Apart from the occasional 100% VOLUME Noise Bang that I get into my Headphones (disregarding the volume I have set), pipewire works pretty well, consistently.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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okay here me out:
Pipewire is one of the best pieces of software I used. It has a cool ass patchbay and unlike PulseAudio I've never had it crash on me. It is the best thing that happened to Linux audio
I was blown away when I connected my phone to my PC through Bluetooth and phone audio started playing through my PC. It just worked without me touching anything
I also really like how "Linux Studio Plugins" are standalone apps that you can run. I don't produce music or anything but I still use stuff like equalizers and spectrum analyzers. It is insane how flexible the "each app has inputs and outputs you can hook together" architecture is.
PulseAudio probably also had some of these features but I never used those because pulse would fall apart every time I touched it. Pipewire doesn't
Broken Linux audio is about to become old news
i don't know about you but broken Linux audio has BEEN old news ever since i started using pipewire
Pipewire has some neat tricks that i use on a daily basis but i can also make it crash on demand so idk :p. I have a restart script in my home directory for that exact reason.
It just does not like audio going out my gpu, together with video, through my receiver and into my tv.
Receiver not on while linux was booting? Guess what, pipewire reboot.
Tv goes off because of "inactivity"? Thats a pipewire reboot
... And yet i love pipewire haha. But ye, audio issues are still a thing
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I also really like how "Linux Studio Plugins" are standalone apps that you can run. I don't produce music or anything but I still use stuff like equalizers and spectrum analyzers. It is insane how flexible the "each app has inputs and outputs you can hook together" architecture is.
It's weird that parts of this approach have been around for a long time, but barely anyone can make them all work together out of the box.
Mac has AU Lab that can host AU apps, i.e. Apple's analog of VST, and feed system audio through them. Plugging any app into another is a bit more involved, though: there was the open-source Sunflower made like fifteen years ago, but bit rot gotten it, and another open-source clone doesn't work for some reason either β so paid apps are the best recourse, just like on Windows iirc.
Mac also has a feature where one can combine multiple audio inputs into one virtual input. A funny application of this is, if you put the mic into a virtual input and call it βRocksmith Something Something Controllerβ, you can play guitar with Rocksmith without their special usb device.
Next stop: iOS has an audio bus for connecting apps together just like VST/AU on the desktop (actually I think it's very same Audio Unit stuff). Android has jackshit, and if you feel that audio latency could be lower, it'll spit in your face.
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I'm going to tempt fate here, you ready?
This hasn't happened to me since pulseaudio
exactly this
Never buy an HP laptop for linux. They often try to have some gimmicky special audio hardware with terrible driver support
Never buy anything HP
My first experience with switching to Linux a few years ago was on an outdated, at the time, ~$400 HP laptop. Switching from Windows 10 to EndeavourOS, and everything just worked, including audio.
In fact, it still works great whenever I turn it on like a few times a year.
hp victus16 is working fine with wireplumber. never buy hp because the anti customer practices, terrible build quality and supporting israel with hardware.
Never buy an HP laptop for linux.
Same with any Apple Intel based iMac
Driver support is non-existent. Audio via the speakers worked but no volume control, Bluetooth, thunderbolt, mic etc didn't work. Even the headphone socket didn't work.
Shit even the gpu (AMD) didn't work properly. Despite being a 5k panel resolution is stuck at 4k.
Sigh. Would have been a great Linux box if I could have gotten it to work
Edit
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Oh no not systemctl --user restart pipewire.service!
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Strange I never had any problems with PW, for me it's probably the most reliable Linux software there is
the bluetooth pipewire pulseaudio mix could be a bit better.
It's gotten to the point that my bluetooth headphones will not connect to my laptop because I don't currently have any media playing.
Load up a youtube video, the audio device springs into life, offers it up as pulseaudio source, who signals to bluez that there is a valid audio profile and suddenly everything connects.
From an efficiency standpoint, yes I get it. From a UX standpoint... please just let my earphones connect when I enable bluetooth from the get go
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Configuring pipewire or pulseaudio is dark magic
I have a terrible confession: i have loads of audio issues im dealing with atm. My desktop setup basically gets confused and stops working whenever i try to switch fom headphones to speaker, and my two laptops just do not want to pair with my bluetooth headphones unless i futz with bluetoothctl every time
Anyway, tangent aside. my terrible confession is that i go to linuxmemes for tech support, someone pls help
Try to use a normal computer instead of trying to kick linux into a ATM.
Most ATMs are acually now linux based,. Weeell the new ones anyway. Old ones are still running on XP.
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I have been using Arch daily for 13+ years and I still don't have a proper grasp on audio and Bluetooth..
Used raw ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio, and now Pipewire. I had major issues with all of them except ALSA.
I managed to disable devices like my webcam mic and PS5 mic, and even added a noise reduction filter to my real mic that shows up as it's own device, but..
Only because the Arch wiki told me specifically how to do those things. Audio just luckily seems to work fine for the most part, currently. I used qpwgraph to play with wireplumber and it's obviously very powerful, but I have no idea how it works :D
Bluetooth is a different story, it seems to work differently on every single device I've worked on..
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Been around since OSS and ALSA was the new kid on the block. Yet to experience these supposed sound issues.
All i can say is, you have been a very lucky individual.
Then you didn't use your computer for much involving audio.
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Gotta be real here for a moment, the last time I had any sort of trouble with audio on Linux was back in the day when I was still fiddling about with Gentoo. But that was, what, fifteen, twenty years ago?
I definitely remember having to futz with audio a looooong time ago, but honestly getting xf86config to work with my video card and monitor was much more difficult.
The dark days of fucking with xorg.conf files and ndiswrapper to get WiFi working are things I'm glad no longer exist.
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Ive not been using Linux for long, maybe only 5 years or so. But I've never had any audio issues.
My audio needs are not as straightforward as the average user. I play drums over midi into reaper. I have used guitars and mics through my audio interface. My midi controllers work without any issues.
Im using pipewire and running reaper with pipewire-jack. I've used mint for years with no issues, and now running debian Trixie with no issues.
It's mostly an old notion that just won't die. Especially in the years after its initial release (2004) it was just a disastrous experience sometimes with cracking noises, misconfigured sinks (or outright missing), crashes and - if I still remember one of my first Linux experiences with Ubuntu 8.04 right - the sudden decision to repeat the current audio buffer at maximum volume.
Ever since I came back to Linux on Desktop around 2017 I didn't had any bigger issues with Pulse either. Ever since Pipewire became the default stuff just works, no issues whatsoever.
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Pro tip: putting the URL in the following character sequence will just show the image in your comment instead of the URL
you can also add a description, mostly useful for accesibility (screen readers for e.g. sight impaired people):
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My god, there's so many comments
Now run it on a pi zero
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