[SOLVED] ALSA to pipewire = broken sound

[Princess Nell]

On one of the systems I migrated to pipewire as per news item "2026-01-25-desktop-profile-pipewire", sound stopped working altogether. As the update was a few weeks ago, I disabled pipewire again (USE flags plus uninstall), verified that sound still works with plain ALSA, then reinstalled as per wiki.

There is some progress in that I can tell sound as such is working now, but it is overlayed by heavy white noise. The noise only appears when audio is playing, i.e. it is not the "white noise on idle" problem others have reported.

Environment: OpenRC, Mate DE, gentoo-sources 6.18.18, pipewire 1.4.10, wireplumber 0.5.13_p20260216. No /etc/asound.conf, no custom /etc/pipewire, no ~/.config/pipewire.

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~ $ wpctl status
PipeWire 'pipewire-0' [1.4.10, user@localhost, cookie:1163699405]
 └─ Clients:
        33. pipewire                            [1.4.10, user@localhost, pid:6294]
        35. WirePlumber                         [1.4.10, user@localhost, pid:6287]
        47. WirePlumber [export]                [1.4.10, user@localhost, pid:6287]
        56. wpctl                               [1.4.10, user@localhost, pid:6987]

Audio
 ├─ Devices:
 │      48. Built-in Audio                      [alsa]
 │  
 ├─ Sinks:
 │  *   53. Built-in Audio Analog Stereo        [vol: 0.40]
 │  
 ├─ Sources:
 │      54. Built-in Audio Analog Stereo        [vol: 1.00]
 │  
 ├─ Filters:
 │  
 └─ Streams:

Video
 ├─ Devices:
 │  
 ├─ Sinks:
 │  
 ├─ Sources:
 │  
 ├─ Filters:
 │  
 └─ Streams:
.
Settings
 └─ Default Configured Devices:

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~ # lspci -nvvk -s 00:1f.3
00:1f.3 0403: 8086:9d70 (rev 21) (prog-if 00 [HDA compatible])
	Subsystem: 17aa:504a
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 64
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 0: Memory at f1240000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Region 4: Memory at f1230000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
	Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

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Mar 29 08:48:35 localhost kernel: snd_hda_codec_alc269 hdaudioC0D0: ALC293: picked fixup  for PCI SSID 17aa:504a
Mar 29 08:48:35 localhost kernel: snd_hda_codec_alc269 hdaudioC0D0: autoconfig for ALC293: line_outs=1 (0x14/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0) type:speaker
Mar 29 08:48:35 localhost kernel: snd_hda_codec_alc269 hdaudioC0D0:    speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
Mar 29 08:48:35 localhost kernel: snd_hda_codec_alc269 hdaudioC0D0:    hp_outs=2 (0x16/0x15/0x0/0x0/0x0)
Mar 29 08:48:35 localhost kernel: snd_hda_codec_alc269 hdaudioC0D0:    mono: mono_out=0x0
Mar 29 08:48:35 localhost kernel: snd_hda_codec_alc269 hdaudioC0D0:    inputs:
Mar 29 08:48:35 localhost kernel: snd_hda_codec_alc269 hdaudioC0D0:      Mic=0x19

I don't quite understand why pipewire is running with a pulseaudio-compatibility config as there is no pulseaudio installed here.

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~ $ ps -ef|grep wire
user    6287    5514  0 13:29 pts/0    00:00:00 /usr/bin/wireplumber
user    6292    6287  0 13:29 pts/0    00:00:00 /usr/bin/pipewire
user    6294    6287  0 13:29 pts/0    00:00:00 /usr/bin/pipewire -c pipewire-pulse.conf
~ $

[Zucca]

While your white noise symptoms seem different...
Have you tried this already?

I had crackling problems, when using bluetooth. I managed to almost completely fix the problem.

Also pulse compatibility is there for such programs that only output audio via pulse protocol.

[Princess Nell]

I had not tried this already. But I had a lot of time to test things while the forums were being upgraded to Discord

The default.clock.min-quantum setting did nothing for me. In fact, after a reboot, sound was gone completely, even the noise was gone. I completely removed pipewire/wireplumber again and still had no sound. So this wasn't a pipewire problem as such.

Tried something new then and booted into a Rocky 9 live iso I still had lying around. This is PA and all, but sound worked perfectly. To my surprise, some 40-odd snd_* modules were loaded here vs. 15 or so under Gentoo. Also, the kernel driver list had a few additional entries.

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snd_hda_intel snd_soc_skl snd_soc_avs

The kernel is much older and heavily patched, so this wasn't directly helpful. I eventually got around to trying this with the Gentoo live image, which resulted in

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snd_soc_avs snd_sof_pci_intel_skl snd_hda_intel

(and working sound also). That was enough to rebuild my custom kernel with additional sound options and replicate the lspci live iso kernel driver list.

Sound is functional again. Essentially, the pipewire migration exposed that the sound configuration on this box was deficient which led to it randomly not working.

A "funny" aspect of this is that a second laptop (different model) with the same sound hw and kernel driver did continue to work fine before and after.