PipeWire 1.0 RC released (Final release expected end 2023)

PipeWire 0.3.81 (2023-10-06) This is the first 1.0 release candidate that is API and ABI compatible with previous 0.3.x releases.

Highlights

• jackdbus support is now enabled by default.
• IRQ based scheduling in ALSA was improved and enabled by default for Pro-Audio profile. It will also link the pcms together to get lower latency. This now matches what JACK does and results in equal latency for Pro-Audio profiles.
• Support both old and new versions of webrtc-audio-processing to make the transition easier.
• Forced quantum changes by nodes or metadata will now also force a suspend and resume of the graph, like the rate changes to make sure all nodes adapt to the new quantum. This is important for Pro-Audio nodes that need to reconfigure the hardware to a new period in IRQ based scheduling.
• Fix a regression in regex parsing.
• Many bugfixes and improvements.

PipeWire

• Jackdbus is by default enabled now. The idea is that when jackdbus is installed, the real libjack.so is in the path and we can become a real JACK client.
• Forces quantum changes by nodes or metadata will now also force a suspend and resume in the graph, like the rate changes to make sure all nodes adapt to the new quantum. This is important for Pro-Audio nodes that need to reconfigure the hardware to a new period.
• The stream now has an EARLY_PROCESS option that can be used to implement custom buffer fill levels. (#3480)
• Fix a regression in regex parsing. (#3528)
• Fix a bug in position reporting in the driver node. (#3189) (#3544)
• Destroying a link will now recalculate the graph correctly.
• Fix the rate comparison for finding the best rate in the graph.
• Use malloc_trim() when available to release memory. (#1840)

Tools

• pw-cat now supports DFF DSD files.
• pw-cli avoid some NULL derefs in some cases.

Modules

• The RAOP sink has seen some cleanups and improvements. It will now ask for feedback every 2 seconds to keep some devices alive.
• A bug in filter-chain was fixed where it would fail to apply the gain when mixing just one source.
• The filter-chain can now pass the stream volume to a control in the filter-chain graph. (#3434)
• Improve volume handling in RAOP sink.

Pulse-server

• Some cleanup in the pending_stream handling.
• Fix a regression in the event emission code where it failed to emit a changed event when a node was linked. (#3522)
• Lower the realtime priority of pulseaudio clients.
• Set pulse.module.id on the echo-cancel streams. (#3541)

SPA

• Support both old and new versions of webrtc-audio-processing to make the transition easier.
• The ALSA driver now does the sync of all followers directly from the wakeup event. This results in more stable rate matching.
• IRQ based scheduling in ALSA was improved and enabled by default for Pro-Audio profile. It will also link the pcms together to get lower latency. This now matches what JACK does and gives equal latency for Pro-Audio profiles.
• GNU/Hurd support was added.
• Some improvements to passthrough handling.

Bluetooth

• Improvements to the codec handling when PipeWire is used as Audio Gateway.
• Adapt to new Bluez API for BAP devices.

JACK

• When the jack library is set in the default library path, avoid using LD_LIBRARY_PATH because this can cause confusion.
• Handle clearing the latency on a port.
• jack_property now always manages to actually change the metadata because it waits for a roundtrip before exiting.