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Can't wait for the PulsEAudio replacement. Although I guess that it'll just transform every audio input into free-software-song.au

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PulseAudio is already replaced by PipeWire[1] at Fedora Linux:

[1]: https://pipewire.org/

Does it enjoy good support from the apps? IIRC every app has to be compiled with support for a particular audio system (e.g. OSS, ALSA or PulseAudio). Do many apps provide PipeWire-compatible versions already?

Pipewire has compatibility shims for both PulseAudio and Jackd. The official recommendation is to continue using those APIs.

Using shims sounds like extra complexity, contributing to latency and bugs.

And yet, most who have tried Pipewire and commented about the experience online report that Pipewire via PulseAudio APIs does the job better and with less bugs than PulseAudio.

Latency is measurably better than PulseAudio even via pipewire-pulse.

edit: I think the confusion is over my use of the word "shim". Pipewire doesn't route through PulseAudio, it replaces PulseAudio but includes an implemenation of the same API. There's no increase in latency or complexity because there's no extra steps.

Yeah, but that's not written in Emacs Lisp, or sed, or Rexx...

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