audio

Writes the user PipeWire and WirePlumber configuration: a clean microphone source with echo cancellation and noise suppression, optional voice effects, and the Bluetooth and suspend settings.

Requirements

PipeWire, PipeWire Pulse and WirePlumber 0.5 as user services. WirePlumber 0.4 ignores the smart filter properties: the stages then only show up as sources to pick by hand.
noise-suppression-for-voice (RNNoise, in 01_base) on Arch Linux.
swh-plugins (26_voice_effects) for the voice effects.
Runs as the user, without privilege escalation.

Role Variables

Variable	Default	Description
`audio_config_home`	`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME`, else `~/.config`	Base directory of the written files.
`audio_pipewire_dir`	`<config home>/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d`	PipeWire drop-ins.
`audio_wireplumber_dir`	`<config home>/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d`	WirePlumber drop-ins.
`audio_rate`	`48000`	Sample rate of the filter nodes.
`audio_node_prefix`	`voice`	Prefix of every node name.
`audio_clean_source`	`voice.clean`	Clean source given to the applications.
`audio_clean_source_description`	`Voix filtrée`	Name shown by the applications.
`audio_echo_cancel_source`	`voice.echo-cancel`	Echo-cancelled source that RNNoise reads.
`audio_echo_cancel_source_description`	`Voix sans écho (interne)`	Its displayed name.
`audio_echo_cancel_args`	see `defaults/main.yml`	WebRTC options (`webrtc.<key>`). Gain control is off; WebRTC noise suppression runs only without RNNoise.
`audio_rnnoise_enabled`	`true` on Arch Linux	Add the RNNoise stage.
`audio_rnnoise_controls`	VAD threshold 50 %, grace 200 ms, retroactive 50 ms	RNNoise voice detector.
`audio_disable_suspend`	`true`	Keep ALSA and Bluetooth devices awake. `false` lets idle devices suspend.
`audio_voice_effects_group`	`26_voice_effects`	Package group that enables the voice effects.
`audio_voice_effects`	vader, chipmunk, robot, church, radio	One virtual source per entry.
`audio_obsolete_files`	`10-realtime.conf` and its SHA-1	Former files deleted while unchanged.

Clean source

The role names its nodes voice.<name>, and the stream that feeds a node voice.<name>.capture, so they sort together in pw-cli, qpwgraph and pavucontrol.

voice.clean is the clean source. WebRTC cancels the speakers' echo on the default microphone, which gives voice.echo-cancel. RNNoise then removes the non-voice noise and mutes the output between phrases. Without RNNoise, the echo canceller output is voice.clean.

Both stages are WirePlumber smart source filters (filter.smart). WirePlumber never makes a smart filter the default source. It chains them by filter.smart.before/after (RNNoise nearest the applications, the echo canceller nearest the microphone), links the echo canceller to the default microphone, and gives voice.clean to every application that records from the default source. The wiring does not depend on the order in which the nodes appear. filter.smart.targetable lets a voice effect record from voice.clean by name.

Keep the microphone as the default source: selecting voice.clean would make the echo canceller read its own chain. An application set to a specific microphone records it unfiltered. If the echo canceller fails to load, RNNoise reads the microphone directly.

Voice effects

With 26_voice_effects, each entry of audio_voice_effects becomes a virtual source fed by voice.clean: voice.vader, voice.chipmunk, voice.robot, voice.church and voice.radio. The radio effect compresses and slightly saturates the voice, keeps 300 to 3200 Hz with a presence bump at 1.8 kHz, and limits the peaks to -1 dBFS, without static. A host without the group loses the effect file. Every module has the nofail flag, so a missing plugin drops one source without stopping PipeWire.

WirePlumber settings

WirePlumber keeps the Bluetooth A2DP profile while an application records, enables every codec (the HFP codecs of headset microphones included) and leaves LDAC on its adaptive quality.

Safety

The role stops before writing anything if ~/.config/pipewire, ~/.config/wireplumber or their *.conf.d directory is a link, so it never writes into a clone that an old deployment linked there.
Text values are written as JSON strings, so a quote in a description is escaped.
A file of audio_obsolete_files is deleted only while it is a regular file with the shipped SHA-1. An edited copy or a link is kept and reported. make clean applies the same rule.

Handlers

A changed file runs try-reload-or-restart on PipeWire, PipeWire Pulse and WirePlumber. swayosd-server.service, deployed by the dotfiles role, is PartOf=pipewire-pulse.service and restarts with it: SwayOSD 0.3 never reconnects to a restarted Pulse server.

Tags: dotfiles, audio.

make deploy TAGS=audio

Dependencies

None. The packages role installs the plugins.

Example Playbook

- hosts: all
  roles:
    - role: audio
      become: false
      tags: [audio]

License

Unlicense

Author Information

pad