Pulseaudio. For a long time my Sony headphones had no working mic. Then one magical update, I had full HSP as well as A2DP sink. It was amazing - I could take teams calls without having to change headsets!
Then one not-so magical update, poof it just went. I tried to scour the bug list in pulseaudio to find anyone who had experienced the same but found the bugtracker impossible to navigate without a login account.
So now I wait, and update, and pray for an update that restores this feature.
Just use a decently recent distro or update to pipewire (and recent kernel). Pulseaudio is basically not where the good things are done anymore. It’s been more than a year or 2 already that the sony phones have microphone working properly.
It is a hard moving bunch of pieces that needed to be in place. The user libraries (pulseaudio or pipewire) the bluez stack and the kernel. For a while things were almost working on the first parts but there were problems on the kernel side then the kernel received patches and it finally was able to support the good audio codec.
(I hate saying this, but) I’m on arch, and using pretty up-to-date versions of pulse and wireplumber, but no dice. I’ve tried the LTS kernel, still no dice. I think it’s a regression that has somehow largely gone unnoticed, because I cannot find any bug reports about it, despite the headphones being quite popular
That could be a combination of something only you have or really just a bug unreported. I would recommend trying to open a bug report and maybe more people can chime in and help.
I’ve personally had a bunch of regressions and problems with some versions, but it’s been fixed for my specific devices. Got 2 codecs for input/mic I can choose and the others for sound output including ldac working nicely.
It’s hard to make a bug report, since I can’t find the specific version that caused the regression, and it’s hard to downgrade that single package to do a binary search to find the regression without altering all the system packages. It’s a kind of “damned-if-you-do” catch-11 situation
I know, but Pipewire gets a lot of hype and I’m not sure how much of it is deserved.
I also don’t know where the “easier” part comes into play for the end-user. pavucontrol and pactl reveals as much to me under pipe as it did under pulse. I’m sure the I/O in the background is a lot cleaner, but I’ve not noticed anything in the foreground.
I’m not sure. I’m using the pipewire-pulse module on top of pipe, which provides the “drop-in replacement” of pulse, so it all seems to work with the old tools.
You make me wonder now whether I should drop pipewire-pulse and see if I still have accessible sound
once an update took away all of my sound devices in mint. had to roll back a few times and update a few packages at a time to find which freedesktop update broke it, then blacklisted it. that was the only time mint broke anything by itself.
About a year in and a couple distro hops, the only time I’ve had something properly break on its own was when my Fedora Sway install forgot where to find font info.
That was the last time I distrohopped, went to Endeavour and got quite cozy with the “fuck you do it yourself” mentality. If my stuff was gonna break, I should at least expect it and have plans
Pulseaudio. For a long time my Sony headphones had no working mic. Then one magical update, I had full HSP as well as A2DP sink. It was amazing - I could take teams calls without having to change headsets!
Then one not-so magical update, poof it just went. I tried to scour the bug list in pulseaudio to find anyone who had experienced the same but found the bugtracker impossible to navigate without a login account.
So now I wait, and update, and pray for an update that restores this feature.
Just use a decently recent distro or update to pipewire (and recent kernel). Pulseaudio is basically not where the good things are done anymore. It’s been more than a year or 2 already that the sony phones have microphone working properly.
It is a hard moving bunch of pieces that needed to be in place. The user libraries (pulseaudio or pipewire) the bluez stack and the kernel. For a while things were almost working on the first parts but there were problems on the kernel side then the kernel received patches and it finally was able to support the good audio codec.
(I hate saying this, but) I’m on arch, and using pretty up-to-date versions of pulse and wireplumber, but no dice. I’ve tried the LTS kernel, still no dice. I think it’s a regression that has somehow largely gone unnoticed, because I cannot find any bug reports about it, despite the headphones being quite popular
That could be a combination of something only you have or really just a bug unreported. I would recommend trying to open a bug report and maybe more people can chime in and help.
I’ve personally had a bunch of regressions and problems with some versions, but it’s been fixed for my specific devices. Got 2 codecs for input/mic I can choose and the others for sound output including ldac working nicely.
It’s hard to make a bug report, since I can’t find the specific version that caused the regression, and it’s hard to downgrade that single package to do a binary search to find the regression without altering all the system packages. It’s a kind of “damned-if-you-do” catch-11 situation
The answer is PipeWire. It’s a drop-in replacement for PulseAudio that works.
I think that’s just branding. I use the pipewire / wireplumber stack for a while and have not noticed any big gains over vanilla pulse
Seems like you had unusual luck with pulseaudio. I had so many problems with it, I was considering switching back to Windows for some tasks.
FYI, Pulse and Pipewire are two different audio servers, not just branding.
Pipewire should be more like JACK, but easier to use like PulseAudio. That was the whole point of it.
I know, but Pipewire gets a lot of hype and I’m not sure how much of it is deserved.
I also don’t know where the “easier” part comes into play for the end-user.
pavucontrolandpactlreveals as much to me under pipe as it did under pulse. I’m sure the I/O in the background is a lot cleaner, but I’ve not noticed anything in the foreground.Those tools were made for pulseaudio, not pipewire, so it makes sense they worm the same. Don’t they have pipewire-specific versions of these tools?
I’m not sure. I’m using the pipewire-pulse module on top of pipe, which provides the “drop-in replacement” of pulse, so it all seems to work with the old tools.
You make me wonder now whether I should drop pipewire-pulse and see if I still have accessible sound
once an update took away all of my sound devices in mint. had to roll back a few times and update a few packages at a time to find which freedesktop update broke it, then blacklisted it. that was the only time mint broke anything by itself.
About a year in and a couple distro hops, the only time I’ve had something properly break on its own was when my Fedora Sway install forgot where to find font info.
That was the last time I distrohopped, went to Endeavour and got quite cozy with the “fuck you do it yourself” mentality. If my stuff was gonna break, I should at least expect it and have plans
I manually disabled HSP in pulseaudio. I’d rather use an external mic than subject myself to the atrocious audio quality of HSP.
But it’s a profile you can switch away from quite nicely using
pavucontrol