5.1 PCM over HDMI not working with Wine/Proton/some KDE apps since pipewire update

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Hi Community,
I’m a Fedora 42 Workstation KDE user, this weekend (31.05/01.06) was something with pipewire in the updates. And something with the kernel.
Can’t figure it out with dnf history list because it doesn’t show all the system updates, only a small part. Is there some kind of update log somewhere else?

Since that update, PCM 5.1 over HDMI won’t play sound any more with Wine (staging 10)/Proton (10) games.
Audio output via HDMI from my graphics card, Nvidia GTX 1060.

Changing to Pulse did not help. Booting with an older Kernel did not solve the issue.
PCM digital Stereo output works.

Elisa Mediaplayer won’t play music any more, not even when changing to PCM digital Stereo output. Non KDE Mediaplayer work. Amberol, Lollypop, MPV etc. still play audio in every configuration ( 5.1 / digital Stereo).

When I start a native linux game, like Divinity Original Sin, sound is missing in cutscenes but working in the game itself.

I deleted the /etc/wireplumper and /usr/share/pipewire folders and all pipewire/wireplumber related stuff in the home folder, removed pipewire completely and did a fresh reinstall of everything.
Reinstall did not solve the problem.

Systemctl status for pipewire and wireplumber:

status pipewire
status pipewire777×280 140 KB

status wireplumber
status wireplumber777×226 116 KB

Is “preset disabled” in the pipewire status normal or pointing towards trouble?

2

Do you use kde discover? That still uses dnf4. Try dnf4 history list

pls don’t post pictures. It would be much better and way more readable to copy&paste the text as preformatted text ‘</>’

What have you installed? pulseaudio? That breaks audio for any program using pulseaudio.

pls post output of
rpm -qa pulseaudio\* and rpm -qa pipewire\*

reg. 5.1/7.1 output see pipewire issue #4722

3

Hi Mark,

pls don’t post pictures. It would be much better and way more readable to copy&paste the text as preformatted text ‘</>’

Check! :wink:

Do you use kde discover? That still uses dnf4. Try dnf4 history list

This explains a lot… sometimes I use discover and sometimes the terminal (and dnf5)…

What have you installed? pulseaudio? That breaks audio for any program using pulseaudio.

No, pipewire.
But after the PCM 5.1 didn’t work any more I tested what happens when I try to:

dnf swap --allowerasing pipewire-pulseaudio pulseaudio

Same result as with pipewire by the way, afterwards I swapped it back to:

pulseaudio pipewire-pulseaudio

pls post output of
rpm -qa pulseausio\*

nothing

and rpm -qa pipewire\*

pipewire-libs-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit-libs-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-gstreamer-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-plugin-libcamera-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-libs-1.4.4-2.fc42.i686
pipewire-utils-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-pulseaudio-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-alsa-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-1.4.4-2.fc42.x86_64
pipewire-alsa-1.4.4-2.fc42.i686

I have a “rescue-drive” with Fedora 42 Gnome. I did some testing…

First test:
Kernel 6.14.6-300
Pipewire 1.4.2-1.fc42
Wine/Proton games run fine with pcm 5.1 over HDMI

Than I updated to the most recent update.
Second test:
Kernel 6.14.9-300
Pipewire 1.4.4-2.fc42
Wine/Proton games have no sound output via PCM 5.1 over HDMI just like in Fedora KDE.

Confusing for me, while I run the first test with Fedora 42 Gnome, I had a quick look at:

systemctl --user status pipewire

and the result was

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; disabled; preset: disabled)

pipewire service and preset where disabled but everything was running fine?! When pipewire service was disabled why…?

Edit: Overlooked it at first..

reg. 5.1/7.1 output see…

Thank you for the link! Problem is already confirmed, known and reported! Pipewire 1.4.4…

4

Ah sorry there was a typo in my previous post:

pulseaudio not pulseausio of course!

pipewire default: disable is correct
you don’t have to enable it manually. It’s triggered by pipewire.socket

● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; disabled; preset: disabled)

● pipewire.socket - PipeWire Multimedia System Sockets
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.socket; enabled; preset: enabled)

it’s the same for pipewire-pulse!

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The output result you asked for is from KDE. Not from the backup system (Gnome).

You seem to have good knowledge about pipewire and how it works. Do you have some resource for me, maybe some quick and dirty resource, how pipewire works? For experienced Linux users but with no detailed technical knowledge of the backend?

For example, I was wondering what the preset: disabled means. What preset?

And why does systemctl status pipewire output:

Unit pipewire.service could not be found.

While systemctl --user status pipewire does the trick?

By the way, thanks for your help. I will wait for an update or try to downgrade to previous pipewire.

Edit: Just for the record

rpm -qa pulseaudio\*

pulseaudio-libs-17.0-5.fc42.x86_64
pulseaudio-libs-glib2-17.0-5.fc42.x86_64
pulseaudio-utils-17.0-5.fc42.x86_64
pulseaudio-qt-qt6-1.7.0-2.fc42.x86_64
pulseaudio-libs-17.0-5.fc42.i686
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I’ve learned a lot from tracking down an issue one user had with irratic audio issues. Turned out pulseaudio and pipewire were installed at the same time :slight_smile:
Before that I did not pay much attention to audio, because it just worked for me.

resources. not really, i guess the obvious www.pipewire.org and
freedesktop

preset: that’s systemd! preset refers to the default files found /usr/lib/systemd/system/

An audio server instance is started for each user, therefore systemctl --user and not system wide systemctl

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