The PipeWire project has released PipeWire 1.4.8 today as yet another maintenance update to the latest PipeWire 1.4 series of this popular open-source server for handling audio/video streams and hardware on Linux systems.
PipeWire 1.4.8 brings low latency for FireWire devices using the ALSA drivers by forcing the IRQ mode in Pro-Audio mode even if there are multiple capture and playback devices, improves compatibility with Apple HomePod Minis by adding fp_sap25 encryption to the RAOP module, and improves support for the Razer BlackShark v3 gaming headset.
This release also implements rename_callback support in the JACK Audio Connection Kit, adds a new flag in the sync_timeline metadata to track if a release_point will be signaled or not, improves the node unprepare function, and ensures it only queues buffers that were previously dequeued to avoid some API misuse.
Starting with this release, PipeWire now uses only three periods in the ALSA sound server when the Pro-Audio mode is enabled for better latency on some drivers. Also, it now sets the period count before the period size for improved compatibility.
Some bug fixes are also present in PipeWire 1.4.8 to address potential wrong pointers in memory mappings, avoid VBAN problems with longer session names, prevent a potential crash in link-factory, fix the -C option in pw-dump, and show the correct values in the api.alsa.period-num ALSA property.
Other than that, PipeWire 1.4.8 logs more information from sndfile when opening a failed file and writes the correct ALAC end tag in the RAOP (airplay) player and library. Check out the release notes on the project’s GitLab page for more details about the changes included in this new PipeWire 1.4 update.
PipeWire comes pre-installed with many popular GNU/Linux distributions, and it’s the default option for handling multimedia streams and hardware. It is also used by default for camera handling in the Mozilla Firefox web browser. You can download the PipeWire 1.4.8 release right now from the official GitLab page.
Image credits: PipeWire project
