[ubuntu-studio-devel] Ubuntu Studio on Gnome (23.04)

[Ross Gammon]

Hi Erich,

Thanks for that great description of where we are at!

I don't really want to remove ubuntu-desktop because if I forget to 
reinstall it before I upgrade to 23.10 (Gnome) I could end up with some 
sort of Frankenstein installation.

The machine mainly does emails, web browsing and chromecastng these 
days, so I don't need a pro-audio set up on it as such. I will probably 
stick with pipewire on this machine and see where it takes me.

On 7/9/23 20:53, Erich Eickmeyer wrote:
> Hi Ross,
> 

<...>


> However, as I read the PipeWire release notes, it might be unnecessary 
> to use PulseAudio altogether and we might be able to deprecate it as 
> well. Ubuntu 23.04 contains PipeWire 0.3.65. PipeWire 0.3.71 was 
> released on 17 May and contains the following notable highlight:
> 
>>   * A new zero-latency jackdbus bridge was added. This works similar
>>     to what PulseAudio has to offer and creates a sink/source when
>>     jackdbus is started. It is however much more efficient and runs
>>     the complete PipeWire graph as a synchronous JACK client with no
>>     added latency.

<...>

> Then, a week ago, PipeWire 0.3.72 was released with this notable highlights:
> 
>>   * A new module-netjack2-driver and module-netjack2-manager were
>>     added that are compatible with NETJACK2. This allows PipeWire to
>>     become a NETJACK2 manager or a driver between JACK2 or PipeWire
>>     servers.
>>   * Support was added for firewire devices with FFADO. This is
>>     untested for now and MIDI is not implemented yet.

I see pipewire 0.3.73 is now in Mantic!

<...>

The Gnome Settings under the Sound section allow you to choose inputs 
and outputs, and adjust volumes in a similar way that you could in 
pavucontrol - which is good.

qpwgraph is a QT GUI interface to wireplumber which is in Lunar. 
Unfortunately the GTK equivalent (Helvum) is not yet packaged for 
Debian. I will have a go with qpwgraph and see where it gets me.

I need to find some money and time to build a new Ubuntu Studio test 
machine. I have a spare USB audio interface now. Then I could try and 
help out with some more potentially destructive testing on Mantic.

Cheers,

Ross