Audio stuttering with the ALSA backend
Version: 0.3.24
Distribution: Arch Linux
Desktop Environment: Tiling WM (bspwm)
Description: Trying to run a game which only supports ALSA results in these errors.
Mar 19 18:33:06 halifax pipewire[1352]: alsa-pcm front:0: snd_pcm_status error: Broken pipe
Mar 19 18:33:06 halifax pipewire[1352]: alsa-pcm front:0: snd_pcm_status error: Broken pipe
Mar 19 18:33:07 halifax pipewire[1352]: alsa-pcm front:0: snd_pcm_status error: Broken pipe
Mar 19 18:33:07 halifax pipewire[1352]: alsa-pcm front:0: snd_pcm_status error: Broken pipe
Mar 19 18:33:07 halifax pipewire[1352]: 1 events suppressed
Mar 19 18:33:07 halifax pipewire[1352]: (PipeWire ALSA [re3]-56) client too slow! rate:512/48000 pos:201261056 status:triggered
Applying these changes to /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf
only seems to amplify the problem (it starts to happen with other programs, like MPV).
default.clock.quantum = 32
default.clock.min-quantum = 32
default.clock.max-quantum = 32
Trying to run without pulseaudio-alsa
or pipewire-alsa
installed seems to fix the issue. Going back to PulseAudio also fixes the problem. So I suspect this is more of a problem with PipeWire's handling of ALSA playback (?).
I could post the entire logs if you want. But the relevant bits are already above (the rest are just Broken pipe
error spam).