It’s pretty ironic to have problems with audio not recognizing headphones… on WINDOWS.
Multi-trillion (10^12) dollar company, btw.
(Both laptops are reasonably new.)
When you want to route your audio a certain way (let’s say audio recording/production or such)
Windows: oh sure, you just gotta download a shitty proprietary driver/program, get that to talk to your daw and from there on it’s…let’s hope it does what you wanna do.
Linux: You want routing options? Have some …(ALL the options)
As someone that is using RTP to send audio from and to different Linux computers, this is unfortunately an option that is getting more difficult to use as time passes. A few years ago when pulseaudio was dominating, it was trivial to just tick a few boxes, enable RTP, see a lit of devices in pasystray, and choose it with a few clicks. Now since pipewire, this is no longer possible. Sure, RTP still works, but using the command line is now mandatory, as all the GUI options have disappeared.
I still find myself reinstalling pulseaudio on most of my computers running Linux because I need RTP audio and it’s disappointing that it’s getting harder and harder to get it to work on Linux.
Yeah they now expect you to use their native protocol for sharing audio on the network.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#Sharing_audio_devices_with_computers_on_the_network
I’ve never used pasystray. But I regularly use qpwgraph now since I switched to pipe wire. It’s similar to the graph from qjackctl.
Any idea if Dante Virtual Soundcard supports Linux? I haven’t done any research on it, but I use a lot of audio-over-IP devices for work and all of them use the Dante protocol. It is definitely a “just open the program, tick a few boxes to route things from A to B, and everything works” solution.
I’m not sure if this is what you’re talking about, but win11 can control both input and output per application.
I often route my Pandora audio through my stereo while my default/games go through my computer speakers (or sometimes my headphones)
Oh that’s a given, I’m talking about routing a signal through several pieces of hardware and/or software in a particular way.
For example: the drummer needs to hear a clicktrack and the bass, while the choir needs to hear the orchestra/themselves separate (and they want a little reverb). (Now take this and apply it to everyone on stage)
These kind of situations can get very complex and can get very high stakes.
For those matters in windows you rely on the software that comes with your hardware. Problem is those don’t always play nice together. Or they simply don’t offer the particular situation you need.
In Linux you can do anything you want. So much so that it sometimes adds unto the complexity.
Virutal Audio Cables, route audio output from OBS to Zoom/Meet as a microphone.
When I tried PulseAudio over network in addition to VNC I just got a really choppy unusable audio.
I just gave up and restored to streaming audio with VLC.
I can’t say I’ve had a great time with audio in either personally, though it’s indeed much easier to fix audio problems in Linux. But just yesterday pipewire must have hung or crashed preventing all browser based video playback entirely, which due to the symptoms not appearing audio related was quite annoying to debug. I still have no idea what caused it in order to avoid it happening again in the future.
Most machines have issues with the headset headphones.
Windows, Mac, Linux.
Many headphones that are headsets will pair as a dual device with the crappy two way audio that sounds like you just connected to your cars Bluetooth from 2005x
just got a new laptop and wanted to boot into windows once so i could make sure bitlocker was off and i had to go through 15 minutes of clicking decline on upsells for 365 vs clicking on install linux mint from the live usb and being yes install
The fuck of wanky-ass Windows installs are you guys running that you’d have audio issues?
Let me guess, you guys ran some weird script you found online that promised to delete all the anti-privacy features without checking what it actually did, and fucked up the whole OS so you can cirklejerk around on Linux forums complaining about Windows?
Want to bet if you did a fresh install of Windows without all the workarounds you seem to need, it will just work?
I have two nice speakers in my office, that have to be connected using aux. My shitty Windows work laptop only has USB-C, so the aux is plugged into a little converter thingy. It sometimes crashes the fuck out, and plays white noise at max volume until replugged. Tried the same setup from my private laptop running NixOS. Absolutely no issues at all.
Unfortunately I do have headphone issues with Linux, but it’s just a bit of silence when unpausing VLC.
Are you using pulseaudio? Could be module suspend on idle (link is blocked for me, might work for you): https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Modules/#module-suspend-on-idle
Aha! I knew that complaining online might get me answers that searching wasn’t getting me. I’ll try tonight
So real. Never have audio issues on my Linux PC.
Meanwhile my company issue ThinkPad just doesn’t want to work with any Bluetooth audio input. I can’t take work calls from any other device either due to IT policy…
I had issues with Bluetooth Audio once. 18 years ago on my first ever install on an IBM ThinkPad 600E that I had bought used with a USB Bluetooth dongle.
PipeWire (written by Wim Taymans) did a lot of good for the Linux distro ecosystem when it comes to audio.
I will never forgive him and Fedora for rolling it out when it was a half-baked piece of shit though.
I remember the times before pipewire, not that fun.
Yet more fun than using microslops slop
Windows keep re-enabling my second monitor after I disabled it, I had to disconnect video cable but in Linux it work just fine (dual boot)
I am just pissed that my bluetooth earbuds at work, ever since upgrading to Win10 (I think? Been a while ago), have issues with their microphones.
If I join a meeting every few minutes audio quality turns robotic, sounds like a very low quality phone call. The only solution is before I join a meeting and almost every time I connect my earbuds, to deselect the microphone on them and instead use the laptop microphone. Which you cannot do “on the fly” while in a meeting, because then you of course just lose all sound immediately.
So it is either being ok with sound quality going down every few minutes, making it difficult to hear people, or dropping in and out of the meeting akwardly to correct this, should I forget this before the meeting.
They worked fine pre-Win10. They still work fine on any other non-Windows device I use. There is absolutely no reason to justify this but somehow it does not get fixed.
I have some bad news, they never worked like that, because bluetooth profiles suck ass. I bet your memory of them working in the past used the laptop mic.
Either that or some aptx nonsense.
Don’t know what to tell you. I used to not have to meddle with the “handsfree telephony” settings and now I have to every time I use the bluetooth earbuds in order to keep the sound working well.
If that for some unlikely reason used to happen automatically then I also do not get why that stopped and now I have to do it.
So please don’t try and gaslight me here.
If you’ve ever had non-sucky audio + microphone from bluetooth headphones I’d love to know the brand.
Earbuds, not headphones, just in case this is important for you.
And the ones I talk about are the Samsung Galaxy Buds live, the “beans”.
The issues I describe have however also happened to many colleagues where I work, but I do not know their respective brands and if they maybe also had issues before.
Over the years, I’ve just come to accept that, no matter the OS, there are just some things computers suck at. Working with hardware is one of them.
I’m pretty sure working with software is the other.
Admitely, my cheap bluetooth in-ear manage to crash bluetoothd now and then.
Linux revoked my mic permissions in the middle of a call today, on Google Meet. Happened before on Zoom.
I have not root-caused it to see if there was flaky hardware or what.
Ok, this prompted me to root-cause the issue. A bad cable between laptop and USB dock seems most likely. Hardware issue, not Linux!
The fun part about windows is you don’t know if it’s breaking because of the coke code from the 80’s or the vibe code from the ‘20s.
You forgot the Ballmer Peak code from the 00’s
Oh, yeah, cocaïne fuelled developers bouncing around. I’d forgotten about those.
Developers Developers Developers Developers
