I've been running into persistent issues with PipeWire on my Linux Mint 22.1 with Cinnamon. These problems began a few months back, likely after an update, and now I frequently experience sound dropouts. The situation worsens when I'm multitasking, like gaming while streaming a video or listening to music. I tried increasing the buffer size, which has helped a bit, but the other night I encountered a static and popping distortion after fast-forwarding a video while gaming. The only solution was to kill the PipeWire process, which restarted automatically and resolved the problem temporarily. My setup includes a Ryzen 7950X3D, Radeon 7900XTX, and 64 GB DDR5 RAM, so hardware performance shouldn't be the issue. I suspect it's just a matter of fine-tuning PipeWire for my needs; any tips on that would be appreciated!
4 Answers
Have you noticed these problems on more modern distros like Fedora or Arch Linux? Because Mint might be running an older version of PipeWire, which could be the root of the problems you're having.
PipeWire can adjust dynamically depending on system load, which might be causing the issues you're seeing. Since you're on Mint, it usually rolls with stable versions of components like PipeWire, so you might not have the latest features. I recommend checking out a comprehensive guide on setting up PipeWire; it explains how it interacts with ALSA, PulseAudio, and more. Resetting your configurations first might help, and then you can adjust settings one by one to see what's best for your setup. Avoid complex profiles like "pro-audio" if you're not using those features.
It’s not a PipeWire issue per se; it seems more like a configuration problem. Your setup needs tuning to fit your specific use cases. Keep experimenting with your configuration until you find a setup that works for you!
It sounds like the adjustments you made to the buffer size might be related to the quantum or sample rate settings. Some users have shared fixes online, so it might help to check out threads related to audio crackling issues on Linux systems. They often have good advice on fine-tuning these settings for optimal performance.
Actually, Mint is considered modern! The version of PipeWire is the same as in other recent distributions, so that's not the issue.