How did you manage to hide the capture stream from Pipewire while filtering the audio?

[103sbavert]

How do you "hide" the "capture input stream" created by a module (such as echo-cancel) from Pipewire?
I'm using this plugin config

context.modules = [
    { 
        name = libpipewire-module-echo-cancel
        args = {
            source.name = "echo_cancel_source"
            sink.name = "echo_cancel_sink"
            monitor.mode = true
            use.system.capture = true
            use.system.playback = true
            aec.type = "webrtc"
            source.props = {
                node.name = "echo-cancel-source"
                node.description = "Echo Cancelled Source"
            }
            aec.args = {
                         webrtc.gain_control = false    
                         webrtc.extended_filter = false
                     }
        }
    }
]

to echo cancel my audio but it turns out that it enables a constant input stream on my device (which is visible in both gnome shell as "microphone in use" indicator and in pavucontrol/pwvucontrol as an input stream. I want to hide that.

(PS: I am trying to find out my own solution over installing easyeffects because it feels like overkill + the module-echo-cancel does better noise filtering on my devices)

[wwmm]

How do you "hide" the "capture input stream" created by a module (such as echo-cancel) from Pipewire?

Do you want to hide it from what exactly? I did not understand that part. In any case it may be better to ask this to PipeWire's developers directly because I never had a reason to create configuration files for its built-in echo cancellation plugin or its loopback devices. You probably are more familiar with them than I am 😄

[103sbavert]

I think it's slightly different on easyeffects. The easyeffects capture stream (if any) doesn't appear at all in pavucontrol or pwvucontrol.

[wwmm]

That is because it isn't a stream technically speaking. For simplicity let's say that EasyEffects does lower level links between a sequence of filter objects. Applications still based on Pulseaudio API like Pavucontrol are not able to see the links and filters EasyEffects creates because these type of objects do not exist on Pulseaudio.

In the case of pwvucontrol it should be able to see EasyEffects links. It probably is intentionally showing only streams.

[103sbavert]

Well it turns out this is an imperfect implementation on Gnome's side. They should be filtering based on the "virtualness" of the capture stream but they aren't..which leads them to think that loaded modules are worth a mic indicator.

[103sbavert]

I am trying to write an extension that works but having a hard time since I don't know JS.

[wwmm]

Well it turns out this is an imperfect implementation on Gnome's side. They should be filtering based on the "virtualness" of the capture stream but they aren't..which leads them to think that loaded modules are worth a mic indicator.

I think KDE still has an open issue about the same problem. So unfortunately it is not only a GNOME thing.