I am reporting back with some progress, hopefully this helps someone else going through this.
I believe this is all caused by the inability to lock the sample rate and bit depth with Pipewire. There is a “default” setting for this, but that seems to be more of a suggestion than anything as many applications ignore this entirely.
That was not the case with Alsa for example you could lock those and they were static. Some folks would argue that if your audio source was inferior to sample rate and bit depth it would just be 0’s for the missing data and it doesn’t make a difference.
This is where I disagree, locking the sample rate and bit depth would avoid a situation like this entirely (it did with Alsa). Do a quick web search for “pipewire cracking” and you will see I am far from the only person with this issue.
I am going to approach this like I found this thread first, and have not done anything at this point to resolve this.
As a warning: I am not 100% sure what all of Step 8 does, a lot of this is self explanatory, but that one loses me a bit. I attempted it out of desperation and by some miracle it worked.
If you are more knowledgeable, or have a better way of accomplishing this please share it with everyone.
Resolution:
- Step 1: Copy config files to your ~/.config this is important for one main reason, if you mess something up you can nuke the /.config/pipewire and ./config/wireplumber folders.
mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire/ && mkdir -p ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/ && cp /usr/share/pipewire/*.conf ~/.config/pipewire/ && cp /usr/share/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/* ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/
- Step 2: Edit ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf - Modify the following line. This removed the pops when scrubbing or starting playback.
pulse.idle.timeout = 0 # pause after 5 seconds of underrun
-
Step 3: Research your hardware and find the sample rates and bit depth it supports. Yours may differ from another thread your looking at.
-
Step 4: Edit ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf - Your choice of editor (I am old school and like nano). Replace this section here with whatever your hardware supports. I picked the highest sample rate and bit depth supported to easily spot anything misbehaving.
(this is relevant for the iFi Zen Dac V1/2/3)
default.clock.rate = 384000
default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 48000 96000 88200 176400 192000 352800 384000 ]
default.clock.quantum = 1024
default.clock.min-quantum = s32le
- Step 5: Edit ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/alsa-vm.conf - I had the best luck with the settings below, your mileage may vary. From what I have read keeping these under 2048 is advisable, but I have cranked them to 8000 without any difference from 2048.
api.alsa.period-size = 2048
api.alsa.headroom = 2048
- Step 6: This may be optional but it is part of making this mess work for me.
mkdir ~/.config/wireplumber/main.lua.d/
In that directory make a file called “50-alsa-config.lua” with the following (Match the rates to your hardware here)
--["audio.channels"] = 2,
--["audio.format"] = "S32LE",
--["audio.rate"] = 384000,
--["audio.allowed-rates"] = "44100 48000 96000 88200 176400 192000 352800 384000",
--["audio.position"] = "FL,FR",
--["api.alsa.period-size"] = 1024,
I am not 100% this is entirely necessary, however it is part of whatever voodoo made this work for me.
- Step 7: This change was made system wide, and I believe it is actually why Pipewire kind of listens to the “defaults” in step 3.
sudo nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/rtkit-daemon.service.d
In that directory edit or create “limits.conf” with the following.
[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/sysconfig/rtkit
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/libexec/rtkit-daemon $RTKIT_ARGS
sudo mkdir /etc/sysconfig
In that directory edit or create a file called “rkit” with the following.
RTKIT_ARGS="--scheduling-policy=FIFO
--our-realtime-priority=89
--max-realtime-priority=88
--min-nice-level=-19
--rttime-usec-max=2000000
--users-max=100
--processes-per-user-max=1000
--threads-per-user-max=10000
--actions-burst-sec=10
--actions-per-burst-max=1000
--canary-cheep-msec=30000
--canary-watchdog-msec=60000
"
- Step 9: Restart audio services.
systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
