On two separate systems, a ThinkPad T43 and an HP Compaq nc6220, playback is garbled or out of order when using the default PulseAudio output plugin. Both systems use the Intel 82801 AC'97: Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03) Each system is running a newly installed Debian testing: Linux dwrc1 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.35-2 i686 GNU/Linux I observed that the problem does not occur when I change the output plugin to ALSA. I also observed that the problem only occurs when PulseAudio uses the default Buffer size (from File, Preferences, Audio) of 500 ms. If I decrement to 100 ms, the problem goes away. Values at and above 500 ms seem to always cause distorted playback. VLC, which also defaults to PulseAudio output, does not show this issue. It appears to be specific to the PulseAudio output plugin that comes with Audacious, and specific to this sound card.
Hi, I'm using audacious 3.4 and this bug is still present. I also experienced it with 3.2.4. I'm using Pulseaudio: $ dpkg -l | grep pulse ii libpulse-dev:i386 2.0-6.1 i386 PulseAudio client development headers and libraries ii libpulse-mainloop-glib0:i386 2.0-6.1 i386 PulseAudio client libraries (glib support) ii libpulse0:i386 2.0-6.1 i386 PulseAudio client libraries ii pulseaudio 2.0-6.1 i386 PulseAudio sound server ii pulseaudio-utils 2.0-6.1 i386 Command line tools for the PulseAudio sound server ii vlc-plugin-pulse 2.0.7-3 i386 PulseAudio plugin for VLC And this is my audio card: $ lspci |grep Audio 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03) The workaround suggested by Ryan works here too: I set the buffer to "100 ms" and I didn't experience any more "POP!" or "BRRK!" sounds as I did when the buffer was set to "500 ms". Running 'audacious -V' provides no output when the audio errors occur. I'm not sure how I can debug further into Pulseaudio (if this is a PA problem). As far as I could test, other PulseAudio programs don't show this problem. Feel free to ask for whatever might help debugging this. Best regards, Luís Picciochi
So, it appears that the workaround only worked partially. Setting the buffer to the minimum allowed of 100ms made the popping sounds rarer, but after some time (and a bit more attention) I started hearing them again. I'm investigation if this mightn't be a pulseaudio and/or driver problem, and not related to Audacious. Ryan: can you test the suggested workaround on this section? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#Glitches.2C_skips_or_crackling Specifically, add tsched=0 to the line load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0 in /etc/pulse/default.pa . Then try to get the audacious higher again, restart pulseaudio (pulseaudio -k). Then start playing something on audacious and see if you hear problems again. Can you also confirm that the command: $ lsmod | grep snd Lists the module snd_hda_intel as loaded? Best regards, Luís Picciochi
Thanks Luís. Adding tsched=0 to the module-udev-detect line in /etc/pulse/default.paresolves this issue. I am on Debian 7.1 w/ kernel 3.2.0: 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.46-1 i686 GNU/Linux I don't have snd_hda_intel loaded: rjn@lefthand:~$ lsmod | grep snd snd_intel8x0 22372 2 snd_intel8x0m 17503 0 snd_ac97_codec 84236 2 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0 snd_pcm 53461 3 snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0 snd_page_alloc 12867 3 snd_pcm,snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0 snd_seq 39512 0 snd_seq_device 13016 1 snd_seq snd_timer 22356 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm snd 42722 12 snd_timer,snd_seq_device,snd_seq,thinkpad_acpi,snd_pcm,snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0 soundcore 12921 1 snd ac97_bus 12462 1 snd_ac97_codec