Software Alternatives & Reviews

PulseAudio VS PipeWire

Compare PulseAudio VS PipeWire and see what are their differences

PulseAudio logo PulseAudio

PulseAudio is a sound system for POSIX OSes, meaning that it is a proxy for your sound applications.

PipeWire logo PipeWire

Low-latency multimedia framework for Linux audio and video, supporting PulseAudio, JACK, ALSA and GStreamer applications
  • PulseAudio Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30
  • PipeWire Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26

PulseAudio videos

Linux PulseAudio Doesn't Suck | For The Record

More videos:

  • Review - What Is Jack, Pulseaudio, and Alsa? Linux Audio Drivers Explained

PipeWire videos

You should use PipeWire... NOW!!!

More videos:

  • Review - PulseAudio Is Dead To Me: Pipewire Is Here To Stay
  • Review - I've replaced JACK and PulseAudio with PipeWire and this is what happened

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to PulseAudio and PipeWire)
Audio
64 64%
36% 36
Audio & Music
71 71%
29% 29
Email Marketing
73 73%
27% 27
Music Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using PulseAudio and PipeWire. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, PipeWire seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 16 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

PulseAudio mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of PulseAudio yet. Tracking of PulseAudio recommendations started around Mar 2021.

PipeWire mentions (16)

  • Firefox 116 Should Have Experimental PipeWire Camera Support
    If you don't know what PipeWire is (I didn't), it's an audio-video handler - it replaces things like PulseAudio. https://pipewire.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Are we sure that weston/wayland is the way to go?
    Damn, your "audio server" seems to disagree with you. Source: 12 months ago
  • PipeWire 0.3.66
    PipeWire is a server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines. This includes:. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Yousican & Linux
    I installed and configured pipewire according to the instructions from the Debian website. And let me tell you, it solved all my problems. The sound quality is good enough for practice, latency is very low. Currently, I just mute my guitar in YS, turn on ToneLib, adjust the volume on the system mixer, and play. Source: over 1 year ago
  • PipeWire Support in Firefox
    > PipeWire is a project that aims to greatly improve handling of audio and video under Linux. It provides a low-latency, graph-based processing engine on top of audio and video devices that can be used to support the use cases currently handled by both PulseAudio and JACK. https://pipewire.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing PulseAudio and PipeWire, you can also consider the following products

Go Button - Go Button is a mobile audio app designed to provide professional playback of music and sound effects for live shows. It provides a creative, self-contained show control system that runs on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

QjackCtl - QjackCtl is JACK Audio Connection Kit Qt GUI Interface

LiveTrax - LiveTrax is an app by MasterMedia Productions through which musicians can control the playback of their favorite track during live performances by using simple controls.

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (known by the acronym ALSA) is a free and open source software...

AudioBus - With Audiobus, the revolutionary new inter-app audio routing system, you can connect your...

PulseEffects - Limiter, compressor, reverberation, stereo equalizer and auto volume effects for Pulseaudio...