PipeWire conflicts with PulseAudio and hides audio devices

[Lastique]

After upgrading from Kubuntu 20.04 to 20.10, PipeWire gets installed and started along with PulseAudio. As a result, upon system startup some audio output and input devices are not visible in PulseAudio. For example, a Builtin audio device might not have analog output or duplex modes - only digital output. Another audio device might not have 5.1 analog output + analog stereo input mode, but have other modes (e.g. stereo duplex or digital output). This may not happen the same way every time - on some start ups some of the devices may be fully visible in PulseAudio, on others - not.

Presumably, PulseAudio cannot access these devices fully because PipeWire grabs these devices on startup.

The problem is solved if pipewire and dependent packages are purged from system.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
Package: pipewire (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.8.0-29.31-lowlatency 5.8.14
Uname: Linux 5.8.0-29-lowlatency x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu50.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Sun Nov 22 15:06:10 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-05-01 (2031 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
SourcePackage: pipewire
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to groovy on 2020-11-22 (0 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[soredake (soredake)]

Any progress on this?

[Nick B. (futurepilot)]

Apparently this was fixed in pipewire 0.3.17. Any chance we can get this fix backported?

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/427

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1897965, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.