Crackling sound in games, pulseaudio CPU usage high (F10)

[Nigel Henry]

On Monday 01 December 2008 19:19, NM wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:04:14 +0100, Nigel Henry wrote:
> > Do you have the same sound problems when playing an audio cd, or playing
> > music files (.ogg, .mp3)?
>
> Nope, no such problem.
>
> > If it is Pulseaudio causing the problem, and you don't use it for
> > anything specific, you could just disable it by removing the package
> > alsa-plugins-pulseaudio. If you are using KDE like me, this will also
> > remove the package kde-settings-pulseaudio. By doing this your audio
> > apps will revert to using Alsa directly. If any of the games you play
> > use SDL, you will need to add the following line to /home/<user>/.bashrc
> > , which will remove the hack that SDL programs need to use Pulseaudio.
> >
> > unset SDL_AUDIODRIVER
>
> Thanks for the tip.
>
> >> This is my sound card:
> >>
> >> 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio
> >> Controller (rev 02)
> >>
> >> [root at ws log]# grep -i hda dmesg
> >> HDA Intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 HDA
> >> Intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 hda_codec: Unknown
> >> model for ALC883, trying auto-probe from BIOS... ALSA
> >> sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:3021: autoconfig: line_outs=4
> >> (0x14/0x15/0x16/0x17/0x0)
> >> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:3025:    speaker_outs=0
> >> (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
> >> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:3029:    hp_outs=1
> >> (0x1b/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0) ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:3030:    mono:
> >> mono_out=0x0 ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:3038:    inputs: mic=0x18,
> >> fmic=0x19, line=0x1a, fline=0x0, cd=0x0, aux=0x0
> >
> > What is the make and model of your Laptop/PC ?
>
> It's home-made with an Asus motherboard. I'll post the details when I get
> back home.
>
> > Can you post the output from the following commands.
> >
> > cat /proc/asound/version
>
> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.17.
>
> > grep ^Codec /proc/asound/card?/codec* /sbin/lspci -vn             (just
> > the bit for the soundcard)
>
> Codec: Realtek ALC883
>
> 00:1b.0 0403: 8086:293e (rev 02)
>  Subsystem: 1043:8277
>  Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
>  Memory at f9ff8000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
>  Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
>  Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+
> Count=1/1 Enable-
>  Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI
> 00
>  Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel <?>
>  Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link <?>
>  Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
>  Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
>
> > Did the sound just work ok post install of F10, or did you have to set
> > model options for snd-hda-intel?
>
> Didn't set anything.
>
> Sounds works ok without PA (used to run under Ubuntu w/o PA)
>
> > There are a whole bunch of model options for the ALC883 codec, some of
> > which may give you more sliders/controls in alsamixer, when run as user
> > in a terminal. To see all the controls when pulseaudio is enabled, you
> > will have to open alsamixer as below, otherwise you will only see one
> > control for pulseaudio.
> >
> > alsamixer -D hw:0
> >
> > Crackling sounds can be a problem to resolve. I know that pulseaudio can
> > be responsible for low volume output, and if you are having to push the
> > volume up to 100% to get decent sound levels to your speakers, it could
> > be that the card is being pushed beyong it's capabilities. It's
> > interesting that when you don't use pulseaudio, the sound is ok.
> >
> > I'll give you a list of model options when you post back, but I need to
> > know the alsa driver version, that's on F10 first.
> >
> > All the best.
> >
> > Nigel.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> One other problem I notice with PA is that sometimes the sound sounds
> saturated, as if it was compressed up and then scaled back down. I have
> this problem after playing around with various volume settings (either pa-
> volume or alsamixer etc)
>
> The main problem here is the CPU usage, which is strange. Any idea what
> causes this?

No Idea on the CPU useage, but I havn't psyched myself up yet to download the 
iso's for F10 on dialup, so don't have it installed yet to try to recreate 
your problem. 6 cd iso's for F9 was bad enough, and I'm still recovering from 
14/15 days of downloading them on dialup, with frequent pausing of Kget, so 
as to retrieve mail, etc.

Nigel.