Audio volume very low after pipewire update

[SOLVED!]
Not pipewire related at all, it was my LQX kernel

I tried searching both reddit and these forums, but everything i I found was a bit out of date.

I know that things like “quiet” and “low” are subjective, so I’ll try to phrase this as best I can.

Been using Endeavour for quite some time, my hardware hasn’t changed, I update regularly. I’m running a very recent fresh isntall, KDE.

my normal, everyday use includes a LOT of movie watching, in that respect, I normally have my volume at around 60%. at that level a given movie, will have dialogue I can hear easily, and Explosions will shake items on my desk. My neighbors don’t complain, but it definitely has some oomph.

Earlier today, I had and update that included Pipewire (the closest thing I can think of as a cause at the moment). And now, If I have my volume at 98%, it is still quieter than what I normally listen too. If I set the volume to 55% and literally press my ear to the speaker, I can’t hear anything.

I tried opening a terminal and resetting things in alsamixer, and then using alsactl store. This doesn’t seem to help.
I’ve tried checking in pavucontrol as well.

I’m not sure what my next troubleshooting step should be at this point.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[ Edit ]
new symptom, my headset will not function at all
Wireless headset, Razer Nari Essential, using “Razer-nari-pipewire-profile” from the AUR for surround.

Hi, I had a problem after a wireplumber update from 4.9… to 4.10… I had no outputs at all.

In my case I had a modifed copy of a wireplumber config in /etc/wireplumber.

The solution was hard to find: with the update some relevant things changed so my config on /etc didn’t work at all. I now deleted it and everything is fine again.

So if you use wireplumber on top of pipewire as well you can temporarily move away config from /etc/wireplumber or check against the originals in /usr/share/wireplumber/…

I do not have any configs in etc/wireplumber, in fact I do not even have an etc/wireplumber folder.

only the originals in usr/share/wireplumber.

Did the recent update replaced pipewire-media-session by wireplumber?

There has been reports of audio issues on some configurations and the the “replace” has been reverted for now.

If that is the case here, you could revert to pipewire-media-session by:

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S pipewire-media-session
1 Like

Alright, I found a resolution. Will edit original post

It was not pipe wire after all it was the lqx kernel.
I reverted to a previous snapshot (thank you timeshift) where all my audio was working correctly, and noticed there was no pipe wire update available, (it was actually two updates ago, my mistake) and through trial and error updated one thing at a time until it broke again. Seems that it’s the Kernel update that did it. Going to be switching back to mainline Kernel.

Great!
Happy you found the culprit and got your audio back in order!

1 Like

Thank you, I just feel bad for assuming it was pipewire!
Sorry for wasting everyone’s time here too…

1 Like

Out of curiosity, I just installed linux-lqx and linux-lqx-headers.

The audio is working just fine on my end. No difference in volume or otherwise.

uname -a
Linux arch-gnome 5.17.7-lqx1-1-lqx #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT Thu, 12 May 2022 19:04:31 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
pacman -Ss pipewire | grep installed
extra/gst-plugin-pipewire 1:0.3.51-1 [installed]
extra/pipewire 1:0.3.51-1 [installed]
extra/pipewire-alsa 1:0.3.51-1 [installed]
extra/pipewire-jack 1:0.3.51-1 [installed]
extra/pipewire-pulse 1:0.3.51-1 [installed]
extra/wireplumber 0.4.10-3 [installed]
pacman -Ss linux-lqx | grep installed
liquorix/linux-lqx 5.17.7.lqx1-1 [installed]
liquorix/linux-lqx-headers 5.17.7.lqx1-1 [installed]
pactl info
Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
.
.
.
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.51)

This might have been a “YMMV” case?
:thinking:

1 Like

Quite possibly.
I have only been using LQX for a couple of weeks, and everything seemed fine.

I check for updates on my system, usually a couple times a day out of sheer boredom lol, but I don’t reboot unless I really need to.

it was after my most recent reboot that audio stopped working properly. and i knew within the past 2-days (ish) i had often updates for pipewire, LQX, basically everything that started with a “K” (gotta love big KDE updates) and a few other odds and ends.

So I walked back a couple snapshots checked audio, then got updates one at a time, and rebooted after each one until it broke again. And I was able to get everything EXCEPT LQX, and soon as I updated that, it broke again.

It may be just my specific combination of hardware/software, IDK, but at least it’s working now.

1 Like

Very well might be the case.

On my end, I have had a few minor breakages with lxq (as far as I have noticed so far):

  • systemd-oomd.service won’t start (this is something I am testing only; not a must at all for all or for all systems)
  • No performance mode available for power-profiles-daemon. Only balanced and power saver.

So, different configurations, different issues it seems.

That’s what matters most!

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.