Dear Maintainer,

I've recently noticed a high-pitched whine playing through the headphones,
specifically when no audio is playing - or, perhaps, when nothing is accessing
pulseaudio.  Having any sound application open but playing no sound (mplayer
paused, for example, or flash running with the sound muted) silences this
whine.  Additionally, having the Gnome sound control panel open to see what
applications are accessing pulseaudio also prevents the sound from occuring.

If any sound is player, the sound will instantly vanish, only to return within
about ten seconds of the next time no audio is playing.

I have the following sound modules loaded:

snd_hda_codec_hdmi     40955  1
snd_hda_codec_via      22798  1
snd_hda_codec_generic    59065  1 snd_hda_codec_via
snd_hda_intel          43768  12
snd_hda_codec         100159  4
snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_via,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep              13148  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                84566  4 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer              26614  1 snd_pcm
snd                    61094  31
snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_via,snd_pcm,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
soundcore              13026  1 snd

My sound hardware is:

00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Crystal Well HD Audio Controller (rev
08)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High
Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

Sincerely,

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

That sounds like a problem with alsa, that it doesn't suspend the
device properly: pulseaudio suspends the device when it is no longer
using it.

You can test this hipothesis by disabling the module suspend-on-idle.
You can do that by commenting the relevant line in
/etc/pulse/default.pa and restarting pulseaudio:

pulseaudio -k ; pulseaudio --start

Without the modifications to default.pa, could you please post the
output of "pactl list"?

Also without modification, if you could get a full log it would be great too:

pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvv --log-time --log-target=file:pa.log

Control: tags -1 -moreinfo

Bam, right on the money.  Disabling that module and restarting
pulseaudio makes the problem go away.

Both attached.  During the verbose logging, I tried playing an audio
file both with headphones on and off, to try and cover the whole range
of potential possibilities.  Both logs were made prior to the test of
the suspend-on-idle removal.

Sincerely,

On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 5:35 PM, Harlan Lieberman-Berg <H.LiebermanBerg@gmail.com> wrote:

Excellent, at least you have a workaround.

I don't see anything strange with the output there. If this symptom is
new, you could try with an older kernel or libasound, to see if it
helps. I do not think this is a pulseaudio bug, but rather in alsa.