pipewire-avb

PipeWire daemon variant for AVB audio-video bridging

TLDR

Start the AVB PipeWire daemon with the default configuration

$ pipewire-avb

Use a custom configuration file

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

Increase log verbosity

$ pipewire-avb -v

Show version information

$ pipewire-avb --version

pipewire-avb is a PipeWire daemon launched with an AVB-tailored configuration. AVB (Audio Video Bridging) is a set of IEEE 802.1 standards (gPTP, FQTSS, MSRP, AVTP) that provide deterministic, low-latency, time-synchronised media streaming over standard Ethernet. It is widely used in pro-audio, automotive, and broadcast environments.The daemon loads the avb module to discover and announce AVB streams (talkers and listeners) on a chosen network interface, sets up a gPTP-driven media clock, and exposes streams as native PipeWire nodes. Standard PulseAudio, ALSA, and JACK clients can then send audio to or receive from AVB endpoints.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).

--version

Show version information and exit.

-c FILE, --config=FILE

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

-P PROPS, --properties=PROPS

Add JSON properties to the daemon context.

CONFIGURATION

The default configuration is /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire-avb.conf. Copy it to /etc/pipewire/ for system-wide changes or to ~/.config/pipewire/ for per-user changes. Drop-in fragments may be placed in a matching pipewire-avb.conf.d/ directory.The configuration selects the AVB network interface, gPTP clock parameters, and stream topology.

CAVEATS

Requires a network interface and switch infrastructure that support AVB/TSN (gPTP and SRP) for guaranteed bandwidth and timing. Stream discovery uses the layer-2 protocols MSRP and MVRP, which often require CAP_NET_ADMIN capabilities or root privileges. Marked EXPERIMENTAL in upstream PipeWire releases.

HISTORY

AVB support was added to PipeWire as part of its push into professional networked audio. PipeWire was created by Wim Taymans at Red Hat and first released in 2017, and now ships as the default audio server in major Linux distributions.