PipeWire vs PulseAudio

Users discuss and recommend PipeWire as a superior alternative to PulseAudio for Linux audio management, highlighting its compatibility, low latency, and resolution of longstanding audio issues like those with ALSA and JACK.

📉 Falling 0.2x Open Source
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Keywords

e.g OSS RME pipewire.org CoreAudio JACK NDK VM www.alsa project.org audio jack linux sound pulse freebsd apis daemon enlightenment time does

Sample Comments

bloopernova Apr 26, 2022 View on HN

Have you tried Pipewire? It's pretty wonderful.

lillecarl Aug 2, 2021 View on HN

I would like to recommend pipewire over Pulse, it's compatible but actually really good, also ALSA compatible

phkahler Oct 19, 2021 View on HN

They're still using pulseaudio and not pipewire?

ahartmetz Apr 4, 2025 View on HN

Yes, PulseAudio works great since it's actually PipeWire.

nullc Sep 1, 2023 View on HN

Maybe it'll be like pulseaudio... it never got good, but pipewire is actually quite good.

colordrops Aug 25, 2024 View on HN

Use pipewire instead of pulseaudio. Much better.

heavyset_go Oct 22, 2021 View on HN

Forget about PulseAudio and use PipeWire.

mixedCase Feb 21, 2021 View on HN

You've already been told about ALSA (which Pulse uses and organizes, for its the low-level audio subsystem the kernel offers) and Jack, which specializes in low-latency audio. There's also sndio ported from OpenBSD.But the one you might want to consider instead is called PipeWire. It implements the ALSA, Pulse and Jack APIs with a single implementation and it's pretty much the future of audio (and video casting) on Linux.If you're using Wayland, you're already usin

duped May 4, 2022 View on HN

Audio I/O on Linux, specifically PulseAudio and JACK. It's a disaster compared to CoreAudio and WASAPI. Maybe pipewire won't suck and break regularly, but I doubt it.

squarefoot Oct 6, 2024 View on HN

Yes, I recall the audio engine problems and the war between Alsa, Pulseaudio and Jack (and OSS before them). Luckily Pipewire solved all or nearly all those problems: it emulates other engines APIs so that programs requiring this or that engine will transparently access it instead of the real required engine. If you're running a recent distro, chances are that you already have Pipewire installed, otherwise you can install it after getting rid of the old engines.<a href="https:/