Voice Chat Stuck in "Connecting" When Virtual Sink Is Used with Loopback [Pipewire]

[BluesAdam]

System Details Report

---

Report details

• Date generated: 2026-08-21 15:38:32

Hardware Information:

• Hardware Model: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-7C56
• Memory: 32.0 GiB
• Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 5 5600 × 12
• Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 7600
• Disk Capacity: 2.0 TB

Software Information:

• Firmware Version: 1.M1
• OS Name: Fedora Linux 44 (Forty Four)
• OS Build: (null)
• OS Type: 64-bit
• GNOME Version: 50
• Windowing System: Wayland
• Kernel Version: Linux 7.1.8-200.fc44.x86_64

The Issue:

First of all, I am not using Flatpak Steam. I installed Steam from Fedora's RPMFusion repo. I have created two virtual sinks to isolate game and voice chat audio from recordings. Achieved that by creating the following file:

/home//.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/10-virtual-sinks.conf

with the following contents:

context.objects = [
{
	factory = adapter
		args = {
			factory.name     = support.null-audio-sink
			node.name        = "Voice_Chat"
			node.description = "Voice Chat"
			media.class      = Audio/Sink
			audio.position   = [ FL FR ]
		}
	}
	{
	factory = adapter
		args = {
			factory.name	        = support.null-audio-sink
			node.name		= "Game"
			node.description	= "Game"
			media.class		= Audio/Sink
			audio.position		= [ FL FR ]
		}
	}
]

Finally, so that I can hear the voice chat as well, I created a loopback using the app "coppwr" as you can see in the screenshot below.

Everything works correctly, but the moment I create the loopback, I cannot join any voice chat rooms or personal voice calls on Steam. Connection status remains "connecting" for a while and then fails silently. Command line doesn't give any information either.

The only solution is to exit Steam, disconnect the loopback using coppwr, restart Steam and then I can join voice chat without a problem.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Create virtual sink for voice chat as described above
2. Create a loopback so you can hear voice chat through default output device
3. Try to join voice chat room or personal voice call

Please let me know if I can provide any more information and how I can do so.

[BluesAdam]

Keep in mind that there seems to be a widespread issue connecting to voice chat on Steam in general, so replicating the issue is kind of a hit and miss at the moment. I don't want to lead developers down a rabbit hole for no reason so approach this bug report with a bit of suspicion for now.

I can still replicate this on my system whenever I create the loopback though but will try again once the issue stops happening in general as I am seeing a lot of similar issues on Steam discussions.