It had a steep learning curve and a lot of configuration but I loved the freedom JACK granted to wire applications to each other.
Is anybody using PipeWire in an audio engineering setup? Or would JACK still be the preferred method here?
Last year I took another chance and made a fresh Arch install on my laptop and went with PW (on previous attempts I tried to switch on an already running system). I had no issues, and in fact it solved some issues I used to have on jack.
Then I did the same on my desktop. I had problems setting up my microphone, but I managed to solve it. Now I have two, very minor issues: sometimes bitwig takes a bit to start the audio engine, or I have to restart the program; and sometimes my audio stops working when I unplug my zoom h1n while the system is running. I rarely do the latter so it's barely an issue.
Actually it allows wiring also jack applications to pipewire applications and pipewire to jack. I use e.g. "pw-jack ardour" to run ardour and launch pw-jack jconvolver and route inputs and outputs with qpwgraph.
I'm using ardour (after the creator recommended I try it in another HN thread) on Debian with a realtime kernel for a 16 in by 8 out interface for eventual use as a FOH mixing console.
After lots of tweaking, I haven't seen much improvement over the default pipewire-jack config, but I've only recently started tackling realtime priorities and modifying pipewire metadata for interfaces.
> It had a steep learning curve and a lot of configuration
Yeah I experienced that with Jack too. I spent even more time trying to learn and configure Pipewire, much longer than I ever did with Jack, all to give up and go back to Jack.