Pipewire Bluetooth plugin with AAC and aptX support for Ubuntu 22.04

Getting Started

Pipewire is partially pre-installed in Ubuntu 22.04, and it can replace PulseAudio using this tutorial.

Prerequisites

Add universe and multiverse repositories (needed for codecs).

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo add-apt-repository multiverse
sudo apt update

Installation

The .deb package can be downloaded in the releases section.

sudo dpkg -i path/to/libspa-0.2-bluetooth_0.3.48-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb

# Optional: prevent updates
sudo apt-mark hold libspa-0.2-bluetooth

Building

Setting up a chroot jail (optional)

Creating a chroot jail

mkdir chroot-jail
sudo debootstrap jammy chroot-jail

# build fails without mounting /proc
sudo mount -t proc /proc /chroot-jail/proc

sudo chroot chroot-jail /bin/bash

Preparing the chroot jail

root:/# export LC_ALL=C
root:/# apt install devscripts equivs software-properties-common wget
root:/# add-apt-repository universe multiverse && apt update

Building pipewire

NOTE: Instructions are for pipewire_0.3.48

# Download pipewire sources
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/p/pipewire/pipewire_0.3.48-1ubuntu1.dsc
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/p/pipewire/pipewire_0.3.48.orig.tar.bz2
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/p/pipewire/pipewire_0.3.48-1ubuntu1.debian.tar.xz

# Extract sources
dpkg-source -x pipewire_0.3.48-1ubuntu1.dsc
cd pipewire-0.3.48

# Apply patch
patch -p1 < path/to/enable-aac-and-aptx-codecs.patch

# Install dependencies
sudo mk-build-deps -i

# Build pipewire (unsigned .deb)
debuild -us -uc

hdodenhof/ubuntu-pipewire-aac-aptx-support