Lag between hitting tab and audio stopping on Linux systems

[Alejandro Ciuba]

I would like to use Praat to perform audio transcriptions. However, I ran into this problem almost immediately. The problem I have is as follows:

1. I open up Praat, closing the Praat Picture window and leaving only the Praat Objects Window.
2. From there, I open an audio file via hitting open in the context menu and selecting my .wav file via "Read from file...".
3. I either also open an existing .Textgrid file associated with the .wav file or I hit the Annotate button to create a new .Textgrid file (pressing "To Textgrid"). Note that this .Textgrid file has 3-4 tiers and no point tiers.
4. I select both objects and and press "View & Edit" which brings me to the main window.
5. After an indiscernible amount of time (usually very quick to occur though), there is a delay between hitting Tab to start/stop the audio recording and the audio recording actually stopping, which can be up to 2-3 seconds (sometimes the application will crash as well, but I don't know how to consistently replicate that). The lag usually starts after pressing Tab very quickly, but once it starts, even giving time between Tab presses doesn't help with the lag.

Note that the recording I am trying to transcribe is about 11 minutes in length (although I don't know if length has anything to do with it).

System specs:
I used the latest version of Praat on both Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS and Deepin 20.1, the issue occurs in both OS. I am currently trying to experiment with launching the application via a VM to see if this problem is also occurring on Windows.

[davidweenink]

This is a known phenomenon if you are using pipewire soundserver as a replacement for pulseaudio . A temporary solution is to revert to pulseaudio as the soundserver.