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Topic: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games (Read 3556 times) previous topic - next topic
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pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Does not happen with pulseaudio.
For example in papa's louie pizzeria the whole game starts crackling, while in others such as tf2 (native) or tboi it's pretty infrequent.
No troubleshooting information I found helped or was relevant.
Will send recording if needed, I apologize for the lack of info, it's 5 am and I'm tired. I don't know what to add.
I'm using the default config, I just installed pipewire following this guide: https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Site/PipewireInsteadPulseaudio
Thank you in advance.

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #2 –
No, this is not the fix, it's just working around the issue and wasting cpu cycles... The better fix would be to change handling of Wine's audio backend from the default pulseaudio to alsa, here's how you can do it with winetricks:
Code: [Select]
$ winetricks sound=alsa
Then check if it's loaded properly with winecfg:

This way pipewire works the way it is intended to which should be:
wine > alsa > pipewire-alsa > pipewire
not:
wine > alsa > pulseaudio > pipewire-pulse > pipewire = all of this wrapping around is just a waste of cpu power...

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Shoun2137 – on
No, this is not the fix, it's just working around the issue and wasting cpu cycles... The better fix would be to change handling of Wine's audio backend from the default pulseaudio to alsa, here's how you can do it with winetricks:
Code: [Select]
$ winetricks sound=alsa
Then check if it's loaded properly with winecfg:

This way pipewire works the way it is intended to which should be:
wine > alsa > pipewire-alsa > pipewire
not:
wine > alsa > pulseaudio > pipewire-pulse > pipewire = all of this wrapping around is just a waste of cpu power...
thanks, will try. How do I set this up in steam proton though?

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #4 –
Quote from: terrorbyte – on
Quote from: Shoun2137 – on
[...]
thanks, will try. How do I set this up in steam proton though?
Same way, but with protontricks, essentially:
Code: [Select]
protontricks <appid> sound=alsa
You can get all locally available proton bottles with:
Code: [Select]
protontricks -l

Edit 25.05.2025:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/1938#note_1286997
Here's why wine's libpulse is absolutely trash and inferior and SHOULD NOT BE EVER USED with pipewire.

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Shoun2137 – on
Quote from: terrorbyte – on

thanks, will try. How do I set this up in steam proton though?
Same way, but with protontricks, essentially:
Code: [Select]
protontricks <appid> sound=alsa
You can get all locally available proton bottles with:
Code: [Select]
protontricks -l

Edit 25.05.2025:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/1938#note_1286997
Here's why wine's libpulse is absolutely trash and inferior and SHOULD NOT BE EVER USED with pipewire.
I finally got around to doing this, do i have to do this for every single game I have installed? That will take a while.

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #6 –
It says selected driver: (None) instead of winealsa.drv
IT'S NOT FIXED, I'LL JUST FIX IT ON A GAME BY GAME BASIS.
Okay that fixed it for that game, I'll see if this can fix skyrim's weird echoes too.

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #7 –
Yeah, it solved it. I just need to run protontricks on affected games. I think it fixed skyrim's issues too. Thanks for the help.

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #8 –
Quote from: terrorbyte – on
It says selected driver: (None) instead of winealsa.drv
[...]
Yeah, I noticed that this happens on current 10.X wine and derivatives, probably just the UI bug in winecfg. Don't get me started on the wine's filepicker...
Quote from: terrorbyte – on
Yeah, it solved it. I just need to run protontricks on affected games. I think it fixed skyrim's issues too. Thanks for the help.
When I have more time, I'll consolidate current Artix pipewire wiki page with several of those quirks so that people wouldn't need to search stuff up on their own. ;f

Re: pipewire-pulse audio crackling in some proton games

Reply #9 –
Unfortunately in FH5 and FH4 sound=alsa option gives low volume and (sort of) incomplete sound.
alsamixer did not help.
So I get back to sound=pulse option but used this in game launch string of steam:
Code: [Select]
env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=400 %command%
No cracking now.

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