Linux Mint 22.3 Audio Distortion Fix

Summary

• Symptom: crackling/distorted audio, intermittent audio instability.
• Confirmed cause in this case: Homebrew pulseaudio was being launched and conflicting with Mint’s native PipeWire audio stack.
• Stable fix: unlink Homebrew pulseaudio/jack binaries and restart PipeWire services.

Quick Fix

brew unlink pulseaudio jack
systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

Verify

which -a pulseaudio
systemctl --user --no-pager --plain is-active pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

Expected:

• pulseaudio should not resolve to /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/pulseaudio
• all three services return active

If Audio Issues Return

Run:

coredumpctl --no-pager --reverse | rg -i pulseaudio | sed -n '1,20p'
ps -eo pid,cmd | rg -i "pipewire|wireplumber|pulseaudio|jackd" | rg -v rg

If crashes point to Homebrew path, re-apply quick fix.

What We Saw (2026-03-28)

• Crash source:
  • /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar/pulseaudio/17.0/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
• Scope:
  • launched under Chromium app scope
• PipeWire services healthy after restart:
  • pipewire: active
  • pipewire-pulse: active
  • wireplumber: active

Rollback (if needed)

brew link pulseaudio jack

Notes

• Earlier workaround (apt remove libjack-jackd2-0) was broad and removed many multimedia packages.
• Prefer PATH-level isolation (brew unlink) over large package removals.