https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/03/08/pipewire-a-year-in-review-look-ahead/ Collabora Logo - Click/tap to navigate to the Collabora website homepage * About + Who we are + Our expertise + Our work + Open Source + Our ecosystem * Services + Guide + Train + Build + Integrate + Optimize + Maintain * Industries + Automotive + Digital TV + Silicon + OEM + VR/AR * News & Blog * Careers * Contact Menu button * About * Services * Industries * News & Blog * Careers * Contact * +44 (0)1223 362967 * +1 514 667 2499 * contact@collabora.com We're hiring! [heroSizer_] * * Home * News & Blog * Blog PipeWire: A year in review & a look ahead George Kiagiadakis avatar George Kiagiadakis March 08, 2022 Share this post: [socialShar] [socialShar] [socialShar] [socialShar] [socialShar] The PipeWire project has made major strides over the past few years, bringing shiny new features, and paving the way for new possibilities in the Linux multimedia scene. With 2021 seeing significant progress made on all fronts, let's take a moment to look back at what was accomplished, and what lies ahead for 2022. Last year began with busywork on the Bluetooth(r) front, with amazing volunteers testing and fixing things on PipeWire's Bluetooth(r) plugin. Throughout the year, the plugin evolved to become perhaps one of the best - if not the best - open source Bluetooth(r) audio stack implementations that I am aware of. Based on an extensible plugin architecture, Pipewire already supports all current audio profiles and codecs. It is also future proof, enabling it to be integrated with other stacks like ofono. It's a solid base for any Bluetooth(r) audio use case. Then, in April, Fedora 34 became the first Linux distribution to ship PipeWire as its default audio service. While PipeWire was there before as a video transport service to enable screen sharing on Wayland, the addition of the audio layer by default exposed all of PipeWire's incredible capabilities to a broader audience. This led to a significant number of improvements that were made to fix issues and improve the experience of several users. In the meantime, at Collabora, we have been tirelessly working on getting WirePlumber ready to become the default session manager for PipeWire. With the 0.4.0 release that came out in June, WirePlumber introduced all those needed elements to achieve this goal. First and foremost, its Lua scripting engine made it possible to write most of the session management logic in a relatively simple scripting language. With the scripting engine available, it became so much easier for us to then sync all the policy logic with pipewire-media-session in order to replace PulseAudio. It also allowed us to maintain the embedded policy that Automotive Grade Linux uses with much more ease. In September, we also integrated audio passthrough functionality in PipeWire. This was accompanied by the respective management logic in WirePlumber and pipewire-media-session to keep everything in sync. That has enabled faster audio paths for resource-intensive applications like video games as well as applications on embedded devices, avoiding the need for audio conversions that typically happen in a standard PipeWire audio setup. Finally, after some intense bug fixing in October, WirePlumber was made the default PipeWire session manager in Fedora 35. It was shortly followed by other major Linux distributions that had started to use PipeWire for audio in the meantime. Now in 2022, we are looking to the future. We already have designs to improve WirePlumber and experiment with new things. On the short-term horizon, we have plans to rework some parts of WirePlumber in order to make its configuration more user-friendly and the scripts easier to work with. We are also planning to revisit the policy logic and try to go a step beyond what PulseAudio has ever offered. In addition, we are looking forward to experimenting with complex cameras to improve how PipeWire and libcamera work together for an optimal user experience. We aim to lead the way for interesting new camera developments in PipeWire. Here's hoping this year will be more amazing than the last! Related Posts WirePlumber in Fedora 35 WirePlumber in Fedora 35 WirePlumber, the PipeWire session manager WirePlumber, the PipeWire session manager PipeWire, the media service transforming the Linux multimedia landscape PipeWire, the media service transforming the Linux multimedia landscape Related Posts WirePlumber in Fedora 35 WirePlumber in Fedora 35 WirePlumber, the PipeWire session manager WirePlumber, the PipeWire session manager PipeWire, the media service transforming the Linux multimedia landscape PipeWire, the media service transforming the Linux multimedia landscape Comments (6) 1. Matt: Mar 09, 2022 at 09:12 AM Last I checked EAC3 passthrough is completely borked https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/1648 Reply to this comment Reply to this comment 1. George Kiagiadakis: Mar 09, 2022 at 03:47 PM I'm sorry to hear that, I was not aware of this specific issue. Just to clarify the statement in the blog post, our work here at Collabora has been mostly focused on PCM (raw, non-encoded audio) passthrough, which is to avoid converting audio to the standard float 32-bit planar format that is in use by PipeWire and to avoid resampling as well (if possible). Additionally, we worked on the session management logic around both raw and encoded passthrough and tested it with PCM and AC3 audio files. Reply to this comment Reply to this comment 1. Be: Mar 09, 2022 at 05:35 PM Could you elaborate on the use cases for PCM passthrough? All I can think of would be passing through from an audio interface's input to output when the hardware lacks direct monitoring. Though I'm unclear why converting to/ from 32 bit floats would be a problem. Reply to this comment Reply to this comment 2. Matthias Urlichs: Mar 09, 2022 at 05:20 PM Suppose I need to get a new Bluetooth protocol for Pipewire implemented. In my case: ASHA, i.e. audio to hearing aids over Bluetooth BLE. Suppose also I'm willing to pay somebody for doing that. Where do I ask? Reply to this comment Reply to this comment 1. Mark Filion: Mar 09, 2022 at 05:37 PM We would be happy to look into this for you! Please get in touch with us at contact@collabora.com so we can discuss further. Reply to this comment Reply to this comment 3. Be: Mar 09, 2022 at 05:33 PM "We are also planning to revisit the policy logic and try to go a step beyond what PulseAudio has ever offered." Could you elaborate on these plans? Reply to this comment Reply to this comment Add a Comment Name: [ ] Email: [ ] Website: [ ] [ ] Notify of New Replies: [ ] Please tick this box to confirm you have read and accept the terms of our privacy notice regarding collection/storage and usage of your personal data: * Allowed tags:
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