Linux - No output for query_devices() / no Pulse / Pipewire devices listed.

[kingsly]

Not exactly a bug report but wanted to add this here to save time for others who may face the same issue as me. (Other similar issues are open without resolution in this issue tracker for years.)

Current releases of Debian (13/Trixie) and Ubuntu (25.10/Questing) ship with outdated libportaudio2 without Pulseaudio / Pipewire support.

Portaudio 19.7.0 was released in April 2021 but Debian(and by extension Ubuntu) are still shipping version 19.6.0 which was released in October 2016!

Portaudio added hostapi support for Pipewire/Pulseaudio in their 19.7.0 release.

From https://files.portaudio.com/download.html

April 6, 2021 - tag v19.7.0

This is the new v19.7.0 stable release. We encourage developers to use this because it 
has many important bug fixes and works with the latest Mac OS and PipeWire. 

EDIT: The above is misleading as Pulseaudio hostapi support is only present in unrelased git commits.(See EDIT at end of this message)

Debian and Ubuntu package details for libportaudio2

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/libportaudio2

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/questing/+package/libportaudio2

Debian Sid and Forky have 19.7.0 since Oct 2025 but it hasn't made it to trixie-backports yet. (Source:
https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/p/portaudio19/portaudio19_19.7.0-1_changelog )

Bash and Python output on a Debian Trixie container with working pipewire/pulseaudio but no physical audio hardware.

$ python3 -m sounddevice

$ python
Python 3.13.5 (main, Jun 25 2025, 18:55:22) [GCC 14.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sounddevice as sd
>>> sd.get_portaudio_version()
(1246720, 'PortAudio V19.6.0-devel, revision 396fe4b6699ae929d3a685b3ef8a7e97396139a4')
>>> print(sd.query_devices())

>>> print(sd.query_hostapis())
({'name': 'ALSA', 'devices': [], 'default_input_device': -1, 'default_output_device': -1}, {'name': 'OSS', 'devices': [], 'default_input_device': -1, 'default_output_device': -1})
>>> 

EDIT: Turns out even 19.7.0 is missing Pulseaudio hostapi support.

So this situation will likely continue until a future portaudio release makes it into Debian/Ubuntu.

$ ls portaudio*/src/hostapi
portaudio1960/src/hostapi:
alsa  asihpi  asio  coreaudio  dsound  jack  oss  skeleton  wasapi  wdmks  wmme

portaudio1970/src/hostapi:
alsa  asihpi  asio  coreaudio  dsound  jack  oss  skeleton  wasapi  wdmks  wmme

portaudio-git-latest/src/hostapi:
alsa    asio     coreaudio  jack  pulseaudio  sndio   wdmks
asihpi  audioio  dsound     oss   skeleton    wasapi  wmme
$