PulseAudio 17.0 Released: Major Update Brings New Features

Learn about key highlights of the PulseAudio 17.0 release.

PulseAudio, the legacy open-source sound server solution, recently announced the release of its latest stable version – PulseAudio 17.0. This upgrade comes packed with numerous enhancements aimed at improving user experience and adding new functionalities for both end users and application developers.

Let’s dive into the details of these exciting updates.

PulseAudio 17.0: What’s new

For the end users, PulseAudio 17.0 introduces several notable modifications to ALSA UCM-based setups. These changes affect how ALSA UCM configurations map to PulseAudio profiles and ports. Instead of creating combined ports for non-conflicting devices, PulseAudio now generates individual profiles for each set of non-conflicting devices.

Devices sharing similar PlaybackPCM or CapturePCM settings but not explicitly marked as conflicting will be considered conflicting.

Moreover, different inputs/outputs will no longer appear as ports on a source/sink; rather, they will be presented as separate sources/sinks. Systems permitting independent operation of specific inputs or outputs will display more than one input/output sink while selecting the desired profile.

Additionally, PulseAudio 17.0 offers a new feature called Battery Level Indication to Bluetooth devices. This functionality lets a PulseAudio host transmit the battery level information to Bluetooth headphones, enabling better integration between portable devices and cars or other systems.

Furthermore, support for the advanced Bluetooth FastStream codec has been implemented, enhancing bi-directional audio quality for compatible devices.

Regarding application development, PulseAudio 17.0 includes an updated webrtc-audio-processing library dependency. This improvement delivers enhanced echo cancellation capabilities and greater tolerance for drift.

Although beamforming support had to be sacrificed due to upstream changes, the overall performance gains make this an attractive proposition for developers.

Lastly, module-role-cork now accepts grouped roles (separated by “/”) as triggers, expanding its flexibility and utility. Simultaneously, the default CPP_STD for the project has been adjusted to C++17.

Overall, it’s a “keep the lights on” update, considering the dev efforts to this legacy audio tech. The alternative & modern Pipewire is already in good shape and used by many modern Linux distributions.

You can get the source of this release on this page.

Via announcement

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