Solved Disable audio ducking w/ Pipewire?

[jonsi]

SOLVED - It wasn't Linux or any of my audio software. It was my sound card, which is a Sound Blaster AE-5.

The fix is to boot into Windows, download Sound Blaster Command, and disable Smart Vol. Looks like it writes the changes to hardware or something. Who knows! Ta-da!

Hey all! As you can tell from me posting in this forum, I'm new. Some background that may or may not be relevant is:

• I installed ALSA to get my Sound Blaster AE-5 to work (perfect)
• Pipewire for the framework or w/e
• Wireplumber
• Puvacontrol for the GUI
• Arch Linux

Everything is working great but I am struggling with some brutal audio/sound ducking, which I believe is controlled by Wireplumber. I think it's this policy.role-based bit.

Anyway, a lot of people say "change the config" of Pipewire to turn off audio ducking. Sounds great but I don't know what that means and don't want to brick anything.

Could someone tell me what I should do or look into to disable audio ducking entirely?

Thank you!

 

[jonsi]

I did find this: https://stefanu21.pages.freedesktop...on/policy.html#wireplumber-conf-d-policy-conf

I farted around in the wireplumber.conf.d folder, but that only has one file, which is alsa-vm.conf

So I opened up wireplumber.conf w/ admin:

and changed the values I found under this duck-level thing from default 0.3, max 1.0, to 0.0 each:

Then I saved it, restarted, and... nothing changed! lol

 

[Condobloke]

@dos2unix may be able to help.

He will be notified of this post when he comes online.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

audio/sound ducking

I'm not sure what "ducking" is but I assume you hear crackling, if so here are steps:

Set value 128 to something larger, try 256 or 512

mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf.d/
cp /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf.d/99-pipewire-pulse.conf
nano ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf.d/99-pipewire-pulse.conf
# Keep only pulse.properties section (delete the rest) and modify:
# pulse.min.quantum      = 128/48000     # 2.7ms
systemctl --user restart wireplumber pipewire pipewire-pulse

 

[jonsi]

I'm not sure what "ducking" is but I assume you hear crackling, if so here are steps:

Sorry! To explain a bit more, something in the software is prioritizing specific apps over others for audio. So when someone talks in Discord, it lowers the volume of everything else - Spotify, browser, games, whatever. More obnoxiously, when you lower or raise your volume, that also makes a noise (even though I have my system sound muted). So when I lower the volume the audio ducking also lowers it and I have no idea how quiet or loud the music actually is. lol.

It sounds like it's getting "ducked" by at least 50%. I think this is also referred to as attenuation, or it's at least related.

 

[osprey]

Sorry! To explain a bit more, something in the software is prioritizing specific apps over others for audio. So when someone talks in Discord, it lowers the volume of everything else - Spotify, browser, games, whatever. More obnoxiously, when you lower or raise your volume, that also makes a noise (even though I have my system sound muted). So when I lower the volume the audio ducking also lowers it and I have no idea how quiet or loud the music actually is. lol.

It sounds like it's getting "ducked" by at least 50%. I think this is also referred to as attenuation, or it's at least related.

In wireplumber config file at /usr/share/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf the config: policy.linking.role-based, appears to be the policy associated with ducking as mentioned in the "##Linking" section of the file. So to turn off ducking one might try and disable "policy.linking.role-based". To that end, perhaps write a file with a name like: 90-disable-duck.conf, with the following contents:

   wireplumber.profiles = {
       main = {
         policy.linking.role-based = disabled
       }
     }

and place the file in one of these locations:
/usr/share/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/
or
~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/

It the directory structure doesn't exist in the ~/.config directory, it can be created.

Then check by stopping and starting the whole audio system.

If it doesn't work, then it's all reversible. I haven't had this issue and haven't tried the above, but it's what I would try.

 

[Condobloke]

In addition to the above post, does the below link show any promise for you ?

C

Post in thread 'ProjectPulseWire – Free & Open Source EasyEffects Presets Manager for Linux (PipeWire / PulseAudio)'

May 25, 2026

Hi everyone,

I would like to introduce ProjectPulseWire, an open-source Python-based tool I have been developing that significantly enhances the Linux audio experience by providing a curated collection of EasyEffects presets and Impulse Response (IRS) files.

What is ProjectPulseWire?

ProjectPulseWire is a CLI-driven preset manager for EasyEffects on Linux. It is designed to work seamlessly with both PipeWire and PulseAudio setups, allowing users to dramatically improve their audio quality without any manual configuration.

What's Included:

• 47 hand-curated EQ presets across...

• CuriousGeorge

• 

 

[jonsi]

I will check those out, thank you!

... But I did dual boot into Windows last night and notice the same problem, which I believe means it's my sound card. I'm going to look into ways to try to adjust its settings, because as far as I know, there is no support for Sound Blaster cards on Linux, and everyone says they're crap.

With that said, I'm going to attempt osprey's fix and hope that something overrides the sound card's settings (if that is the underlying issue), and I think ProjectPulseWire would be beneficial for me anyway as I am a beginner audiophile snob.

I very much appreciate your all's help!

 

[osprey]

as far as I know, there is no support for Sound Blaster cards on Linux,

I very much appreciate your all's help!

The linux kernel does support sound blaster cards, but they've varied over the years. As the company has released new models, the linux developers have had to catch up with their reverse engineering. Newer kernels support the newer cards, so the best option is to install the latest possible kernel.

However, as you mention, if the same issue is present with windows, then that suggests a hardware issue, or some software unable to deal with certain aspects of the hardware.

 

[jonsi]

The linux kernel does support sound blaster cards, but they've varied over the years. As the company has released new models, the linux developers have had to catch up with their reverse engineering. Newer kernels support the newer cards, so the best option is to install the latest possible kernel.

However, as you mention, if the same issue is present with windows, then that suggests a hardware issue, or some software unable to deal with certain aspects of the hardware.

Looks like I'm on 7.0.10-zen1-1-zen... Whatever that means... Learning a lot by trying to fix lil problems here and there. I believe this is a pretty recent kernel, and my sound card is older (got it in 2018), so I'm assuming support would be there.

I did try it with my speakers, which are plugged into my mobo instead, just to double check that it's specifically the output of the sound card that's affected, and it is.

I think my next search is gonna be something along the lines of, "how to manage settings for sound blaster ae-5 in arch linux" lol.

 

[jonsi]

The fix is to boot into Windows, download Sound Blaster Command, and disable Smart Vol. Looks like it writes the changes to hardware or something. Who knows! Ta-da! Thanks again everyone.

Will edit into my OP in case any poor sod who also happens to use a Sound Blaster card comes across this.