MANAGER LIKE WIREPLUMBER IS SUPPOSED TO DO FOR ME???

And even THIS is a fucking hack. What I really *needed* is virtual audio device, but something as simple as that requires you to fucking load a PipeWire "device factory" module. If PipeWire is poorly documented, and WirePlumber is worse, then what do you think is it like with the GODDAMN MODULES?
ZERO.
NIL.
NADA.
You get ONE manpage barely explaining anything, with, again, "examples" THAT DON'T WORK.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:28:06 No.108901240

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:28:06 No.108901240

>>108901230
Well thank fucking god I haven't had THIS happen. As shit as these are, at least I haven't encountered outright bugs. But now having gone through all this it wouldn't surprise me AT ALL if shit like this happens.

>Not on Windows I don't remember system sounds distorting when playing music.
It's a fucking travesty.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:38:54 No.108901282

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:38:54 No.108901282

pactl load-module module-null-sink media.class=Audio/Source/Virtual
took a couple minutes to find a solution. granted i suppose i already knew about the null-sink module as i use it as a "virtual sink" so programs can use that as the default output, which is then routed through some other stuff before ending up at my actual sound card

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:42:43 No.108901295

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:42:43 No.108901295

>>108901282
Hahahaha
HAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHA

>granted i suppose i already knew about the null-sink module as i use it as a "virtual sink" so programs can use that as the default output
You fucking LYING piece of shit
The "module-null-sink" DOESN'T EXIST.
I saw that ArchWiki section. I know about it. I TRIED IT. IT DOESN'T WORK. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "NULL AUDIO SINK"!!!!
Fucking run `man libpipewire-modules` RIGHT NOW you dumb fucking retarded asshole cunt.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:43:35 No.108901300

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:43:35 No.108901300

>>108901200
sysvinit, pulseaudio and X11 still just werk
there's simply no need for systemd, kikewire and gayland
p.s. if you don't like pulse you can still just rawdog alsa

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:44:12 No.108901305

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:44:12 No.108901305

>>108901282
Also, note how it says `pactl`
PACTL
as in PA-CONTROL
PULSEAUDIO CONTROL
THIS ISN'T IT!!!!!!!

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:45:17 No.108901313

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:45:17 No.108901313

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>>108901295
works for me™

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:46:32 No.108901319

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:46:32 No.108901319

>>108901313
why does the kikewire logo look like hebrew abjad?
rhetorical question, obviously.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:46:39 No.108901320

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:46:39 No.108901320

>>108901313
What. The. Fuck.
How??? Are you just on plain PulseAudio?

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:48:11 No.108901326

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:48:11 No.108901326

>>108901320
>>108901313
>>108901295
>>108901282
The closest I could find to a "null device" is what they call an "example device". I tried doing that, but, again, I couldn't figure out where to find any sort of configuration options.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:49:51 No.108901333

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:49:51 No.108901333

And besides, what I need is an audio DEVICE. The program that gave me trouble works by detecting DEVICES, not audio sources.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:51:08 No.108901341

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:51:08 No.108901341

>>108901200
One of the big issues with these are the insane defaults which want the audio system to have microseconds of delay. This is a huge cpu burden and will automatically destroy cheap motherboard hardware.
Adjusting the confuguration helps but I think bigger problem is that people who develop these things are retards with no real music background or anything else either.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)04:59:01 No.108901382

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)04:59:01 No.108901382

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>>108901320
no it's pipewire, you can tell from the PW icon, pulse/jack/alsa objects have different icons

>>108901333
a microphone is a type of source, so a virtual source will appear anywhere a microphone would, i tested it with discord to make sure it worked before posting it

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)05:03:50 No.108901398

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)05:03:50 No.108901398

>>108901382
>a microphone is a type of source, so a virtual source will appear anywhere a microphone would, i tested it with discord to make sure it worked before posting it
Unfortunately it's not as simple as that... The program that gave me trouble (it's projectMSDL, btw) only shows audio devices, i.e. only the stuff that show up with `type PipeWire:Interface:Device` when you do `pw-cli ls`.

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)05:40:22 No.108901537

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)05:40:22 No.108901537

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>>108901398
projectMSDL seems to totally ignore command line arguments for me (so i can't check if it sees or can use anything but the first source), but i've used it before just manually hooking it up to my audio output monitor

Anonymous
05/25/26(Mon)11:24:44 No.108903300

Anonymous 05/25/26(Mon)11:24:44 No.108903300

>>108901200
Claude Code could have done this in 2 minutes