Pipewire / Wireplumber, tips

Tips to take better advantage of Pipewire and Wireplumber.
Created: . .
Note

After applying one or more tips, the services have to be reload with the command systemctl --user restart wireplumber pipewire pipewire-pulse.

Disable unused devices 🔗

If you don’t use the integrated sound card of your graphic card or the mic of a webcam, you can disable them by creating a file in ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/, named for example disable-useless-devices.conf and containing:

monitor.alsa.rules = [
    {
        matches = [
            {
                device.name = "~alsa_card.pci-*"
            }
        ]
        actions = {
            update-props = {
                device.disabled = true
            }
        }
    }
]
(syntax for Wireplumber ≥ 0.5)

~alsa_card.pci-* will select all the PCI cards, including the dedicated sound cards. To target one device in particular, its name has to be retrieved in the list given by the command pactl list short. The binary pactl is provided by the package pulseaudio-utils or its equivalent on your distribution.

Disable the automatic suspension 🔗

By default Wireplumber suspend the inputs / outputs in absence of activity. This suspension causes a delay before the sound can be heard again − as when the music resumes. To disable this suspension create a file in ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/ named for example disable-suspension.conf and containing:

monitor.alsa.rules = [
    {
        matches = [
            {
                node.name = "~alsa_input.*"
            }
            {
                node.name = "~alsa_output.*"
            }
        ]
        actions = {
            update-props = {
                session.suspend-timeout-seconds = 0
            }
        }
    }
]
(syntax for Wireplumber ≥ 0.5)
Note

Maintaining this activity will cause a slightly higher power consumption not desired on a laptop.

Dick Grayson from Batmetal
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