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.
“Robotic low quality” sounds like buffer underruns. Any audio example, even from a cell phone held up to speakers, will be fine to help troubleshoot this.
Sample: https://soundcloud.com/lollingtonbear/linux-audio-test
Since this sounds so consistent, I don’t think that this is from buffer underruns. It sounds like the frequency of your interface and the frequency that is being sent by your computer are different. Try changing them around and see if you can get it to work that way.