this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Pipewire's default quantum (buffer size, effectively) is incredibly low, this is good for low latency audio but anytime your system is too busy to keep the buffers filled you get crackling.
If you look at
pw-topyou'll see all of your devices and nodes. The quant column is probably 1 or a very small number for the devices.You can increase the quantum with this command. This only lasts until pipewire restarts:
At a sample rate of 48000, this is roughly a 10ms buffer. 1024 is 20ms, etc. You want it as low as possible without getting crackling. Start with 512 and adjust from there (you don't have to use a power of 2, a quantum of 1234 works just as well).
By default pipewire doesn't do any 'mic boost', as Windows calls it. You can get the same effect by raising the maximum volume.
In your sound control panel you should be able to turn the mic up higher than 100%. In KDE Plasma, you can do this in System Settings -> Sound -> Configure Volume Controls... [top right button] -> Raise maximum volume.
Alternatively, you can use EasyEffects to add a compressor. This will boost your mic volume and also prevent it from getting too loud
Compressors basically reduce the dynamic range of an audio signal by attenuating loud sounds and boosting quieter ones, this would provide a better mix.
Other useful plug-ins are noise canceling, (kills background noise) and echo canceling (lets you play sound out of your speakers which won't get picked up by your mic). Sometimes apps, like Discord, will do this signal processing for you while others, like Signal, do no signal processing.
I absolutely wasn't expecting a helpful response under a meme, so thank you very much for taking the time to write it!
I'd have to test that more thoroughly, but I do think that lines up with the timing of the issues.
Can I put that in some config to make it stick?
I'm admittedly very junior to pipewire config, so most of what I have is copied from the internet, tweaked for node names / descriptions, but I generally like working with config files and slowly learning what all that stuff in there means.
I have two loopbacks (I like having music and games each grouped separately from other audio), an echo-cancel and a noise cancel (filter-chain with a single rnnoise node), all configured via
.conffiles. As an aside, is there a "best order" to chain echo cancel and noise cancel?Echo cancel seems to have a quantum/rate of 480/48000 across the board. Loopbacks, rnnoise and alsa_output (my headset) all have 0/0. I imagine it makes sense for the Loopbacks and rnnoise, but should it be something else for the main output?
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Well, it seemed to work just fine without echo cancel, if I capture the mic directly, but putting it through echo cancel (with or without noise cancel) seems to reduce the gain significantly.
I'm gonna mess with the volume sliders and see which ones I can crank up to fix that issue.
But I'm confused why that issue would occur in the first place and if I have something misconfigured.
Sounds like a compressor would be a good idea to have anyway. Is that also doable through the config? I'm not opposed to graphical tools, I just feel like working with the config directly is more educational. It's also more prone to screwing things up, but that's just bonus lessons on what not to do.
Curiously, the reason I looked at echo-cancel in the first place is that Discord's own echo fucks with things, cutting me out at times while also not cancelling the echo at others.