Arch Linux

il2dottore

Member

Registered: 2026-06-21

Posts: 3

WirePlumber/PipeWire reaches 100% CPU usage after adjusting volume

Hi everyone,

I am facing a frustrating issue where WirePlumber/PipeWire suddenly spikes to 100% CPU usage after adjusting the audio volume. It remains stuck at that level unless I restart the service manually. After a few minutes, it happens again, causing Firefox to freeze, the system to stop responding, and audio to cut out completely.

Here are my system specifications:

Laptop: Acer Nitro 5 AN515-57
BIOS: V1.20
Kernel: Linux 7.0.12
CPU: Intel Core i5-11400H
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics / NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile
Desktop: KDE Plasma 6.7.0 (Wayland)

Audio Server & Hardware Info:

Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.6.6)
Default Sink/Source: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo

card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC295 Analog
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3/7/8/9: HDMI

This is the only suspicious log I could gather right before the crash:

Jun 08 09:59:21 il2dottore wireplumber[1318]: wp-device: SPA handle 'api.libcamera.enum.manager' could not be loaded; is it installed?
Jun 08 09:59:21 il2dottore wireplumber[1318]: s-monitors-libcamera: PipeWire's libcamera SPA plugin is missing or broken. Some camera types may not be supported.

During the spike, top shows:

PID 1318 wireplumber 99.7% CPU

What I have tried so far (with no success):
1. Removed all state and configuration files:

rm -rf ~/.local/state/wireplumber
rm -rf ~/.local/state/pipewire
rm -rf ~/.config/pulse

2. Reinstalled all related packages:

sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-pulse pipewire-alsa wireplumber alsa-utils alsa-card-profiles plasma-pa pavucontrol

The issue persists.

Has anyone encountered this or could guide me on how to properly debug/fix this?

Thanks in advance!

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,743

Re: WirePlumber/PipeWire reaches 100% CPU usage after adjusting volume

This is the only suspicious log

Completey insignificant, the messages are rather common

1. Removed all state and configuration files:

While wireplumber/pipewire were running?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePl … t_settings

Do you have any custom pipewire/wireplumber/pulseaudio configs?
Is a fresh user account affected by the same symptoms?

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daarchlist

Member

Registered: 2026-09-02

Posts: 1

Re: WirePlumber/PipeWire reaches 100% CPU usage after adjusting volume

Hello, forgive me for bringing an inactive thread back. I was having this problem with my Arch Linux installation as well, and in fact have the exact same model and revision laptop as you. I signed up because I wanted to share this with you and see if it works. As of August, it was happening to me as well.
Whenever I would wake from sleep, this is when it would trigger. The memory would keep climbing higher and higher on the wireplumber process, and it was hammering one of my cores. I tried downgrading wireplumber and pipewire multiple versions down to no avail.

It turns out the problem begins multiple layers down, at least based on my experience. I disabled ACP from pipewire-alsa. This fixed the problem, but naturally split up my audio into multiple streams, so I turned it back on and the issue started again as I continued to look again.
I asked ChatGPT for help and eventually we stumbled upon

sudo hdajacksensetest -c 0

Putting it in a for loop:

for i in {1..20}; do sudo hdajacksensetest -c 0 sleep 0.25

What was going on was that unused pin 0x19 kept reporting that it was connecting and disconnecting. I am not too sure what this pin is used for, and it may differ for your instance. I disabled it with

sudo hda1jackretask

After disabling pin 0x19 from there (may have to mark unused pin), Wireplumber stopped acting up right away. I made it persistent across reboot in hda1jackretask. I'm not sure what the side effects may be, it could be something like a microphone pin, but I used a wireless headset, so I'm not too sure.

I'm not sure why this behavior started happening on this laptop model specifically, and how it could be patched. It could be a kernel level thing. Not sure.

Regardless I hope this is able to assist you.