Yesterday I notice missing codecs on when using my headphones. I tried a system update and that didn’t add anything new. I then tried to change my audio routers using Garuda Assistant, but found a few potential bugs.
Bug 1: When changing the audio router between pipewire and pulseaudio, the assistant doesn’t correctly manage the plasma-pa package. When updating the audio router, pacman throws an error stating that plasma-pa is a dependent of a package (X), so the current router is not fully uninstalled. But, because the new router relies on a package that is in conflict with X, then the new router cannot be installed. To fix this, I used pacman manually, and didn’t really pay attention when the plasma-pa pacakge was deleted. When looking, I noticed a few other people have also been stung with the “missing sound option in system settings,” and I found the solution here.
Bug 2: I also noticed that when re-installing pipewire using Garuda Assistant, it didn’t grab all the packages that were needed for a seamless experience. I followed this wiki and just installed everything the page mentioned in section 3. This is noting that these packages are optional dependencies of the pipewire pacakge as shown here, so they may not be automagically installed by just installing pipewire.
Now I have a comfortable experience with the extra higher quality codecs for that sweet audio experience.
I have not tried to thoroughly recreate the issue for reproduction steps because I need my machine for other work and projects. But I thought it’d be better to capture the issues and hope it helps someone.
Note: I have not done a thorough test on my machine and fully expect that I’ve kinda borked something in the process. But I’ll fix it when it becomes a problem.