🎙PulseAudio and PipeWire: A Comparative Review 🎧
🎙PulseAudio and PipeWire: A Comparative Review 🎧 Introduction In the world of Linux audio systems, PulseAudio and PipeWire are two major players. Both are designed to manage audio streams and provide a bridge between applications and the kernel's ALSA audio stack. This article will provide a comprehensive review and comparison of these two systems, focusing on their performance, compatibility, and features. PulseAudio PulseAudio is a standard audio stack used by almost all Linux distributions. It can be used for mixing, per-application volume control, and network audio. However, it has faced criticism for high CPU usage and numerous bugs, particularly in its early years from 2004 to 2014. Modern versions of PulseAudio have addressed many of these issues and are generally considered reliable and useful. PulseAudio's configuration can be adjusted to affect audio quality, with settings such as high-priority, default-sample-channels, and default-sample-rate. However, some users...