1 files changed, 115 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

A content/posts/audio_on_linux.md

@@ 0,0 1,115 @@
+---
+title: Audio on Linux
+date: "2024-01-23T22:30:37+00:00"
+draft: false
+---
+
+Why is audio on Linux so difficult?
+
+----
+
+Over the course of a decade,
+I have experimented with just about every reasonable configuration for audio
+on a Linux distribution.
+
+It helps that I have very simple needs.
+A single, analog output jack.
+No worrying about stereo channels,
+no worrying about specialty sound cards and drivers.
+Pretty much any sink should be able to manage this job.
+
+ALSA is an incredibly simple system.
+Also a very inflexible one.
+But it works very well, in a simple and straightforward way.
+Once upon a time I ran my PC with just ALSA.
+The ultimate killer for any such configuration is the inability to support
+multiple concurrent audio streams.
+
+PulseAudio has been the *de facto* for so long.
+There's much said on the internet about the quality of code in the PulseAudio
+project,
+though I have to wonder if there's any fact to it.
+I think people just love to complain about other coding styles.
+What I do know is that PulseAudio is highly reliable,
+highly configurable,
+and easier to configure than JACK and ALSA.
+
+Speaking of JACK:
+I have used it before.
+Actually I used it on a MacBook, rather than a Linux PC.
+I think that's enough experience to say *it works*,
+and also *it can be challenging to use* ***well***.
+I would consider using it again.
+
+Lastly: PipeWire.
+The much-hyped newcomer.
+I believe that it's meant to fill some gaps in the X11-Wayland transition.
+I do technically use it,
+as I've never bothered to re-configure my laptop running Manjaro.
+I recently decided to try it on my PC as well.
+That... is the topic of the next sections.
+
+----
+
+I had some issues with PulseAudio following my last system update.
+Audio skipping every few seconds.
+Barely noticeable in videos of human speech,
+but highly irritating in any music playback.
+
+I did some poking around with PulseAudio configurations and reboots.
+I mucked around with ALSA utilities,
+since Pulse's sink just sits on top of that device.
+Finally I came to the conclusion that this was the kernel's fault.
+Maybe there's a minute change to memory limits?
+I resolved to wait a few days,
+to see what kernel patches would do to solve the issue.
+Still, I felt that the audio server should be able to compensate for any
+issues that boiled down to memory usage.
+
+----
+
+But a kernel update came and went,
+and the issue persisted.
+At this point I became more than frustrated.
+After much more fussing with configurations,
+I decided that PulseAudio just wasn't up to that task.
+But perhaps, I wondered,
+PipeWire would prove to be?
+
+The story for switching on Arch is remarkably simple.
+Although I'm very much puzzled by the need for separate servers and session
+managers.
+I got things running,
+hit play,
+and... no improvement.
+
+And actually, there was a major regression!
+After about 10 minutes, audio would cut out completely and permanently.
+I had to teach myself a great deal about the design of PipeWire just to begin
+diagnosing the issue.
+For some reason,
+Firefox's node is being marked as idle,
+and the driver node is killing off that process entirely.
+There's an extremely unhelpful log message about an invalid command and some
+I/O error.
+But after reading through some of the source code and spending days reading
+forums and bug trackers,
+I still have no idea what is going on to cause this.
+
+My only assumption is that PulseAudio is handling some erroneous state
+(again, probably due to some memory tweak in the new kernel)
+more gracefully than PipeWire.
+Neither is offering me a solution,
+but at least PulseAudio doesn't fall over itself.
+So what's the point of the coupled session-manager-and-server design of
+PipeWire if it doesn't actually achieve high availability?
+It all seems like unnecessary and unhelpful complications.
+
+----
+
+So I'm moving on from PipeWire.
+I'll leave it on any systems that come with it pre-configured,
+but the majority of my installations are minimal Arch systems,
+so that's effectively 'few and fewer'.
+I'm more willing to give JACK a try at this point.
+