Pipewire vs PulseAudio, general question

https://lemmy.world/post/4455930

Pipewire vs PulseAudio, general question - Lemmy.world

What are the main differences between pipewire and pulseaudio? Which one is better? What are other alternative popular sound servers besides these two?

Pipewire is the new hotness. I’ve read comments from various audio engineers and programmers that pipewire “gets it right”.

Pipewire came out in 2017, pulseaudio in 2004.

Audio engineer here. Anything ALSA is inherently does not “get it right”
Can you elaborate on what specifically makes ALSA bad, and what you mean by HAL audio drivers?
I answered below, you can also read on any of the ALSA pages as well as the wiki page for it. Wealth of knowledge on the subject is available

www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm.html

After application transfers the data in the memory areas, then it must be acknowledged the end of transfer via snd_pcm_mmap_commit() function to allow the ALSA library update the pointers to ring buffer. This kind of communication is also called “zero-copy”, because the device does not require to copy the samples from application to another place in system memory.

When you tell RTFM expect to see manual stating opposite of your point.

ALSA project - the C library reference: PCM (digital audio) interface

That’s still not direct hardware, if you think you cracked the code then by all means show everyone otherwise, this would be a huge deal for a lot of people

Not direct enough? It literally says it will send your buffer to soundcard without creating any additional buffers.

Other people under this post complain of ALSA being too direct.