Anyone know of some simple, clean, example code for interfacing with MIDI (both sending and receiving) via the #Pipewire APIs?
My instinct is to just avail myself of libusb_detach_kernel_driver() and talking to USB MIDI devices directly, but maybe the modern Linux interfaces for doing this higher up the stack are actually reasonable?
If anyone is interested in joining me on a #YouTube #livestream, feel free to message me!
Right now, I'm figuring out #JACK and learning it from the docs. Next, I'll figure out #PipeWire, and finally #WASAPI. Then, I want to build an #audio I/O library from scratch abstracting over these host APIs. Since I haven't worked with them before, I want to get a feel for how to use them and such, so I want to get familiar with them first.
🧵 So, the #Recording with the vintage #RME #Fireface400 in #Ardour on old #macOS on a #MacBookPro 2017 went well, I guess.
This thread started with me praising #Pipewire on #Linux.
And yes, I still believe Pipewire is what users of Windows and OSX will envy us Linuxers for. One fine day.
As it is for now, none of my professional audio interfaces works with it. The Yamha 01v96i via USB doesn't, the RME Digi9652 (vintage PCI) doesn't, and the Fireface400 (vintage Firewire) used to work well with Jack's firewire backend, but it doesn't work so well with the newer ALSA kernel driver apparently.
It is possible to run these interfaces using a mixed mode of #Jack and Pipewire on #UbuntuStudio 24.04 still, but it means that you lose most of the convenience Pipewire actually introduces.
So, sadly, my conclusion for today is: Class Compliant USB audio interfaces and Pipewire are great. The rest, at lest for me & my gear, is not working.
🧵 So, the vintage #MacBook 2017 still does it with the #RME #Fireface400 and #Totalmix.
Unfortunately, I don't have my plugins installed on it since I only use it as a monitor mixer and recorder with #TotalMix and #Ardour.
Even though Ardour does recognize plugins used in projects that are the same on #macOS and #Linux, so you can copy projects around without any issue – not the case with #Cubase even between #Windows11 and #Windows10 and the very same plugin binaries…
Of course, #Apple enthusiasts will never accept that a #MacBook 2017 can be still used today at all.
Thing is, probably #Firewire via Thunderbolt3 (with adaptors) won't even work on today's Apple computers.
So, Apple folks must be making enough money with recording apparently to buy new computers and new audio interfaces regularly.
Well, things do work now, on #osX. Sadly, the cool #Bluetooth trick with #Pipewire playing back audio over a phone connection now has gone down the drain for this project…
🧵 Having praised #Pipewire…
… the #RME #Fireface400 disappeared from the scene just moments later.
I did a reboot, like if this was #Windows, except this is #UbuntuStudio #Linux.
The Fireface is back up. But not so is #ffadoMixer.
„No supported devices found“
I am not willing to imagine this happening at my client's place.
Perhaps it's time to fetch the vintage #MacBook pro from the storage for this job… like I used to do with the FireFace 400, just because #TotalMix was so much more convenient.
Unfortunately, it is quite unlikely to get such an old tool like FfadoMixer improved, because these #Firewire #FFADO audio devices are vintage gear. Yet, I doubt more recent Fireface UFX devices have different preamps or different converters… so why spending over 1k€ on something new?
I am currently preparing a mobile #Recording session on my #UbuntuStudio #Linux laptop.
I cannot over-emphasize the coolness of #Pipewire, the new Linux audio system!
So while I'm testing a couple of expensive mics with my #RME #FireFace400, the actual result is to be used as a #VoiceBox announcement.
So how to monitor this audio in a realistic way?
Well, turns out I can pair my mobile phone using #Bluetooth with Pipewire. Then I can call up myself from the mobile on my fixed line phone… and simply play back the audio from #Ardour via my mobile all the way through the lousy phone network right into my fixed line phone.
This is just amazing!
(#ffadoMixer still is inconvenient to use when compared to #TotalMix and I still have to figure out how to run it not as root, but oh well, can't have the cake and eat it, I'd say.)
EDIT… or will this go down the drain? (🧵 )
RealtimeKit has a new home next to @pipewire, and I just rolled out a new release ... give it a spin!
#openSUSE Tumbleweed kept pace in November with updated desktops, improved performance, and cleaner workflows. #Plasma and #GNOME both saw usability gains, while #PipeWire and #Mesa enhanced hardware support. #OpenSource https://news.opensuse.org/2025/12/01/tw-monthly-update-nov/
Yo what ?
Trying to watch something on the new laptop when all of a sudden, realisation
I forgot to install pipewire when switching over to NixOS…
Alright, let’s see how it’s done
*paste pipewire entry*
*rebuild & reboot*
That’s it ?! Yeah… That’s it…
Now let’s see how it’ll end up when I finally move over the workstation, Hyprland and Nvidia is gonna be interesting, even tho I heard it does work given the right configuration
Saturday night. Installing #Arch on a new drive because #quickshell won't play nice with #pipewire
@prinlu depends on what you want to do... Also don't underestimate the possibility to have a more modular approach on Linux via #jackaudio (and/or #pipewire ).
I often use #Rosegarden together with #Ardour (syched via jack transport), have combined with #puredata, qmidiarp, etc. #Yoshimi synth of course.
I prefer #Rosegarden as a sequencer/ composition tool, #ardour for audio #daw, #puredata for the more experimental/ DIY stuff...
You can get pretty (crazy) creative 😉
i am cursed, my computers are doomed to not do what they're supposed to
anyway if anyone has any idea on how to fix my pipewire issues (regular crackling and micro-pauses, every 1.5sec roughly) PLEASE tell me. and yes, i have fucked with the buffer size already. no, a second of latency isn't an option. also, no, my cpu is not the problem. this is a recent issue, exclusive to my desktop pc.
please help this is driving me nuts. this recently started happening after an update i believe.
further information:
:boost_request:
UPDATE: I figured it out (i think, it works currently). I think it was linked to the systime problems I had, my timeserver thought NTP was an hour behind for some reason and briefly slowed down the system clock. And since that apparently is used not only for timekeeping in anything else, but also the audio clock, that led to my system sending bullshit to headphones. Yeah.
...anyway, turning off NTS fixed it.
Could it be that certain #VST plugins don't work with Wine under Linux because they were built with MS Visual Studio?
I've been testing some Windows VST plugins again over the last few days, and almost none of them worked. Yesterday I tested #Scaler. It didn't work either. But when I started the plugin, a download of MS Visual Studio started.
#PeaceLoveMusix #LinuxAudio #DAW #Wine #VisualStudio #Pipewire
ICYMI: LE Audio replaces classic Bluetooth® audio profiles with a modern, low-energy framework designed for lower latency, better battery life, and more advanced use cases.
Dive into how it works on Linux through BlueZ + PipeWire, and what’s coming next for developers and devices: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2025/11/24/implementing-bluetooth-le-audio-and-auracast-on-linux-systems/
Set up a Raspberry Pi as a a Bluetooth audio sink #sound #bluetooth #pipewire
Curious to learn how multimedia pipeline scheduling works?
In the talk I recently gave at the GStreamer Conference 2025, I do a deep dive on the approaches of two popular frameworks: #GStreamer and #PipeWire. With emphasis on understanding PipeWire, I outline the advantages and drawbacks of each approach, which use cases they fit best and how they can be combined.
▶️ Watch now: https://gstconf.ubicast.tv/permalink/v126b0f18edc2somjm2r/
It's absolutely amazing how far #wine has come. In combination with an rt #Linux kernel and #yabridge, I've gotten some hefty #VST3 plugins to work quite well.
Not to mention that #PipeWire is giving #CoreAudio a run for its money.
It's now possible for me to move over to Linux as a music workstation - and you should too.
Follow me on further #LinuxMusic adventures!
Continuing on my #linuxmint #imac saga: Mint uses #Pipewire as its audio server. This is a very confusing project. I stopped using desktop Linux when Alsa was standard, and Pulseaudio was JUST becoming a thing. Pipewire seems to be yet another layer. I wonder if any of those config files will allow me to pin the PCM and speaker channels to 74% and only make the master volume accessible...?
The documentation is not geared towards end users...
