Using KDE plasma, Archlinux, Pipewire, Focusrite 2i2 3rd Gen
Audio from built-in audio and via GPU into display speakers all works fine but audio through my Focusrite is badly distorted, like it is running at super-low quality.
I’ve spent most of today trying to work out how to make pipewire use the right bit/sample rates. It. This should be a basic GUI feature, and certainly shouldn’t need to sudo edit cryptic files to configure this stuff. I use Reaper and I’ll need to change bit / sample rates from time to time, so having to make with config files is just nuts. This should be a basic function available in the control panel (Like windows has had for decades). / rant
Anyway, I genuinely want to fix this problem and would really like a GUI tool for it, but a working config edit will do at this point. I can’ also make a script to tweak it on demand I suppose.
There is a video that suggests building a new kernel driver for it, which is even more nuts for something so basic.
I have had issues before with the 2i2 on Linux, where it seemed that no matter the setting in software, the hardware would always sample at a set 44.1kHz. So, with software thinking it was sampling at one rate, the playback would always be at the wrong speed. Doesnt sound like the the same as your issue of distorted audio, but yes, clearly there is something lacking in the kernel drivers for the 2i2!
Wish I could offer a fix but I have used it so sporadically thay I just tolerated my single choice for sample rate.
I’ll try using 44.1 and see what happens. Though I’d like to be ablet to change it 96khz as well sometimes.
This could indeed be a samplerate mismatch between applications and os. At least that’s a thing in Windows If you want to use 96khz, make sure all the running applications + Linux uses it.