so i use endeavouros + hyprland. i installed cava from this repo https://github.com/karlstav/cava , following it step by step. after i was done spotify wasnt working. i looked online but couldnt find anything abt it, so as a newbie i admittedly used chatgpt (i know, deserved), after following it steps for a while, it not only didnt fix my problem, but i could no longer hear anything from my laptop. plsssss help me.
Hello, first of could you post the output of Inxi -Aaz and systemctl status --user pipewire wireplumber
Then, do you remember what you did exactly that led to audio not working ? Cava in itself should not interfere with audio output
PS: Cava is present in extra, you should install it with pacman -S cava
@random-hooman ,
Question #1: If you followed the instructions for Arch linux then there was a question
during installing pulseaudio
Remove pipewire-pulse? What did you answer?
inxi -A
should say Pipewire or Pulseaudio is running. There is no need for pulseaudio. Or start it correctly
systemctl --user status pulseaudio.socket
If you want pulseaudio to start right after login:
systemctl --user enable pulseaudio
Btw in Hyprland /JaKooLit cava is included with pipewire
edit: sorry for the yap session, just wanted to be as detailed as i could
for systemctl, the output i got was “systemctl status --user pipewire wireplumber
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2025-10-04 15:29:23 PKT; 8min ago
Invocation: 2d2529359ac346d9a13d4f3d9ab8d929
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
Main PID: 1830 (pipewire)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 18465)
Memory: 5.5M (peak: 7.2M)
CPU: 52ms
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
└─1830 /usr/bin/pipewire
اکتوبر 04 15:29:23 bsdk systemd[1604]: Started PipeWire Multimedia Service.
● wireplumber.service - Multimedia Service Session Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/wireplumber.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2025-10-04 15:29:23 PKT; 8min ago
Invocation: 1dec9821a9eb48d29d04a5b96888f954
Main PID: 1831 (wireplumber)
Tasks: 6 (limit: 18465)
Memory: 5.1M (peak: 7.1M)
CPU: 362ms
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/wireplumber.service
└─1831 /usr/bin/wireplumber
اکتوبر 04 15:29:23 bsdk systemd[1604]: Started Multimedia Service Session Manager.
اکتوبر 04 15:29:24 bsdk wireplumber[1831]: spa.bluez5: BlueZ system service is not available
اکتوبر 04 15:29:24 bsdk wireplumber[1831]: wp-device: SPA handle ‘api.libcamera.enum.manager’ could not be loaded; is it installed?
اکتوبر 04 15:29:24 bsdk wireplumber[1831]: s-monitors-libcamera: PipeWire’s libcamera SPA plugin is missing or broken. Some camera types may not be supported.“
and for inxi i got “ inxi -Aaz
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Raptor Lake-P/U/H cAVS vendor: Hewlett-Packard
driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl alternate: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_avs,
snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:51ca class-ID: 0401
API: ALSA v: k6.16.10-arch1-1 status: kernel-api
tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
Server-1: sndiod v: N/A status: off tools: aucat,midicat,sndioctl
Server-2: PipeWire v: 1.4.8 status: active with: 1: wireplumber
status: active 2: pipewire-alsa type: plugin 3: pw-jack type: plugin
tools: pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
Server-3: PulseAudio v: 17.0-43-g3e2bb status: active
with: pulseaudio-alsa type: plugin tools: pacat,pactl,pamixer,pavucontrol“
idk exactly what i did wrong. after i installed cava i was playing around with it watching yt videos. then i opened rmpc (my music player) and it just wasnt playing my songs. i tried the same on spotify and even those songs would only play for like 20 seconds. i tried looking at what was wrong through mpd (since it is what rmpc uses) and it said that it couldnt fetch the audio. here i started using chatgpt cuz i didnt know what to do. it told me to bash “ps aux | grep mpd“ and kill the extra ‘manual‘ mpd processes. after that it told me to edit the mpd config. AT SOME POINT i did get the response that pulseaudio and pipewire were at conflict and i think that is what was causing it. i deleted pipewire and at that point i noticed that i was getting no sound whatsoever.
rn ive deleted mpd, cava and its dependencies (the ones that i could), pipewire.
when i bash inix -A, server-1 is pipewire and server-2 is pulseaudio. both are active, idk what that means though. at some point when i was following gpts instructions, i got something saying that pulseaudio and pipewire were both in conflict, im pretty sure that has something to do with it.
sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-pulse
Disable and Stop PulseAudio:
Prevent PulseAudio from running by disabling its user services.
systemctl --user disable pulseaudio.servicesystemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service
Enable and Start PipeWire Services:
Enable and start the PipeWire services to make them run on your user login.
systemctl --user enable pipewire.servicesystemctl --user enable pipewire-pulse.servicesystemctl --user enable wireplumber.service(a common session manager for PipeWire)systemctl --user start pipewire.servicesystemctl --user start pipewire-pulse.servicesystemctl --user start wireplumber.service
Reboot
yay -S cava
systemctl --user enable --now pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
Should work for the lazy typist. To check their state, just type status instead of enable --now
Reboot shouldn’t be required.
Don’t follow potential hallucinations when there are proper instructions available on which package manger to use. And to configure it using pipewire as the backend.
No mercy. I knew there will be someone with this --now . I should have used my memory and not copy&paste.
It’s not only the --now, via systemctl you can easily enable or check the status multiple services at once, no need to type the .service suffix explicitly each time. But correct me if I’m wrong.
it worked!! thank you so much!