Reducing microphone noise using pipewire modules

Question

Reducing microphone noise using pipewire modules

With pulseaudio, it was easy to load a module for microphone noise reduction.
This link explains it clearly:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/18958/realtime-noise-removal-with-pulseaudio

I want to add rnnoise as a plugin of pipewire to cancel the noise of the microphone for all users.

I’m looking for a minimalist solution and would like to avoid applications. Like this one:
https://github.com/noisetorch/NoiseTorch?tab=readme-ov-file

Asked By: floupinette

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Source

Answer 1

Install noise-suppression-for-voice. As of April 2024, there’s no Ubuntu package, see this open issue for installation instructions. It is packaged for Arch, Alpine, Gentoo, and openSUSE, though. See its README for settings you can tweak.

Answered By: Devon

Answer 2

I have found a way to load rnnoise as a pipewire plugin for all users.

Step 1:
On this page you can download the rnnoise drivers compiled for X86 linux. This is not the last version of rnnoise. If you want the latest version, i think you have to perform compilation by yourself from the official github repo.

Step 2:
In the downloaded archive, you will find the needed linux libs.
Always take mono libs. You probably have only one microphone!
I propose to store them in /usr/lib/audio/ So you will have to create the folder audio.
As i renamed the files, i have now in this folder:

ladspa.so
lv2.so
vst3.so
vst.so

Step 3
Create the 2 pipewire folders to get this path:

/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

Step 4
In this folder create the file 99-mic-denoising.conf.
In this file paste this content:

    context.modules = [
        {name = libpipewire-module-filter-chain
        args = {
            node.description =  "Noise Canceling source"
            media.name =  "Noise Canceling source"
            filter.graph = {
                nodes = [
                    {
                    type = ladspa
                    name = rnnoise
                    plugin = /usr/lib/audio/ladspa.so
                    label = noise_suppressor_mono
                    control = {
                        "VAD Threshold (%)" = 90.0
                        "VAD Grace Period (ms)" = 200
                        "Retroactive VAD Grace (ms)" = 0
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
        capture.props = {
            node.name =  "capture.rnnoise_source"
            node.passive = true
            audio.rate = 48000
        }
        playback.props = {
            node.name =  "rnnoise_source"
            media.class = Audio/Source
            audio.rate = 48000
        }
    }
    }
    ]

Step 5
Restart pipewire deamon:

systemctl restart --user pipewire.service

Now in gnome settings you can choose the microphone with noise cancelled.

Comments

We so use the pipewire filter-chain module. Check the documentation, it’s very useful.
Each application (which use audio) has been designed to use a standard (called audio plugin API):
- ladspa: open standard…but it’s not the newest one
- lv2: open standard…the newest one
- vst3: proprietary standard (you should not see it with open source programs)
- vst: proprietary standard (you should not ….)

So the solution I provided, doesn’t cover applications using lv2 audio plugin (i don’t care about proprietary standards). Any help for lv2 is welcome.

Answered By: floupinette