Running Ubuntu 24.10 (on kernel 6.13.6 with Mainline)
There is a known issue with Proton games on Steam where Proton games will not output to audio interfaces that have more than 2 sinks (aka anything bigger than stereo). I am using a Focusrite Clarett+ 8Pre which has many ins and out. While most of my system audio works completely fine, including Steam games that are running on Linux native, my Proton games have no sound. I used to be running Debian 12 and I fixed this issue by adding pipewire, as described on this Debian wiki page (Debian 12 does not use pipewire by default). This simple fix made everything work perfectly, which is why I’m confused that pipewire on Ubuntu can’t seem to figure it out.
The 2 “fixes” I’ve seen are:
- Plugging in a true stereo interface, launching your game with that as the output, then switching to the preferred output after launch, or
- Manually creating a stereo sink by modifying a system file as described on this page
Since I’ve seen it work perfectly before, I’m not satisfied with these fixes and I’d like to hear if anyone else has figured out a more elegant solution. Maybe Steam/Proton doesn’t use pipewire correctly by default?
In case it matters, wpctl status reports pipewire version 1.2.4