Bluetooth audio to breaks if the Bluetooth device connects after EasyEffects has already launched

[alexhorner]

EasyEffects Version

7.2.5-1.fc43 (installed via Fedora repo on Discover)

What package are you using?

Arch (easyeffects)

Distribution

Fedora 43 (KDE Plasma Edition)

Describe the bug

EasyEffects causes Bluetooth audio to break if the Bluetooth device connects after EasyEffects has already launched. Restarting EasyEffects whilst the Bluetooth device remains connected resolves this issue. I have tested this with two different Bluetooth devices and they behave the same. This issue does not appear to occur with built-in or USB audio devices.

Expected Behavior

EasyEffects can be started both before or after a Bluetooth device is connected and will work reliably.

Debug Log

ee.log

The attached log shows me launching EasyEffects with the Bluetooth device already connected (audio working) then disconnecting it, reconnecting it (audio stops working) toggling the global bypass a few times, and then manually fixing audio in Helvum.

Additional Information

I have an issue with my Bluetooth headphones not working whenever I connect them whilst EasyEffects is running. This does not happen when EasyEffects is not running, nor does it happen if I open EasyEffects after connecting my headphones instead of headphones after EasyEffects opens. This is reproducible on demand by simply disconnecting and reconnecting my headphones whilst EasyEffects remains open.

I do not recall the exact version of EasyEffects or Fedora 43 I was on when it worked before, some version from January, but after updating in early March this started being an issue.

I have figured out some interesting behaviour around this issue, including a way to fix it manually. If I wait 5-10 minutes this issue sometimes fixes itself, and if I quit and restart EasyEffects such that it has opened after the Bluetooth device is connected, it always fixes it. But here are some screenshots I took from Helvum describing the PipeWire configuration the system ends up in and how I can also fix it manually:

The screenshot above shows how the pipeline is configured when the audio doesn't work.

The screenshot above shows how the pipeline is configured when audio starts working again.

The screenshot above shows the section I can manually modify to fix this issue. As you can see, I have disconnected the "Bluetooth internal playback stream" block from the "Multimedia" block. Disconnecting both the left and right channels is required, but upon doing so audio starts out a bit choppy for a few seconds and then cleans up and everything behaves.

The working and broken screenshots above shows this has also happened, except this was automatic after restarting EasyEffects, not done by me.

I have also noticed interesting behaviour with the Global Bypass button in EasyEffects. When audio is in the broken state, if I rapidly click the Global Bypass button so it is toggling on and off, I get a few samples of audio come through and the spectrum moves (it is stationary usually whilst in the broken state). I don't know if this is useful information

[SinTan1729]

I'm also experiencing this (on EndeavourOS KDE), but for me, simply enabling and disabling effects inside Easyeffects fixes the issue. Restarting wireplumber also fixes it, but enabling and disabling the effects is just easier.

But of course it happens again when a new bluetooth audio device is connected, or the same device is reconnected.

[alexhorner]

Hi @SinTan1729, I am unfortunately not able to reproduce a fix with turning off my EQ effect inside EasyEffects, it remains broken, however restarting wireplumber (systemctl --user restart wireplumber) seems pretty 50/50 on fixing/not fixing.

I'm curious, if you're able to install Helvum, does toggling your effects add and remove things (or bypass them) from your audio pipeline? It may just be that the effect I am using doesn't do that when I toggle it specifically and yours does.

Do you also have that second node with your Bluetooth devices, which doing the manual fix works on? Just in case, since it isn't at all obvious, the way you remove links between nodes is to click and drag as if linking the same two nodes together again, which it sees as a removal not an add.

[SinTan1729]

Yes, toggling effects does change the connections inside helvum. Also, installing helvum seems to have done something, and I'm not experiencing the issue anymore. It's strange.

Edit: And yes, I do have two nodes for my headphones, one connecting to the bluetooth internal playback stream node, another to easy effects source, which in turn connects to output level meter.

[wwmm]

7.2.5-1.fc43

If possible install the Flatpak from Flathub with the latest 8.x version. It has some fixes that 7.2.5 doesn't. That being said it is unlikely this issue can be fixed on our side. From EasyEffects point of view bluetooth devices are just a generic node like any other soundcard. If other devices are fine the difference is happening inside pipewire and/or wireplumber.

Another point is that EasyEffects is not the one making the filters and the links active. Pipewire is the one deciding when that happens.

[alexhorner]

Hi @wwmm

Somehow this is even worse than the previous version. I have to fiddle around even more in Helvum to get it to select the correct audio output. At one point it defaulted to some kind of loop where the dB meter reached nearly 1000dB (which I believe is enough to destroy the entire galaxy, might I add).

[wwmm]

Hi @wwmm

Somehow this is even worse than the previous version. I have to fiddle around even more in Helvum to get it to select the correct audio output. At one point it defaulted to some kind of loop where the dB meter reached nearly 1000dB (which I believe is enough to destroy the entire galaxy, might I add).

Hum... Based on your logs your are using pipewire 1.4. I wonder how this is on pipewire 1.6. At the end of the day the one that actually knows what is or not a bluetooth is pipewire and wireplumber.

Something I know that does not work with easyeffects is wireplumber automatic bluetooth profile selection. There is nothing I can do about that one. Wireplumber logic is based on streams and EasyEffects filters are not streams. So I just disabled that wireplumber feature on my system. Maybe it is related to your problem somehow.

[alexhorner]

Hum... Based on your logs your are using pipewire 1.4. I wonder how this is on pipewire 1.6. At the end of the day the one that actually knows what is or not a bluetooth is pipewire and wireplumber.

Something I know that does not work with easyeffects is wireplumber automatic bluetooth profile selection. There is nothing I can do about that one. Wireplumber logic is based on streams and EasyEffects filters are not streams. So I just disabled that wireplumber feature on my system. Maybe it is related to your problem somehow.

The profile selection does seem to be fine. I have selected SBC-XQ from the picker in the KDE audio panel and that has just always stuck without an issue no matter what I am doing.

Will have to wait for Fedora to catch up to 1.6 before I can see what that does. Just very frustrating that it used to work fine and now I have to restart EasyEffects every time I connect bluetooth headphones.

[wwmm]

Just very frustrating that it used to work fine and now I have to restart EasyEffects every time I connect bluetooth headphones.

Considering you were still using 7.2.5 and upgrading to 8.x did not help it does not look like a change in EasyEffects caused this. Maybe a pipewire or wireplumber update. But if none of that happened the only thing that comes to my mind is a corrupt wireplumber state file. Sometimes weird problems go away after deleting the folder ~/.local/state/wireplumber/ and rebooting.

[alexhorner]

Considering you were still using 7.2.5 and upgrading to 8.x did not help it does not look like a change in EasyEffects caused this. Maybe a pipewire or wireplumber update. But if none of that happened the only thing that comes to my mind is a corrupt wireplumber state file. Sometimes weird problems go away after deleting the folder ~/.local/state/wireplumber/ and rebooting.

I have tried wiping this directory and sadly it has not resolved the issue.

I have also just noticed that when Bluetooth connects with EasyEffects starting up, callaudiod segfaults. This appears to only happen once per login but seems fairly consistent.

           PID: 21432 (callaudiod)
           UID: 1000 (ahorner)
           GID: 1000 (ahorner)
        Signal: 11 (SEGV)
     Timestamp: Fri 2026-03-20 17:27:10 GMT (3s ago)
  Command Line: /usr/bin/callaudiod
    Executable: /usr/bin/callaudiod
 Control Group: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/dbus-:1.2-org.mobian_project.CallAudio@2.service
          Unit: user@1000.service
     User Unit: dbus-:1.2-org.mobian_project.CallAudio@2.service
         Slice: user-1000.slice
     Owner UID: 1000 (ahorner)
       Boot ID: 37efbe701a70440b947ebee97abbe481
    Machine ID: 94b0ab34bf554967b7f636c4078aa5b7
      Hostname: hawk22hat
       Storage: /var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.callaudiod.1000.37efbe701a70440b947ebee97abbe481.21432.1774027630000000.zst (present)
  Size on Disk: 481.7K
       Package: callaudiod/0.1.99-1.fc43
      build-id: 99a0f77eb483062984549710e12016b646fa55c5
       Message: Process 21432 (callaudiod) of user 1000 dumped core.
                
                Module /usr/bin/callaudiod from rpm callaudiod-0.1.99-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libcrypt.so.2 from rpm libxcrypt-4.5.2-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libXau.so.6 from rpm libXau-1.0.12-3.fc43.x86_64
                Module libmpg123.so.0 from rpm mpg123-1.32.10-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libogg.so.0 from rpm libogg-1.3.6-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libopus.so.0 from rpm opus-1.5.2-3.fc43.x86_64
                Module libvorbisenc.so.2 from rpm libvorbis-1.3.7-13.fc43.x86_64
                Module libvorbis.so.0 from rpm libvorbis-1.3.7-13.fc43.x86_64
                Module libFLAC.so.14 from rpm flac-1.5.0-5.fc43.x86_64
                Module libgsm.so.1 from rpm gsm-1.0.23-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libkeyutils.so.1 from rpm keyutils-1.6.3-6.fc43.x86_64
                Module libkrb5support.so.0 from rpm krb5-1.22.2-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libcom_err.so.2 from rpm e2fsprogs-1.47.3-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libk5crypto.so.3 from rpm krb5-1.22.2-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libkrb5.so.3 from rpm krb5-1.22.2-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libsasl2.so.3 from rpm cyrus-sasl-2.1.28-33.fc43.x86_64
                Module libevent-2.1.so.7 from rpm libevent-2.1.12-16.fc43.x86_64
                Module libunistring.so.5 from rpm libunistring-1.1-10.fc43.x86_64
                Module libxcb.so.1 from rpm libxcb-1.17.0-6.fc43.x86_64
                Module libsndfile.so.1 from rpm libsndfile-1.2.2-10.fc43.x86_64
                Module libblkid.so.1 from rpm util-linux-2.41.3-7.fc43.x86_64
                Module libcap.so.2 from rpm libcap-2.76-3.fc43.x86_64
                Module liblzma.so.5 from rpm xz-5.8.1-4.fc43.x86_64
                Module libbrotlicommon.so.1 from rpm brotli-1.2.0-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libbrotlidec.so.1 from rpm brotli-1.2.0-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libgssapi_krb5.so.2 from rpm krb5-1.22.2-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libcrypto.so.3 from rpm openssl-3.5.4-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libssl.so.3 from rpm openssl-3.5.4-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libpsl.so.5 from rpm libpsl-0.21.5-6.fc43.x86_64
                Module libssh.so.4 from rpm libssh-0.11.4-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libidn2.so.0 from rpm libidn2-2.3.8-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libnghttp2.so.14 from rpm nghttp2-1.66.0-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libdbus-1.so.3 from rpm dbus-1.16.0-4.fc43.x86_64
                Module libpulsecommon-17.0.so from rpm pulseaudio-17.0-9.fc43.x86_64
                Module libpcre2-8.so.0 from rpm pcre2-10.47-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libffi.so.8 from rpm libffi-3.5.2-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libselinux.so.1 from rpm libselinux-3.9-5.fc43.x86_64
                Module libmount.so.1 from rpm util-linux-2.41.3-7.fc43.x86_64
                Module libz.so.1 from rpm zlib-ng-2.3.3-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libgmodule-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.86.4-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libstemmer.so.0 from rpm snowball-3.0.1-8.fc43.x86_64
                Module libzstd.so.1 from rpm zstd-1.5.7-2.fc43.x86_64
                Module libsystemd.so.0 from rpm systemd-258.7-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libfyaml.so.0 from rpm libfyaml-0.8-8.fc43.x86_64
                Module libxml2.so.2 from rpm libxml2-2.12.10-5.fc43.x86_64
                Module libxmlb.so.2 from rpm libxmlb-0.3.24-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libcurl.so.4 from rpm curl-8.15.0-5.fc43.x86_64
                Module libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0 from rpm pulseaudio-17.0-9.fc43.x86_64
                Module libpulse.so.0 from rpm pulseaudio-17.0-9.fc43.x86_64
                Module libglib-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.86.4-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libgobject-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.86.4-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libgio-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.86.4-1.fc43.x86_64
                Module libappstream.so.5 from rpm appstream-1.1.0-1.fc43.x86_64
                Stack trace of thread 21432:
                #0  0x0000560601af23a3 init_sink_info (/usr/bin/callaudiod + 0x43a3)
                #1  0x00007fc24b1e7c65 context_get_sink_info_callback.lto_priv.0 (libpulse.so.0 + 0xfc65)
                #2  0x00007fc24a885842 run_action (libpulsecommon-17.0.so + 0x33842)
                #3  0x00007fc24a886ab0 pa_pdispatch_run (libpulsecommon-17.0.so + 0x34ab0)
                #4  0x00007fc24b1e14ab pstream_packet_callback (libpulse.so.0 + 0x94ab)
                #5  0x00007fc24a88b6e2 do_read (libpulsecommon-17.0.so + 0x396e2)
                #6  0x00007fc24a88c56f do_pstream_read_write (libpulsecommon-17.0.so + 0x3a56f)
                #7  0x00007fc24b1d3854 dispatch_func (libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0 + 0x1854)
                #8  0x00007fc24b269323 g_main_context_dispatch_unlocked.lto_priv.0 (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x41323)
                #9  0x00007fc24b272278 g_main_context_iterate_unlocked.isra.0 (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x4a278)
                #10 0x00007fc24b27251f g_main_loop_run (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x4a51f)
                #11 0x0000560601aef73d main (/usr/bin/callaudiod + 0x173d)
                #12 0x00007fc24afe05b5 __libc_start_call_main (libc.so.6 + 0x35b5)
                #13 0x00007fc24afe0668 __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_2.34 (libc.so.6 + 0x3668)
                #14 0x0000560601aef775 _start (/usr/bin/callaudiod + 0x1775)
                
                Stack trace of thread 21436:
                #0  0x00007fc24b0579a2 __syscall_cancel_arch (libc.so.6 + 0x7a9a2)
                #1  0x00007fc24b04bc3c __internal_syscall_cancel (libc.so.6 + 0x6ec3c)
                #2  0x00007fc24b04bc84 __syscall_cancel (libc.so.6 + 0x6ec84)
                #3  0x00007fc24b0c5706 ppoll (libc.so.6 + 0xe8706)
                #4  0x00007fc24b272360 g_main_context_iterate_unlocked.isra.0 (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x4a360)
                #5  0x00007fc24b272423 g_main_context_iteration (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x4a423)
                #6  0x00007fc24b272471 glib_worker_main (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x4a471)
                #7  0x00007fc24b29d742 g_thread_proxy (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x75742)
                #8  0x00007fc24b04f464 start_thread (libc.so.6 + 0x72464)
                #9  0x00007fc24b0d25ec __clone3 (libc.so.6 + 0xf55ec)
                
                Stack trace of thread 21437:
                #0  0x00007fc24b0d038d syscall (libc.so.6 + 0xf338d)
                #1  0x00007fc24b2945ab g_cond_wait (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x6c5ab)
                #2  0x00007fc24b23220c g_async_queue_pop_intern_unlocked (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0xa20c)
                #3  0x00007fc24b29dbf4 g_thread_pool_spawn_thread (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x75bf4)
                #4  0x00007fc24b29d742 g_thread_proxy (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x75742)
                #5  0x00007fc24b04f464 start_thread (libc.so.6 + 0x72464)
                #6  0x00007fc24b0d25ec __clone3 (libc.so.6 + 0xf55ec)
                
                Stack trace of thread 21439:
                #0  0x00007fc24b0579a2 __syscall_cancel_arch (libc.so.6 + 0x7a9a2)
                #1  0x00007fc24b04bc3c __internal_syscall_cancel (libc.so.6 + 0x6ec3c)
                #2  0x00007fc24b04bc84 __syscall_cancel (libc.so.6 + 0x6ec84)
                #3  0x00007fc24b0c5706 ppoll (libc.so.6 + 0xe8706)
                #4  0x00007fc24b272360 g_main_context_iterate_unlocked.isra.0 (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x4a360)
                #5  0x00007fc24b27251f g_main_loop_run (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x4a51f)
                #6  0x00007fc24b4c5f92 gdbus_shared_thread_func.lto_priv.0 (libgio-2.0.so.0 + 0xe8f92)
                #7  0x00007fc24b29d742 g_thread_proxy (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x75742)
                #8  0x00007fc24b04f464 start_thread (libc.so.6 + 0x72464)
                #9  0x00007fc24b0d25ec __clone3 (libc.so.6 + 0xf55ec)
                ELF object binary architecture: AMD x86-64