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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

Are audio issues on Linux still a thing?

I've been using Linux as desktop OS for 14 years this month, and I've never had issues with audio on none of the 6 computers I installed Linux on.

Getting a new printer working (or a fresh install working with an existing printer that used to work flawlessly), has been a recurrent source of frustration, and I've experienced occasional issues with GPU drivers, but audio has never been an issue, so I wonder: are “sound issues on Linux” a meme that survived from the early days of Pulse Audio, or is that still a thing in 2023?

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Yes, unfortunately. Since pipewire was introduced (replacing pulseaudio) sound always "judders" when playing or unpausing a video in VLC. It's a slight annoyance so I've not bothered to look into it. Pipewire also crashes after a while (seems to have a memory leak) which causes any programs to lose sound, - that "only" requires you to restart those programs.

Linux Mint 21.1 Vera. I get stutters in VLC playback without pipewire - pulseaudio is to blame, Mint used to work better. Thanks for the heads up, I will not try fix what is broken with something that has known issues.

$ pactl info

Library Protocol Version: 35

Server Protocol Version: 35

Server Name: pulseaudio

Server Version: 15.99.1

> Are audio issues on Linux still a thing?

Little things - on mine, the volume level after resume is being set back to the default level, not the last-set level. I suspect that's because it's a USB audio device though.

Another little thing: I needed to

  sudo pacman -S sof-firmware

to get audio on my Linux.

> sof-firmware is required for some newer laptop models (mainly since 2019) because they implement their drivers with firmware provided by the Sound Open Firmware project. Checking the journal will provide messages about the missing firmware (see BBS#275577).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Archit...

This is perfectly legitimate, but I had to scan through `dmesg` and find a recommendation in a hyperlink. Not something you'd ask your grandmother to do.

I think that's likely to be an artifact of using Arch, which is not exactly a consumer-oriented distro.

Only for some people. Lots of people are saying they are having issues with pipewire, but personally I have never had any audio issues with pulseaudio nor with pipewire. And that is on multiple devices across many years.

So no, it's not Linux. Because if it works for at least 1 person, that means there isn't some sort of technical limitation where Linux can't get audio to work properly, since clearly it can.

Maybe the distro they use doesn't package the audio packages properly, or maybe they messed around with too many settings, or maybe their specific hardware has issues. But none of that is Linux's fault.

Does it really matter whose fault it is? When the average user tries to switch from Windows to some flavor of Linux and their audio doesn't work, they don't give two shits whether it's Linux-the-kernel, the package maintainers, or the audio subsystem at fault, they're rightfully going to blame Linux-the-ecosystem.

It is a thing again, actually.

Since pipewire, on wayland/kde, my audio sink regularly dies and has to be turned off and back on again to work.

I’ve never experienced audio issues before that since … 2012 ish.

Strange. What distro are you using? I've used that same stack for a year+ and things have been just peachy. I'm playing Steam games and doing light studio work (Ardour, etc). I'm actually surprised by how Pipewire just works. (Fedora Kinoite)

It's on Arch Linux. I haven't really figured out what's going on yet, the sound dies erratically but usually when eg. a Chrome audio tab is closed or something.

Younger me would debug it more. Older me just made a script to turn the sink off and on quickly until someone else fixes it ...

> Are audio issues on Linux still a thing?

Only if you an incompetent, bungling fool who refuses to just do things in a sane way, and use a distribution designed for the purpose, such as Ubuntu Studio.

I've had a pro-audio Linux-based DAW in my studio for 15 years and it has easily been the most stable, rock-solid performing DAW - alongside both Mac and Windows systems - by a long shot. The reason is, I chose my hardware and my distribution accordingly - Presonus AD/DA convertors, and Ubuntu Studio - which is such an amazing, powerful, mind-blowingly wonderful resource, I feel inclined to not mention it, lest it get wide adoption and suffer the long-September factor when everyone and their dog realizes just how great it is.

Seriously, choose your distribution wisely and you will have better audio performance than the other OS'es. This is a fact.

I haven’t had problems, but my friend was. The problem was solved by updating his graphics drivers, as he was running everything through his Invidia GPU’s DisplayPort.

That didn’t solve Cinnamon’s refusal to use Steam, however. I have had 0 problems in XFCE, outside of self-made ones like crashing my PulseAudio trying to modify the config.

Buy Brother laser printers. Never had an issue with those in a quarter century of Linux use.

automatic switching from A2DP (headphones) to HSP/HFP (handsfree) doesn't work most of the time [1]. the drivers for BT or other audio cards are bad as hell, so everything else isn't working as it should.

[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/31...

I’ve had pretty good luck myself, but have on occasion gotten wrapped around the axle with some layer in the middle suddenly having whacked out mixer settings or something.

I’ve always been able to Google a solution so far.

>I've never had issues with audio on none of the 6 computers I installed Linux on

Same. More than a decade, multiple installations, multiple distros, no issues. And most of them were running PA.

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