Serious crackling (unusable) with external interface, minor crackling with internal at low buffer size
- PipeWire version (
pipewire --version
): 0.3.71 (and a couple previous) - Distribution and distribution version (
PRETTY_NAME
from/etc/os-release
): Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS - Desktop Environment: GNOME
- Kernel version (
uname -r
): 6.2.6-76060206-generic (and others including contemporary and more recent versions of Liquorix)
Description of Problem:
When using REAPER (DAW), monitoring at low buffer sizes is impossible with an external interface as it causes intense crackling. This makes the entire system completely unusable for recording. I'm using system76-scheduler but as far as I can tell it does not affect the results at all one way or the other.
This is an extremely important issue to me as I have been dealing with it for months and reinstalls have fixed nothing.
How Reproducible:
inescapable
Steps to Reproduce:
- Plug in an external audio interface with headphones + microphone
- Set buffer size to 128
- Open Reaper (ideally I could change the buffer size with Reaper open but this functionality broke recently as well)
- Set Reaper's audio device to JACK
- Create and record-arm a new track
- Set the input for the new track to where on the interface the microphone is plugged in
- Toggle input monitoring so that audio going into the microphone comes back out the headphones
- Speak into the microphone and hear that the audio is horribly crackly and unusable
The same results can also be achieved with either a synthesizer or another microphone, as long as the output remains on the interface.
Actual Results:
Hideous crackling can be heard on the output, as of severe underrunning; but no underrun counter that I can find is ever incremented. Minor underrunning can be seen on the input (that is, 128-sample gaps in the recorded waveform), but to actually hear anything properly the buffer size must be increased significantly.
Expected Results:
As in previous versions of Pipewire (i.e. from before approx. May), I should be able to use input monitoring to hear myself properly in real time while recording at the same buffer size, even with light effects like reverb applied.
Additional Info (as attachments):
-
pw-dump > pw-dump.log
: pw-dump.log