Linux, Pipewire and the VCV Audio 8 and 16 modules.

VCV Rack
1

Hello wonderful VCV community,

This is my first post so please go easy on me. I am using the free version on Linux Mint with Pipewire, and my problem is that when I add the audio 8 and 16 modules to my patch I don’t see extra audio inputs and outputs exposed in the qpwgraph app for routing audio in or out of VCV Rack. I just get the standard two channels for input and output. If anyone can shine any light on this I would be very grateful.

Interestingly when i add the Audio 8 module and select ‘ALSA’ from the driver option, I get the option of 'Default ALSA Device (1-8 in, 1-8 out) from the Audio device option, and the input and output lights on the module go green for each pair in the module. However in qpwgraph I only see two channels in and out.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and offering any advise

Jim.

2

Have you tried using JACK?

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Hi Dreamer thank you for the reply,

Yes, I had previously used JACK for audio apps and routing in Linux Mint and it worked very well*. I can’t for the life of me remember if it gave me access to all eight inputs/outputs of the Audio 8 module (getting old). After reinstalling Mint after tinkering with the OS to death I thought I would give PipeWire a run for it’s money as my main audio service and this is the first big issue I have run into with it.

I was hoping I might connect with other users of VCV Rack who have experience with PipeWire and WirePlumber so I can learn more about it. Searching this forum has returned only a small handful of results which leads me to believe it’s not popular with the community.

I have had some success with using multiple ‘Audio’ modules which is not guaranteed to work according to the devs.

So in conclusion and summary, I’m just finding my feet with PipeWire and keeping an eye on returning to JACK if i need to make use of multi-channel in/outputs, and also to make my mark in this fantastic forum for others who find themselves in a similar position.

Thanks again for responding, enjoy making music.

Jim

*In reality i had a few issues with JACK in Mint which needed a bit more investigation (dummy sinks etc) but on the whole it worked ‘out of the box’. (Was using KXStudio Cadence apps)

4

Stop the press!

Having done some digging this morning I stumbled on this link on a reddit post by “animateknet”

"Hi everyone!

I’ve made a VCV Rack 2 plugin that adds native PipeWire support directly to Rack’s audio driver menu on Linux.

Instead of routing PipeWire through ALSA, PulseAudio or JACK, the driver creates a real PipeWire pw_filter node with named audio ports.

Rack shows up as a proper node in the PipeWire graph, ready to be routed with qpwgraph, Helvum or pw-link.

This post links to their github page where you can download a plugin file and add it to VCV Rack’s plugin folder. Once restarted you can select this driver in the audio module and it indeed allows access to all 16 channels in and out. It can be seen in apps like qpwgraph and have audio routed into and out of VCV.

5

pipewire supports JACK api, so you can still use JACK option when running pipewire

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Hi Dreamer,

That’s interesting, in my experience selecting ‘Jack’ in the audio driver option in the VCV ‘audio’ module presents me with no available audio device to select. Can you shine any light on what I am doing wrong?

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Because JACK is not a device, it’s an API. You would typically do all the routing outside of the program like by using qpwgraph.

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Thank You for this tip. I’ve just tried this plugin and it runs. That’s cool !

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Glad to know the info is of use to others working with Pipewire and VCV Rack. I believe the creator of the plugin has also made other plugins under the name of ‘Animatek’ so I thought I would give them a shout-out.