#1106569 pipewire: Audio intermittently crackles and distorts severely specifically on Trixie with Pipewire

Package:
pipewire
Source:
pipewire
Description:
audio and video processing engine multimedia server
Submitter:
gigaqueen
Date:
2025-12-01 14:45:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1106569#5
Date:
2025-05-26 12:07:45 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,
There is a problem with Trixie's current Pipewire version.

   * What led up to the situation?
	This issue began when I upgraded to Debian Trixie. It was not present in Bookworm.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
	I attempted the following fixes:

	Made a file in /etc/security/limits.d/50-pw-rlimits.conf
	File Contents:
	@pipewire   - rtprio  95
	@pipewire   - nice    -19
	@pipewire   - memlock 4194304

   * What was the outcome of this action?
	The issue remained unaffected.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?
	Not applicable - I was attempting to apply this fix
#1106569#10
Date:
2025-05-26 13:09:20 UTC
From:
To:
I also have started hearing occasional crackling in the last few
months in debian sid.
It was fine in Jan-Feb, and appeared maybe in March-April.
My PW has always been running with RT prio, maybe this is a kernel regression?

Roman.
#1106569#15
Date:
2025-05-26 13:09:20 UTC
From:
To:
I also have started hearing occasional crackling in the last few
months in debian sid.
It was fine in Jan-Feb, and appeared maybe in March-April.
My PW has always been running with RT prio, maybe this is a kernel regression?

Roman.
#1106569#20
Date:
2025-05-29 09:37:09 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Would you check if this issue persists with pipewire 1.4.4-1 in
experimental that I 'm preparing, thus it should be available in the
repo in few hours.

Thank you.

Best regards,
Dylan
#1106569#25
Date:
2025-05-29 16:37:30 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Dylan,

It seems to be marginally better with 1.4.4-1, but I can still hear
cracks and glitches.

Cheers,
-Paul
#1106569#32
Date:
2025-08-17 00:32:12 UTC
From:
To:
As a workaround, I increased pipewire "quantum" from 128 to 256
following the wiki[1] and its mostly fixed on my machine.

1. https://wiki.debian.org/PipeWire#choppy_audio_on_systems_with_high_load
#1106569#37
Date:
2025-09-22 17:01:08 UTC
From:
To:
I've had a similar issue since upgrading from bookworm to trixie.  Intermittent distortion (high frequency glitches mostly) on all audio.  For me restarting pipewire with `systemctl restart --user pipewire` fixes the issue until the next reboot.  So it seems to be some kind of problem with startup order or initialization.

I don't see any errors in the pipewire journal or dmesg.

J.P.
#1106569#42
Date:
2025-12-01 14:43:07 UTC
From:
To:
This bug has been fixed for me since the release of 13.2.  Presumably the kernel update resolved it.

J.P.