Audio on Arch Linux with KDE Plasma

Published . Nil revisions.

Packages to Install

To set-up audio on Arch Linux with the KDE Plasma desktop environment, install pipewire-jack, wireplumber, and kmix: 

sudo pacman -S pipewire-jack wireplumber kmix
  • pipewire-jack is an implementation of the JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK; a recursive acronym) Application Programming Interface (API). JACK provides a sound server daemon that provides real-time, low latency connections for audio and MIDI data between applications that implement its API.
  • wireplumber is a powerful session and policy manager for PipeWire. PipeWire is a new low-level multimedia framework. It aims to offer capture and playback for both audio and video with minimal latency and support for PulseAudio, JACK, ALSA and GStreamer-based applications.
  • kmix is a sound channel mixer and volume control that provides the applet for the desktop system tray.

Adjusting Audio

After installation of the above applications, audio can be adjusted using either the applet in the desktop environment by right-clicking and then selecting Show Mixer Window, or on the command line via wpctl.

Laptop Specific Requirements

If you are on a laptop, you will also need sof-firmware:

sudo pacman -S sof-firmware