A colleague of mine had a BSOD while we were doing our stand-up, and I have had a few over the last few years.

Also, you don't get to tell us that BSODs don't count if the driver is written by someone else, that's not how it works. Otherwise Linux has no audio problem, only alsa does. Completely different thing.

IDK why you're shilling for them honestly

Ive not been using Linux for long, maybe only 5 years or so. But I've never had any audio issues.

My audio needs are not as straightforward as the average user. I play drums over midi into reaper. I have used guitars and mics through my audio interface. My midi controllers work without any issues.

Im using pipewire and running reaper with pipewire-jack. I've used mint for years with no issues, and now running debian Trixie with no issues.

Yeah, this and a bunch of nearsighted VST developers are the only things keeping me from switching to Linux entirely anymore. Things have definitely gotten better on the Linux side of things, and definitely gotten worse with Windows, so I feel like it's only a matter of time.

Because it's nervous and under a lot of pressure. Go easy on it.

Not strictly an issue in that sense, but I am a musician that heavily uses software monitoring for guitars and vocals, meaning I rely on the lowest latency possible to play back the input.

Pipewire just isn't quite there on the performance level of jack, but I also use realtime kernels and CPU governors to further reduce latency issues, so this is an extreme use case.

While the guy you replied to seens a bit unhinged, I have to agree that pipewire isn't the holy grail some people make it out to be, but I guess it's a better solution than pulse audio for 99% of general users.

Systemd haters when you use systemd instead of UltraXinitializer made in 2005 by John Init in C-- that requires you to manually write init scripts and has 894 critical severity CVEs

You know, I don't get this joke. I have been using Linux and BSD since 2019, and the only incident I ever had was with sndio(7), and that was because I decided to switch to the -current branch of OpenBSD without heeding the warnings.

Apart from that, whether I was using ALSA, PulseAudio, PipeWire, JACK, or OSS (on FreeBSD), I always had a perfect experience.

Another tip: Be careful linking images from hosts that you don't control.

You don't want to come back and find your funny.gif picture is now displaying a goatse.

I also really like how "Linux Studio Plugins" are standalone apps that you can run. I don't produce music or anything but I still use stuff like equalizers and spectrum analyzers. It is insane how flexible the "each app has inputs and outputs you can hook together" architecture is.

It's weird that parts of this approach have been around for a long time, but barely anyone can make them all work together out of the box.

Mac has AU Lab that can host AU apps, i.e. Apple's analog of VST, and feed system audio through them. Plugging any app into another is a bit more involved, though: there was the open-source Sunflower made like fifteen years ago, but bit rot gotten it, and another open-source clone doesn't work for some reason either — so paid apps are the best recourse, just like on Windows iirc.

Mac also has a feature where one can combine multiple audio inputs into one virtual input. A funny application of this is, if you put the mic into a virtual input and call it ‘Rocksmith Something Something Controller’, you can play guitar with Rocksmith without their special usb device.

Next stop: iOS has an audio bus for connecting apps together just like VST/AU on the desktop (actually I think it's very same Audio Unit stuff). Android has jackshit, and if you feel that audio latency could be lower, it'll spit in your face.

Oh wow. How much time does the whole input-processing-output takes? I would have thought it would be so fast that you couldn't notice it

Some musicians assured me that using bluetooth instrument was fine in terms of delay, wouldn't that absolutely blow up all the cool kernel tuning?

It's mostly an old notion that just won't die. Especially in the years after its initial release (2004) it was just a disastrous experience sometimes with cracking noises, misconfigured sinks (or outright missing), crashes and - if I still remember one of my first Linux experiences with Ubuntu 8.04 right - the sudden decision to repeat the current audio buffer at maximum volume.

Ever since I came back to Linux on Desktop around 2017 I didn't had any bigger issues with Pulse either. Ever since Pipewire became the default stuff just works, no issues whatsoever.

OP.
Fuck right off with your nazi-bot repost.

Have you gotten any amount of stable behavior when two users are logged in?

I definitely remember having to futz with audio a looooong time ago, but honestly getting xf86config to work with my video card and monitor was much more difficult.

The joke is they can't hear them because their audio broke. You're overthinking it. Lol.

The dark days of fucking with xorg.conf files and ndiswrapper to get WiFi working are things I'm glad no longer exist.

I have a terrible confession: i have loads of audio issues im dealing with atm. My desktop setup basically gets confused and stops working whenever i try to switch fom headphones to speaker, and my two laptops just do not want to pair with my bluetooth headphones unless i futz with bluetoothctl every time

Anyway, tangent aside. my terrible confession is that i go to linuxmemes for tech support, someone pls help

I got your System "D" right here \*grabs crotch\*

I think I managed to skip the ndiswrapper era. I was using Ethernet on desktops and my laptops were Macs. Nowadays my desktop has both wifi and Ethernet, and my laptops run Linux but nmtui just works.

Strange I never had any problems with PW, for me it's probably the most reliable Linux software there is

Never buy an HP laptop for linux. They often try to have some gimmicky special audio hardware with terrible driver support

Try to use a normal computer instead of trying to kick linux into a ATM.

Linux user for 20 years: in my days I has to compile X by hand if I wanted a graphic interface.

Linux users for 10 years: kinda worked, sometimes you had to install the same a couple of times with different configurations until one worked for you.

Linux user for 5 years: lmao, this easier than windows.

Most ATMs are acually now linux based,. Weeell the new ones anyway. Old ones are still running on XP.

How is the latency on Pipewire? Have you tried using it for instruments at all?

Have you reported the crashing issue to the developers of pipewire?

Yeah I am also running linux for 20 years or so. Minor hiccups here and there, but sound has been solid generally.

Dépend of thé country, Saw some are on windows 10. I guess windows 11 is too unstable yet.

Not yet. Ive been too busy tbh.
I assume that, like many linux tools, its a bitch to report something. Not just a easy bug tracker or something

From what I found this is their official bug tracker

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues

Not sure, xp might be too new. I've definitely seen nt 4 on an ATM before.

Had to change the quantum because I had audio "cracks"/bug sounds, cutting audio..

I have been using Arch daily for 13+ years and I still don't have a proper grasp on audio and Bluetooth..

Used raw ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio, and now Pipewire. I had major issues with all of them except ALSA.

I managed to disable devices like my webcam mic and PS5 mic, and even added a noise reduction filter to my real mic that shows up as it's own device, but..

Only because the Arch wiki told me specifically how to do those things. Audio just luckily seems to work fine for the most part, currently. I used qpwgraph to play with wireplumber and it's obviously very powerful, but I have no idea how it works :D

Bluetooth is a different story, it seems to work differently on every single device I've worked on..

Do you write in a French accent?

I fucked with Xorg literally yesterday to get my display working

Just use Arch or a derivative like CachyOS, it's not as scary as you might think

I don't know much about "bluetooth instruments", the question is what's meant by that, exactly. There are wireless units for mics and guitars, but they are usually connected to an amp directly, so there is only one way transmission, which may be fine with a bit of latency.

When you use your computer as a digital amp/effects processor, you get a roundtip latency, e.g. from the input into a AD converter, to digital processing and back through a DA into the speakers.

That means you basically have doubled the internal latency and the more effects you use in parallel, the tighter the timings have to be.

With jack on an optimised system, I get anything between 4-8ms of total latency. Anything below 20ms is generally considered "fine", but you can hear it, depending on your subjective brain and ears. I would say I notice anything above 10ms already, but I've played with 16+ when I started and it worked for pracitsing.

hp victus16 is working fine with wireplumber. never buy hp because the anti customer practices, terrible build quality and supporting israel with hardware.

Easy Effects is such a great app. I like a little bit more bass on my music, and it has presets for that as well!

IDK why you’re shilling for them honestly

I love this so much. :D

I said that Linux AND Windows are stable these days. You took "Windows shill" from that. How pathetic is this?

Yep

My elitebook 840 works fine on linux

Never buy an HP laptop for linux.

Same with any Apple Intel based iMac

Driver support is non-existent. Audio via the speakers worked but no volume control, Bluetooth, thunderbolt, mic etc didn't work. Even the headphone socket didn't work.

Shit even the gpu (AMD) didn't work properly. Despite being a 5k panel resolution is stuck at 4k.

Sigh. Would have been a great Linux box if I could have gotten it to work

Edit

SyStEmD iS tHe OnLy InIt SyStEm BeCaUsE wE kNoW nO aLtErNaTiVeS

i use GNU Shepherd btw, thanks for asking (:

now go back writing text files for services and pray for them to werk like the cave people you are

the bluetooth pipewire pulseaudio mix could be a bit better.

It's gotten to the point that my bluetooth headphones will not connect to my laptop because I don't currently have any media playing.

Load up a youtube video, the audio device springs into life, offers it up as pulseaudio source, who signals to bluez that there is a valid audio profile and suddenly everything connects.

From an efficiency standpoint, yes I get it. From a UX standpoint... please just let my earphones connect when I enable bluetooth from the get go

Which distro did you use? Or is it the same for all?

Many hardware companies have the same problem, they can output some decent hardware, but some other series are true lemons (especially for Linux/Unix, but for a lesser extent, for that other system as well). And beforehand, it's not always easy to know which is which. It's a common issue with laptop makers where the hardware is often more esoteric.

It used to be, but that was a long time ago.

Configuring pipewire or pulseaudio is dark magic