pipewire-aes67

PipeWire daemon variant for AES67 audio-over-IP networking

TLDR

Start the AES67 PipeWire daemon with the default configuration

$ pipewire-aes67

Use a custom configuration file

$ pipewire-aes67 -c [path/to/pipewire-aes67.conf]

Increase log verbosity

$ pipewire-aes67 -v

Show version information

$ pipewire-aes67 --version

pipewire-aes67 is a PipeWire daemon launched with an AES67-tailored configuration. AES67 is an open audio-over-IP interoperability standard (used by systems such as Dante and RAVENNA) that defines low-latency, uncompressed PCM audio transport over standard Ethernet using RTP, PTP for clock sync, and SAP/SDP for stream announcements.In its default configuration the daemon configures a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) hardware clock node, multicast RTP transmitters and receivers, and SAP announcement modules, exposing AES67 streams as native PipeWire devices. Existing audio applications using ALSA, PulseAudio, or JACK clients can then send to or receive from AES67 endpoints transparently.The binary is typically a symlink to pipewire(1); the program selects its default configuration based on argv[0].

PARAMETERS

-h, --help

Show help text and exit.

-v, --verbose

Increase logging verbosity (may be repeated, e.g. -vvv).

--version

Show version information and exit.

-c FILE, --config=FILE

Load the given configuration file (default pipewire-aes67.conf).

-P PROPS, --properties=PROPS

Add JSON properties to the daemon context.

CONFIGURATION

The default configuration is /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire-aes67.conf. Copy it to /etc/pipewire/ for system-wide changes or to ~/.config/pipewire/ for per-user changes. Drop-in fragments may also be placed under a matching pipewire-aes67.conf.d/ directory.Key items to configure include the PTP clock interface or device, multicast network interface, sample rate, channel count, and per-stream RTP/SAP parameters.

CAVEATS

Requires a working PTP time source on the local network and a network interface that supports multicast and (ideally) hardware timestamping. Verified interoperable with Dante and RAVENNA from PipeWire 1.1.0 onwards. Firewall rules must allow the relevant multicast and PTP traffic.

HISTORY

AES67 support was added to PipeWire as part of its expanding professional audio capabilities, with full Dante and RAVENNA interoperability landing in PipeWire 1.1.0 (2024). PipeWire itself was created by Wim Taymans at Red Hat and first released in 2017.