pulseaudio degraded (latency & popping) when running as brew service [only] - monterrey m1

[troyxmccall]

hi, first off - I love homebrew and thank you for all for you wonderful/incredible work

i have a feeling this might be a sysinternals thing specific to LaunchAgents and Monterrey

bug: I'm experiencing lot's of audio clipping & latency when running pulseaudioas a brew service on my [nearly maxed out m1 macbook pro | 12.3.1], ie:

brew services start pulseaudio 

grepping the brew service process

❯ ps aux | grep pulse
tmccall          45712   0.0  0.0 408505488   1504 s002  R+   11:09AM   0:00.00 grep --color=auto pulse
tmccall          45609   0.0  0.0 408686304  13200   ??  S    11:09AM   0:00.06 /opt/homebrew/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1 --verbose

but ZERO clipping and latency when running the command directly

/opt/homebrew/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1 --verbose

grepping the manually executed process

❯ ps aux | grep pulse
tmccall          43811   2.8  0.0 408799648  13904 s001  S+   10:58AM   0:17.62 /opt/homebrew/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1 --verbose
tmccall          45428   0.2  0.0 408645776   1808 s002  S+   11:08AM   0:00.00 grep --color=auto pulse

BOTH have the same PRI in top|htop: : @24 & renicing the PID does not improve pulse, even to -20

system info

❯ neofetch 
                    'c.          [email protected] 
                 ,xNMM.          ----------------------- 
               .OMMMMo           OS: macOS 12.3.1 21E258 arm64 
               OMMM0,            Host: MacBookPro18,4 
     .;loddo:' loolloddol;.      Kernel: 21.4.0 
   cKMMMMMMMMMMNWMMMMMMMMMM0:    Uptime: 16 hours, 32 mins 
 .KMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd.    Packages: 354 (brew) 
 XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX.      Shell: bash 5.1.16 
;MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:       Resolution: 1800x1169 
:MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:       DE: Aqua 
.MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX.      WM: Quartz Compositor 
 kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd.    WM Theme: Blue (Dark) 
 .XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMk   Terminal: Apple_Terminal 
  .XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMK.   Terminal Font: RobotoMonoNerdFontComplete-Regular 
    kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMd     CPU: Apple M1 Max 
     ;KMMMMMMMWXXWMMMMMMMk.      GPU: Apple M1 Max 
       .cooc,.    .,coo:.        Memory: 5616MiB / 65536MiB 

                                                         
                                                         

m1 bottle info

❯ brew info pulseaudio 
pulseaudio: stable 14.2 (bottled), HEAD
Sound system for POSIX OSes
https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Software/PulseAudio/
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/pulseaudio/14.2 (168 files, 7.4MB) *
  Poured from bottle on 2022-04-07 at 10:19:03
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/pulseaudio.rb
License: GPL-2.0-or-later and LGPL-2.1-or-later and BSD-3-Clause
==> Dependencies
Build: pkg-config ✔
Required: json-c ✔, libsndfile ✔, libsoxr ✔, libtool ✔, [email protected] ✔, speexdsp ✔
==> Options
--HEAD
	Install HEAD version
==> Caveats
To restart pulseaudio after an upgrade:
  brew services restart pulseaudio
Or, if you don't want/need a background service you can just run:
  /opt/homebrew/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1 --verbose

I also experience this issue when building the formula from source, so I don't think it's bottle specific, ie:

brew reinstall pulseaudio -s

brew service plist

❯ bat ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.pulseaudio.plist
───────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       │ File: /Users/tmccall/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.pulseaudio.plist
       │ Size: 658 B
───────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
   1   │ <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   2   │ <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
   3   │ <plist version="1.0">
   4   │ <dict>
   5   │     <key>KeepAlive</key>
   6   │     <true/>
   7   │     <key>Label</key>
   8   │     <string>homebrew.mxcl.pulseaudio</string>
   9   │     <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  10   │     <array>
  11   │         <string>/opt/homebrew/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio</string>
  12   │         <string>--exit-idle-time=-1</string>
  13   │         <string>--verbose</string>
  14   │     </array>
  15   │     <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  16   │     <true/>
  17   │     <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  18   │     <string>/opt/homebrew/var/log/pulseaudio.log</string>
  19   │     <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  20   │     <string>/opt/homebrew/var/log/pulseaudio.log</string>
  21   │ </dict>
  22   │ </plist>
───────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

unable to duplicate on intel machine

the interesting part is that if I run pulseaudio as a brew service on an older arch (intel)

brew services start pulseaudio 

and

/usr/local/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1 --verbose

BOTH work perfectly without clipping/latency on older intel

❯ neofetch
                    'c.          tdmccall@the-beast
                 ,xNMM.          ------------------
               .OMMMMo           OS: macOS Catalina 10.15.7 19H1824 x86_64
               OMMM0,            Host: MacPro5,1
     .;loddo:' loolloddol;.      Kernel: 19.6.0
   cKMMMMMMMMMMNWMMMMMMMMMM0:    Uptime: 1 day, 2 hours, 4 mins
 .KMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd.    Packages: 475 (brew)
 XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX.      Shell: bash 5.1.16
;MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:       Resolution: 2560x1440, 2560x1440
:MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:       DE: Aqua
.MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX.      WM: Rectangle
 kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd.    Terminal: iTerm2
 .XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMk   Terminal Font: RobotoMonoNerdFontComplete-Regular 12
  .XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMK.   CPU: Intel Xeon W3690 (12) @ 3.47GHz
    kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMd     GPU: Radeon RX 580
     ;KMMMMMMMWXXWMMMMMMMk.      Memory: 20065MiB / 49152MiB
       .cooc,.    .,coo:.

intel bottle info

❯ brew info pulseaudio
pulseaudio: stable 14.2 (bottled), HEAD
Sound system for POSIX OSes
https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Software/PulseAudio/
/usr/local/Cellar/pulseaudio/14.2 (168 files, 7MB) *
  Poured from bottle on 2022-04-05 at 13:46:42
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/pulseaudio.rb
License: GPL-2.0-or-later and LGPL-2.1-or-later and BSD-3-Clause
==> Dependencies
Build: pkg-config ✔
Required: json-c ✔, libsndfile ✔, libsoxr ✔, libtool ✔, [email protected] ✔, speexdsp ✔
==> Options
--HEAD
	Install HEAD version
==> Caveats
To restart pulseaudio after an upgrade:
  brew services restart pulseaudio
Or, if you don't want/need a background service you can just run:
  /usr/local/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1 --verbose

would love any thoughts/input!

I can run pulse with nohup if needed for now

ty again!

[cmh716]

Did you ever resolve this? I have the same problem on the latest, 17.0 pulseaudio on Apple Silicon