Install PipeWire on Manjaro XFCE

Martin Döring, November, 27 of 2021

This is how I replaced Manjaro's PulseAudio audiosystem with PipeWire. It worked immediately and without any issues up to now.

Why do that? I think this is if you like use music production tools like LMMS or Ardour and don't want to fiddle around with a parallel installation of Jack and PulseAudio daemons. PipeWire unifies this, it is one new sound system with all the legacy interfaces, so all common programs will run, as normal.

Most, if not all information, I got from the forum post in the »Links« section. So I have to thank rabcor for this all.

Replace PulseAudio with PipeWire on Manjaro:

To replace PulseAudio with PipeWire on Manjaro run:

pacman -R manjaro-pulse pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-jack pulseaudio-lirc pulseaudio-rtp && \
pacman -S manjaro-pipewire

Create User Config Files

Normally user config files are enough, PipeWire always runs in user space.

mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire/media-session.d/ && \
cp /usr/share/pipewire/*.conf ~/.config/pipewire/ && \
cp /usr/share/pipewire/media-session.d/*.conf \
~/.config/pipewire/media-session.d/

Create systemwide Config Files for all Users

This is just needed, if you want to give a default configuration for other users too

sudo mkdir -p /etc/pipewire/media-session.d/ && \
sudo cp /usr/share/pipewire/*.conf /etc/pipewire/ && \
sudo cp /usr/share/pipewire/media-session.d/*.conf \
/etc/pipewire/media-session.d/

Configure allowed Sampling Rates:

In ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf uncomment and adjust the possible sampling rates you like to use:

    default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 ]

Make your User member of the »realtime« group

As the current user do:

sudo usermod -a -G realtime $USER

This will get working just after a new login or reboot.

Restart System

For to get rid of all eventually running PulseAudio processes I did restart my system

sudo reboot

After beeing logged in again you can check if PipeWire is running:

systemctl --user status pipewire.socket

PipeWire is running in user space, it is not a system wide systemd service!

You can see all programs using PipeWire with:

pw-top

Programs using the Jack interface of PipeWire need to get the LD_LIBRARY_PATH adjusted with »pw-jack« put in front:

pw-jack <Programmname>

Revert back to PulseAudio

If you want to go back from PipeWire to PulseSudio do this:

pacman -R manjaro-pipewire && \
pacman -S pulseaudio-bluetooth manjaro-pulse

Links

How to troubleshoot Crackling in PipeWire
Pipewire in the Archlinux Wiki
I've replaced JACK and PulseAudio with PipeWire and this is what happened by unfa
Is PipeWire ready for audio production (in Q4 2021)?

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