Re: [RFC 00/24] audio: add GStreamer backend

["Marc-André Lureau" <marcandre.lureau@redhat.com>]

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Hi Geoffrey

On Tue, Dec 2, 2025 at 4:31 PM Geoffrey McRae <geoff@hostfission.com> wrote:

>
> The PipeWire and PulseAudio backends are used by a large number of users
> in the VFIO community. Removing these would be an enormous determent to
> QEMU.
>

They come with GStreamer pulse/pipe elements.


>
> Audio output from QEMU has always been problematic, but with the
> PulseAudio and later, the PipeWire interface, it became much more user
> friendly for those that wanted to configure the VM to output native
> audio into their sound plumbing.
>

Could you be more specific?


> I do not agree that ALSA is as useful as you state it is, it's dependent
> on the host system's audio hardware support. If the sound device doesn't
> support hardware mixing (almost none do anymore), or the bitrate/sample
> rate QEMU wishes to use, your out of luck.
>
> What I do think needs fixing here is the removal of the forced S16 audio
> format, and the resampler which forces all output to 48KHz. This though
> would require changes to the SPICE protocol as currently it is fixed at
> two channel 48KHz S16 also IIRC.
>
>
Why is it a problem that Spice requires 48khz? Afaik, you can't have both
Spice & another backend (unlike VNC which does monitor to capture)


> IMHO adding GStreamer is unnecessary, we have the modern PipeWire
> interface which is compatible with everything. I see absolutely no
> reason to add so much complexity to the project for little to no gain.
>
>
Pipewire alone is not compatible with Windows or OSX, afaik.

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