how to diagnose / report pipewire problems?

[Matthew Miller]

My desktop system is currently dead, so I am doing a thing which seems to
cause stress for pipewire: I'm moving my laptop between two budget USB-C
docking stations at two different desks. At one desk, I have an SteelSeries
Arctis 7 which has a non-bluetooth USB wireless transceiver. At the other, a
cheap "CM106-like" DAC which feeds a 4-speaker surround sound setup. And to
compound things, I switch between accounts on my laptop a lot -- my own,
plus a "clean" one which I use for presenting from so when I share my screen
there's not my bookmarks or confidential email accidentally there, plus one
that's the opposite and I use for testing things.

With PulseAudio, this was all working fine. With Pipewire, it's been a
little glitchy. Like, yesterday, one time for no apparent reason, the
surround channels on the CM106-like were weirdly scrambled (rear left was
front right, I think?). And this morning, I missed the beginning of a
meeting because the Arctis 7 just wasn't showing up and I was only getting
computer audio as an output option.

When these things happen, where is it best to diagnose and report the
problems? (This is on Fedora 33 with pipewire enabled as in the change
proposal.)

There are also a lot of things in the journal like:

pipewire[2585]: 1 events suppressed
  pipewire[2585]: (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun! rate:256/48000 count:4 time:145607327 delay:21 max:10557

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:19:22AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> pipewire[2585]: 1 events suppressed
>   pipewire[2585]: (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun! rate:256/48000 count:4 time:145607327 delay:21 max:10557

And just now my audio vanished and the journal is going crazy with

pipewire[2585]: 373 events suppressed
pipewire[2585]: (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun! rate:64/48000 count:13399 time:934721026 delay:6 max:10557
pipewire[2585]: 377 events suppressed
pipewire[2585]: (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun! rate:64/48000 count:13588 time:936727696 delay:6 max:10557

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:23:21AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:19:22AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > pipewire[2585]: 1 events suppressed
> >   pipewire[2585]: (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun! rate:256/48000 count:4 time:145607327 delay:21 max:10557
>
> And just now my audio vanished and the journal is going crazy with

Oh actually it is now just Firefox where audio doesn't work. Sound test
works fine, Chrome works fine, just Firefox is now silent. Whee. It's turned
up all the way in the Sound control panel.

[Lukas Ruzicka]

Matthew,
pipewire are two userspace systemd services -> pipewire and pipewire-pulse.
Check that they are running, you can also restart them, if there is a
problem.

You can also try the following to monitor the devices:

1. For the basic info on pipewire -> *pw-dump 0 *
2. For the basic info on pipewire-pulseaudio layer -> *pactl info*
3. To list all available playback devices -> *pw-cat -p --list-targets*
4. To list all available recording devices* -> pw-cat -r --list-targets*
5. To see what devices are playing and how they are performing -> *pw-top*
6. To try that a sound can be played over a selected device -> *pw-cat -p
--target XX file.wav*
7. You can also use *pavucontrol* to control the overall loudness, as well
as the loudness of particular applications and which device they will use
to play.

Just a long shot, but what if replacing the audio device while the system
is running causes pipewire to still believe that the default audio is the
one present when the services started and it redirects all the sound to it,
leaving the new device silent?

I hope this will help you a bit.

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 4:32 PM Matthew Miller 
wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:23:21AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:19:22AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > > pipewire[2585]: 1 events suppressed
> > >   pipewire[2585]:
>
> (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun!
> rate:256/48000 count:4 time:145607327 delay:21 max:10557
> > And just now my audio vanished and the journal is going crazy with
>
> Oh actually it is now just Firefox where audio doesn't work. Sound test
> works fine, Chrome works fine, just Firefox is now silent. Whee. It's
> turned
> up all the way in the Sound control panel.
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
>
> Fedora Project Leader
> _______________________________________________
> desktop mailing list -- [e-mail]
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[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 05:10:41PM +0100, Lukas Ruzicka wrote:
> For the basic info on pipewire -> *pw-dump 0 *
> For the basic info on pipewire-pulseaudio layer -> *pactl info*
> To list all available playback devices -> *pw-cat -p --list-targets*
> To list all available recording devices* -> pw-cat -r --list-targets*
> To see what devices are playing and how they are performing -> *pw-top*
> To try that a sound can be played over a selected device -> *pw-cat -p
>
> --target XX file.wav*
> 7. You can also use *pavucontrol* to control the overall loudness, as well
> as the loudness of particular applications and which device they will use
> to play.

Thanks, that's all super helpful!

[Matthew Miller]

> To list all available playback devices -> *pw-cat -p --list-targets*

Yeah, so, just now, this was not showing my Arctis headphones, so I did 
systemctl --user restart pipewire, which makes them show up -- but the GNOME
sound control panel doesn't show them. It shows the headphones-jack
headphones. But audio is going to the Arctis ones! But, the volume control
doesn't work.

[Lukas Ruzicka]

On Sat, Feb 6, 2021 at 5:02 PM Matthew Miller 
wrote:
> > To list all available playback devices -> *pw-cat -p --list-targets*
>
> Yeah, so, just now, this was not showing my Arctis headphones, so I did
> systemctl --user restart pipewire, which makes them show up -- but the
> GNOME
> sound control panel doesn't show them. It shows the headphones-jack
> headphones. But audio is going to the Arctis ones! But, the volume control
> doesn't work.

Recently there were some issues with the volume control in Gnome, see this
bug for example https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1912062.
You might be able to *restart the pipewire-pulse* service, too, to get that
working.
If it doesn't help, you should be able to manipulate volume & co. using
*pavucontrol*.

On my machine, volume control on Gnome panel works fine, but I never change
the sound card. One machine is a desktop with Focusrite Scarlett constantly
connected, others are laptops with no docking station using the built-in
audio only.

Hope that helps.
Lukas
> --
> Matthew Miller
>
> Fedora Project Leader
> _______________________________________________
> desktop mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
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[Lukas Ruzicka]

The XRuns are telling you, that your system is too slow to fill up the
audio buffer, you should probably increase the headroom to make the buffer
bigger.

Try editing the* /etc/pipewire/media-session.d/**alsa-monitor.conf *file
and uncomment and change the line:  *api.alsa.headroom = 1024*

You can probably go for some bigger number here, such as 2048 or even 4096
if you do not intend to make your laptop a DAW machine.

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 4:24 PM Matthew Miller 
wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:19:22AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > pipewire[2585]: 1 events suppressed
> >   pipewire[2585]:
>
> (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun!
> rate:256/48000 count:4 time:145607327 delay:21 max:10557
>
> And just now my audio vanished and the journal is going crazy with
>
> pipewire[2585]: 373 events suppressed
> pipewire[2585]:
> (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun!
> rate:64/48000 count:13399 time:934721026 delay:6 max:10557
> pipewire[2585]: 377 events suppressed
> pipewire[2585]:
> (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun!
> rate:64/48000 count:13588 time:936727696 delay:6 max:10557
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
>
> Fedora Project Leader
> _______________________________________________
> desktop mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]...

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 05:15:10PM +0100, Lukas Ruzicka wrote:
> The XRuns are telling you, that your system is too slow to fill up the
> audio buffer, you should probably increase the headroom to make the buffer
> bigger.

Huh. It is an X1 Carbon with a i7-10510U. Is this to be expected? Is there a
way the system could self-tune itself instead? Maybe we need a different
dfeault?
> Try editing the* /etc/pipewire/media-session.d/**alsa-monitor.conf *file
> and uncomment and change the line:  *api.alsa.headroom = 1024*

Just to confirm: the default (commented-out) value was 0. I'm putting it to
1024 and will try 2048 if the problem persists.

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 10:19 AM Matthew Miller  wrote:
> My desktop system is currently dead, so I am doing a thing which seems to
> cause stress for pipewire: I'm moving my laptop between two budget USB-C
> docking stations at two different desks. At one desk, I have an SteelSeries
> Arctis 7 which has a non-bluetooth USB wireless transceiver. At the other, a
> cheap "CM106-like" DAC which feeds a 4-speaker surround sound setup. And to
> compound things, I switch between accounts on my laptop a lot -- my own,
> plus a "clean" one which I use for presenting from so when I share my screen
> there's not my bookmarks or confidential email accidentally there, plus one
> that's the opposite and I use for testing things.
>
> With PulseAudio, this was all working fine. With Pipewire, it's been a
> little glitchy. Like, yesterday, one time for no apparent reason, the
> surround channels on the CM106-like were weirdly scrambled (rear left was
> front right, I think?). And this morning, I missed the beginning of a
> meeting because the Arctis 7 just wasn't showing up and I was only getting
> computer audio as an output option.
>
> When these things happen, where is it best to diagnose and report the
> problems? (This is on Fedora 33 with pipewire enabled as in the change
> proposal.)
>
> There are also a lot of things in the journal like:
>
> pipewire[2585]: 1 events suppressed
>   pipewire[2585]: (alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_SteelSeries_Arctis_7-00.stereo-game-49) XRun! rate:256/48000 count:4 time:145607327 delay:21 max:10557

Best place would be to file issues upstream:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues

Alternatively, filing bugs in Red Hat Bugzilla will help too:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=pipew...

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:23:26AM -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> Best place would be to file issues upstream:
> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues
>
> Alternatively, filing bugs in Red Hat Bugzilla will help too:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=pipew...

I guess right now I don't really have _bug reports_, I have _problems_, and
I know bugzilla at least isn't a good venue for that kind of thing.

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 12:47 PM Matthew Miller  wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 10:23:26AM -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > Best place would be to file issues upstream:
> > https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues
> >
> > Alternatively, filing bugs in Red Hat Bugzilla will help too:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=pipew...
>
> I guess right now I don't really have _bug reports_, I have _problems_, and
> I know bugzilla at least isn't a good venue for that kind of thing.

Then as Wim said, going to the #pipewire IRC channel on Freenode (via
IRC or Matrix) would be the way to go.

[Wim Taymans]

Those underrun problems are likely fixed with the new pending update:

https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2021-f394ea10e9

In addition to filing an issue, you can also come to our IRC channel #pipewire on freenode
for some interactive help and debugging.