Bugzilla – Bug 461361
PulseAudio crackling (ALSA)
Last modified: 2013-12-09 19:54:00 UTC
When >= 2 apps are playing sound, PA crackles. When alone Firefox with Flash is playing a sound... PA crackles. It began in 11.0 after updating to PA 0.9.12. I can still reporoduce it on default and non-default (changed rate to proper 48000 for my card) config of PA in 11.1. The only modified config file I'm using is: daemon.conf http://phpfi.com/390633
Reassigned to PA maintainer.
I tried different resampling methods and higher fragment size, but nothing helps. And http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/FAQ#IoftenhearnoiseswhenplayingbackwithPulseAudiowhatcanIdo is not a solution, rather a "stupid thing we can put here to make you silent" :/ .
Sorry for spamming. I also tried that "not a solution" and it was even worse - crackling all the time.
today I tried to apply Ubuntu default config. speex-float-1, 8 fragments, 10ms sized. didn't help. I though it might be related to my ALSA card, but ac97_quirk is set to 2, dxs_support too (DXS disabled) and PCM volume is set to 25% and master to 100%, so it's not that.
I experienced this problem with openSUSE 11.1 as well. Pulseaudio bug ticket #358 seems to describe this problem as a regression bug introduction in 0.9.12 http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/358 Installing pulseaudio 0.9.14 fixed the problem for me. I installed it from this source: http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/GNOME:Factory/openSUSE_11.1/pulseaudio.ymp
It doesn't help me. Although it doesn't crackle the way it crackled before upgrade, it crackles in a new way. All the time a SDL app is running (even at lower volume). And sometimes loses seconds of playback. And a new fact: when CPU/MEM usage is higher, PA loses seconds and has hiccups. That's new. I used to use PulseAudio with low MEM available (128MB!) instead of ESD to save some RAM but it didn't crackle then. Now it does. Remember the feeling when you eat mexican food (beans etc.)? The sounds you made after eating this. PulseAudio crackles this way right now, resembling me this :s .
*** Bug 440901 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Installing pulseaudio 0.9.14 didn't help here either.
My hardware has recently changed. I have a different mainboard with different soundcard... But problem remains. The mainboard is ASRock K7VT4A (http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=K7VT4A%20PRO&s=462) and the new soundcard is CMedia CMI9761 (5.1 capable). The problem is that 1) CMedia card is detected as VIA 82xx and uses such driver (via82xx) even if it causes hardware volume controls to stop working 2) It still crackles sometimes. Still running SDL-based app like Workaholic causes awful crackling and hiccups. SDL_AUDIODRIVER=esd, what helped at beginning (SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse caused crackling) doesn't work for longer time.
Created attachment 272886 [details] alsa-info.sh --no-upload output
Seems SUSE kernel configuration might be a problem. http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/490 https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2009-February/003150.html
There is ticket #478514 concerning the kernel configuration.
Since bug 478514 is not going to be resolved in the way users expect it to be, I filed bug 480020 according to one of last comments on bug 478514.
Update released for: gdbm, gdbm-debuginfo, gdbm-debugsource, gdbm-devel, libpulse-browse0, libpulse-devel, libpulse-mainloop-glib0, libpulse0, libpulsecore4, pulseaudio, pulseaudio-debuginfo, pulseaudio-debugsource, pulseaudio-esound-compat, pulseaudio-lang, pulseaudio-module-bluetooth, pulseaudio-module-gconf, pulseaudio-module-jack, pulseaudio-module-lirc, pulseaudio-module-x11, pulseaudio-module-zeroconf, pulseaudio-utils Products: openSUSE 11.1 (debug, i586, ppc, ppc64, x86_64)
I am having this very serious problem too, since an initial installation of openSUSE 11.1 in May (fully updated). With Master at 100% my sound card is clipping enormously (crackling because of heavy distortion; it is way too loud, very very much too loud; even with Master around 30% it still seems to clip a little bit) With Amarok, listening is totally impossible e.g., the only player working properly is XMMS (using ALSA, I think), all other players produce extreme crackling when using standard volume, very harmful by the way. Note that adjusting the PCM volume doesn't really have much effect (a little bit if at 0%). The solution is to minimize the Master Volume, at least for me! When setting the Master volume to max. 30%, although having PCM at 100%, the sound is fine, I am using 0% (yes, 0%, and there is sound (that is the weird thing, something is wrongly amplified (on the software side), signal gets overamplified!); 0% are a little bit too low (sounds like as if I would had set volume to 20-30% on my former PCLinuxOS system (it was clipping too above ~75%, btw)), but this doesn't destroy hardware) My workarounding solution: Turn all output and input quiet, except those that you need; e.g. PCM=100% and Master=20%. But now things have become worse with PuleAudio 0.9.15-1.3, because volume adjustments suddenly get lost on reboot and get (re-)set to those *fatal* 100%, see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=502604#c11 So, this bug now is going to damage my audio equipment over time... My specs: See http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_5fe28ef2-ec4f-4cb6-b03d-7c924a8cde1e L Kernel: 2.6.27.23-0.1-default (i686) L VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (snd_via82xx) L PuleAudio 0.9.15-1.3 ---- Note that there is launchpad ticket stating that this kind of problem may not be related to PulseAudio: * https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/285866 Please see also: * https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/359361 * https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/284947 (lowering standard volume for the VIA 8235 chipset would be nice too, if this issue were going to be a permanent bug; will not hope so ;-)
Created attachment 297343 [details] "alsa-info.sh --no-upload" output (PCM=100%, Master=0%)
Created attachment 297344 [details] "lspci -v" output
Pulseaudio gives you the ability to change the volume of each program that connects to it on an individual basis. Try checking those to make sure that none of them are above 100%. If I remember correctly, that happened to me at one point. Semi-related, I got rid of the crackling and popping by upgrading to the 2.6.29.1 kernel, and also upgrading to Pulseaudio 0.9.15. Heck, it even works flawlessly with Wine right now.
Maybe will test a kernel upgrade in future, but what I did now was fully updating my system and especially upgrading to KDE 4.2.90 (4.3b2). After that my sound system was broken for all audio players (yast2 test sound was ok); then I re-installed phonon, alsa, xine etc.; what has been successful to get my sound system working again was installing "alsa-driver-unstable-kmp-pae", I think. Now with an upgraded (factory) sound system (presumably alsa-driver-unstable-kmp-pae), Master seems to stay at the specified level after reboot, and it seems that the clipping problem got better, though *still* there! It seems that I can now go up to around >50% without crackling. But there is still crackling and popping above this level (I noted above that this was the same with PCLOS 2007); maybe a kernel upgrade will fix the rest, but that's not yet part of v11.1 but 11.2-devel. @Blake Johnson: Where to change those PulseAudio settings? GUI (yast2)? In yast2, everything is at 0%. What I am really wondering about is, why some audio players show volume controllers that go up to 200% like VLC (I can remember that there was other player, I think it was (was) the now (once more) downgraded Amarok, not sure). XMMS is doing things well.
@Wiki Melancholie PulseAudio Mananger > Devices Application specific settings are located under 'sinks', output devices are under 'sources'. Just click on one, and then click on 'Properties' to adjust the volume. Pretty sure this specifically is not related to this bug though.
Ah, package "paman" ;-) No, nothing over 100%. XMMS is not even using PulseAudio, figured out with pavumeter. Am I describing a ALSA bug, actually? ... think so (changed bug summary) L See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/285866 (comment #15) L PulseAudio is using ALSA as backend, right? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio#Design Q: Why should ALSA/PulseAudio actually allow to set (total) volumes higher than 100%? If I see this right, 101% will always mean clipping; unless you have to workaround a silent card (what should be rare). There should never be standard values of more than 100% (1.0) when it comes to audio equipment. 100% = full voltage (let's say 0.7 Volt signal). And there obviously must be a value greater than one (somewhere), otherwise there weren't any clipping effects. If you have to force quiet devices to play normal by increasing the amplification then the sound system should pop up warning messages, but should never ever even reach 100%+ by default.
Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but if it's an ALSA bug, which the crackling is not (at least with my issue), removing PulseAudio and installing the esound-daemon would tell you if it is. If it still crackles, it's ALSA. If not, it's PulseAudio. When PulseAudio is installed, all applications that directly try to interface with ALSA get redirected through PulseAudio first for mixing, and then back to ALSA for output (or wherever it's set to go). That's why "ALSA Playback" exists under sink. Anything that directly interfaces with PulseAudio, like everything ideally should, each individual application would have it's own entry. Anything over 100% is for amplification purposes. I completely agree that nothing should be over 100% by default, but in some odd cases, I've seen it over 100%.
With XMMS and PCM + Master volume set both to 100% it crackles. With other players my speaker would begin to burn then pretty quickly if doing this loud ;-) As my XMMS is definitely not using PulseAudio (not running, killed) it most probably seems to be an ALSA bug on my system (maybe also on the reporter's one, as ALSA is underlying). The upgrades described above definitely let me now raise the volume level a bit, though.
Hm, for me, PulseAudio seems working well, don't know when it started. Only sometimes when CPU usage is too high, I get a playback hiccup. My configs are: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52540/modprobe.conf http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52540/modprobe.conf.local http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52540/modprobe.d/sound http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52540/pulse/client.conf http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52540/pulse/daemon.conf http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52540/pulse/default.pa http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52540/pulse/system.pa I won't close the bug, because many other people still suffer PA-related problems here.
I am experiencing pulseaudio crackling / distorted / "broken radio" / sound stuttering -whatever you might call it. I find that those newer pulse audio modules don't resolve the issue entirely : rpm -qa |grep pulse pulseaudio-utils-0.9.14-6.1 libpulse0-0.9.14-6.1 pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.14-6.1 libpulsecore4-0.9.12-10.2 libpulse-mainloop-glib0-0.9.14-6.1 pulseaudio-module-bluetooth-0.9.14-6.1 alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.18-6.12 pulseaudio-0.9.14-6.1 libxine1-pulse-1.1.16.3-0.pm.2 pulseaudio-module-lirc-0.9.14-6.1 libpulse-browse0-0.9.14-6.1 pulseaudio-esound-compat-0.9.14-6.1 pulseaudio-lang-0.9.14-6.1 pulseaudio-module-zeroconf-0.9.14-6.1 libpulsecore9-0.9.14-6.1 pulseaudio-module-gconf-0.9.14-6.1 whilst playing mp3 in amarok or playing games in mame sound "performance" can be appauling, this is continuously appearing in messages whether sound is acceptable or not : Jun 24 23:34:44 jgws1 pulseaudio[3717]: module-alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write! Most likely this is an ALSA driver bug. Please report this issue to the PulseAudio developers. - in the fact the above is whilst actually not playing any audio at all !! /etc/pulse/default.pa : .ifexists module-hal-detect.so load-module module-hal-detect tsched=1 .else - when tsched is 0 sound is worse. I don't have the fastest PC in the world but I'm losing faith in suse or opesuse and my current state of mind is I won't be installing 11.2..if we can't fix this lets go back to alsa pre-pulse whatever its design was or is redhat better..!?
Created attachment 300228 [details] JG output of lspci -v
@Jason: If you just want your sound to work like normal, just remove Pulseaudio and install esound. Comment #11 suggests that it's the kernel configuration which is causing the problems. I myself have upgraded to both Linux 2.6.30, and the latest PulseAudio. That's probably why my issues are gone. Actually, you mentioned Amarok, so if you are using KDE, then maybe my first suggestion is wrong. I don't know much about KDE. If you are using Gnome though, it should help.
is installing esound just a step sideways if the real problems are with the kernel ? I have zypper/zen doing my auto updates and I see no update to 2.6.30...?! i use amarok under gnome by including kde libs.. again the gnome offering is rubbish -helix/banshee used to corrupt my mp3 tags and interface clearly exhibited the usual "we haven't even installed this before releasing to the general public". So burnt too many times to ever go back to those apps...
by the way pulseaudio consumes 17% cpu under mame... thanks everyone for their input...
@Jason: I compiled Linux 2.6.30 myself. I just based it off the current configuration, plus some minor alterations. It's not an RPM you can find anywhere I'm pretty sure. Esound is what use to be used before PulseAudio became the norm. If you install esound again, everything should work as it use to. Pulseaudio gives you more freedom in the sense that it allows you to control the volume of each individual stream, and it's networkable. It has better plug n' play support too. Actually, there are a lot of really nifty advantages to it, but to be honest, I don't think most people use them. /Banshee user. Love it.
A lot has changed in four years. Is this still an issue? FWIW, I had crackling sound with pulseaudio early on too, and those problems were fixed a long time ago.
I'd say close this bug. No issues to report.
There seems to be no objections. Closing this as WORKSFORME, although FIXED would probably also apply. Thanks, everyone.