[opensuse] Intermittent sound dropouts with Pulseaudio
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 For a long time, I have noticed that the sound intermittently drops out for a few seconds, since pulseaudio became standard with openSUSE. This seems to be triggered by other events, such as moving files especially with Digikam, but also with Krusader or Dolphin. Fetching mail with Thunderbird sometimes does it, and sometimes it just happens - - presumably a 'behind the scenes' housekeeping job interferes). My current setup is: openSUSE 12.3 KDE 4.11.4 Music playback through mpd Skype 4.2.0.11 The soundcard is MCP51 High Definition Audio and is integrated on the motherboard. The processor is 2.5GHz quad core, with 8GB RAM. Graphics output is through an nVidia GeForce 9600GT card driven by the proprietary nVidia drivers. I finally decided to nail this, and carefully worked through the advice on these two pages: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Perfe... http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Desktops/KDE/ Most of my setup appeared to be correct. My mpd.conf contains the following: audio_output { type "pulse" name "My MPD Pulse Output" server "localhost" # optional sink "alsa_output" # optional } and I added ~/.asoundrc, which consists of: pcm.pulse { type pulse } ctl.pulse { type pulse } Has anyone else experienced similar problems with pulseaudio, and if so, do you have any recommended tweaks? Thanks, Bob - -- Bob Williams System: Linux 3.7.10-1.16-desktop Distro: openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) with KDE Development Platform: 4.11.4 Uptime: 12:00pm up 7 days 19:53, 4 users, load average: 0.86, 0.56, 0.47 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlK0gOAACgkQ0Sr7eZJrmU5xhgCeOdoF4aN6Bhsn9YKri/1NVgi7 KOcAmwbw2JRS8nDegQfX9ny2NAPVp84F =gnZ4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/20/2013 11:39 AM, Bob Williams wrote:
Has anyone else experienced similar problems with pulseaudio, and if so, do you have any recommended tweaks?
Bob, I have seen exactly what you are talking about in both opensuse and archlinux when using pulse. Either sound intermittently drops out, or sound events are delayed by several seconds at times (i.e. you shade a window and a few seconds later here the sound) I have tried about every pulse tweak you can think of, but I haven't found any that "fixed" the problem. I would welcome others thoughts on the issue as well. - -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlK/rJsACgkQZMpuZ8Cyrcg6SACeNjI62H4K520iMvXXe6kaHcc3 1+YAnj8Fm42zhPQ+QuvbB9t66q+gcPhz =TUq0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 29/12/13 05:01, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 12/20/2013 11:39 AM, Bob Williams wrote:
Has anyone else experienced similar problems with pulseaudio, and if so, do you have any recommended tweaks?
Bob,
I have seen exactly what you are talking about in both opensuse and archlinux when using pulse. Either sound intermittently drops out, or sound events are delayed by several seconds at times (i.e. you shade a window and a few seconds later here the sound) I have tried about every pulse tweak you can think of, but I haven't found any that "fixed" the problem. I would welcome others thoughts on the issue as well.
David, Nice to hear from you again. Since my original post I have been all round the houses with this one. I disabled pulseaudio and tried to get things working with just alsa. mplayer on the command line worked, but I couldn't get mpd working, so I went back to PA. I changed the soundcard from a Soundblaster Live 24bit to the built in sound hardware, but that was worse, both in terms of quality and dropouts. Now I'm more or less back to the original setup. My music is stored on a 2 x 1TB RAID1 partition, I use mpd via gmpc to play the music through Phonon, Gstreamer, PA, alsa and whatever else there is layered in there. See http://www.tuxradar.com/content/how-it-works-linux-audio-explained. As you are the first to respond, it would seem no one else on the list has this problem, or no one knows the answer. - -- Bob Williams System: Linux 3.7.10-1.16-desktop Distro: openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) with KDE Development Platform: 4.11.4 Uptime: 00:00am up 4:37, 4 users, load average: 0.87, 0.38, 0.28 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlLAAfcACgkQ0Sr7eZJrmU5SxwCfcQDGNYADyVmhXvd0iFZIH/82 UGIAnidyL/pD0xmcAkeT6C2CYdyI5d7v =Z+p9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Sun, 29 Dec 2013 11:05:29 +0000
Bob Williams
As you are the first to respond, it would seem no one else on the list has this problem, or no one knows the answer.
I use 13.1 and no problems with delayed, or dropped, sounds. If David is using 12.3, or earlier, taking that no change in user space helped you, it could be that problem is in the kernel. http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/HEAD/standard/ See details in: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Kernel_of_the_day While it may sound scary, it is the easiest way to test kernel level changes without installing newer openSUSE release. -- Regards, Rajko. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 29/12/13 11:17, Rajko wrote:
On Sun, 29 Dec 2013 11:05:29 +0000 Bob Williams
wrote: As you are the first to respond, it would seem no one else on the list has this problem, or no one knows the answer.
I use 13.1 and no problems with delayed, or dropped, sounds.
If David is using 12.3, or earlier, taking that no change in user space helped you, it could be that problem is in the kernel.
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/HEAD/standard/
See details in: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Kernel_of_the_day
While it may sound scary, it is the easiest way to test kernel level changes without installing newer openSUSE release.
I was holding off upgrading to 13.1 until the nVidia repo had been sorted out, as I have twin monitors and need the proprietary drivers. Your suggestion of trying a more recent kernel sounds good. Bob - -- Bob Williams System: Linux 3.7.10-1.16-desktop Distro: openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) with KDE Development Platform: 4.11.4 Uptime: 00:00am up 4:37, 4 users, load average: 0.87, 0.38, 0.28 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlLAChYACgkQ0Sr7eZJrmU5WwQCfdaFRujlECQo6cKwfiHSuH8tA wtUAn0XDK40qqcg70WoocBuhAnc7hDeP =VaAG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 29/12/13 11:17, Rajko wrote:
On Sun, 29 Dec 2013 11:05:29 +0000 Bob Williams
wrote: As you are the first to respond, it would seem no one else on the list has this problem, or no one knows the answer.
I use 13.1 and no problems with delayed, or dropped, sounds.
If David is using 12.3, or earlier, taking that no change in user space helped you, it could be that problem is in the kernel.
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/HEAD/standard/
See details in: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Kernel_of_the_day
While it may sound scary, it is the easiest way to test kernel level changes without installing newer openSUSE release.
Last night I upgraded to 13.1 (zypper dup), and I regret to say, I'm still getting the same problem. The worst offender is Google maps (and any page that uses Google maps), especially when zooming in/out, but also sometimes when scrolling. It was worse using the 'old' Google maps, but it also happens with the new version. It also happened when running a perl script that made frequent calls to perlMagick to resize about 2,000 jpg images, amongst other jobs. This script uses all 4 cores in my CPU at between 50 and 75% according to gkrellm. Pulseaudio is supposed to run with a niceness of -11, so how does a program (perl) run from the command line push it out of the way? Or is the conflict happening somewhere else? Alsa? Gstreamer? Or is nice not respected? Bob - -- Bob Williams System: Linux 3.11.6-4-desktop Distro: openSUSE 13.1 (x86_64) with KDE Development Platform: 4.12.0 Uptime: 12:00pm up 19:43, 3 users, load average: 1.84, 1.96, 1.34 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlLCtb4ACgkQ0Sr7eZJrmU5N3ACfQN6m0p8Xmpoeg5d98dZRq3Zm KG4AoIApJiYjAMOMqgN3dHO8sxQbqNd+ =Ny5e -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Le 31/12/2013 13:17, Bob Williams a écrit :
This script uses all 4 cores in my CPU at between 50 and 75% according to gkrellm. Pulseaudio is supposed to run with a niceness of -11, so
https://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page http://subversion.ffado.org/wiki/IrqPriorities may be :-( jdd -- http://www.dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/31/2013 06:17 AM, Bob Williams wrote:
Last night I upgraded to 13.1 (zypper dup), and I regret to say, I'm still getting the same problem.
The worst offender is Google maps (and any page that uses Google maps), especially when zooming in/out, but also sometimes when scrolling. It was worse using the 'old' Google maps, but it also happens with the new version.
It also happened when running a perl script that made frequent calls to perlMagick to resize about 2,000 jpg images, amongst other jobs. This script uses all 4 cores in my CPU at between 50 and 75% according to gkrellm. Pulseaudio is supposed to run with a niceness of -11, so how does a program (perl) run from the command line push it out of the way? Or is the conflict happening somewhere else? Alsa? Gstreamer? Or is nice not respected?
Bob
Sigh.... The frustrating thing is sound would just "work" in the past. I probably spent a week on this issue a year or so ago. If I recall, it was skype that prompted my dive into the issue, ver. 3 worked, ver 4 didn't. I dorked with with pulseaudio-alsa, messed with kcmartsrc, messed with pulse/system.pa and default.pa, played with autospawn in pulse/client.conf, etc.. -- and through it all I found I could make my problem worse, kill my sound all together, but not find a fix that made sound work consistently through all applications (i.e. kde/gtk/browser web plugins/etc..) Skype was a pain, it would work with a very narrow config that broke sound for everything else, and not work when sound for everything else worked. No, I never looked at cannibalizing and rebuilding pieces of the sound puzzle, I just never had the time to dork with it. Another thing, as you have found with your sound card switch, is that sound will work fine on some hardware, but be miserable with other hardware. My laptops work fine, the dell boxes I have are hit and miss - same with the custom boxes I have (using onboard audio - no high-end sound cards) I have seen no consistency in motherboard manufacturers/sound chipsets either. I have MSI, Tyan, Gigabyte, VIA, etc.. and it is really hit or miss. In the end, it was like the pieces of the sound puzzle didn't all match the slots linux has for them. I suspect it is just a hard for the guys packaging the sound drivers/packages in the various desktops and apps to keep up with kernel and hardware changes as it is for anyone else, but the frustrating part is (1) the old stuff should just work, and (2) if it doesn't, there should be a good sound wiki somewhere that could walk you though a decision tree to find out why it doesn't and help you fix it. So far, I haven't found either.... I'm interested in whatever else you find as well. - -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlLEf5gACgkQZMpuZ8CyrciaKgCffrZby6yJiTYDs6tfp4e/50x+ wrcAmwXBq8Ecz5qO7j5QA2j6CRpC22jy =isqL -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Le 29/12/2013 12:05, Bob Williams a écrit :
As you are the first to respond, it would seem no one else on the list has this problem, or no one knows the answer.
thats me :-( but I oftren hear about real time kernel, any on openSUSE? jdd -- http://www.dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (4)
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Bob Williams
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David C. Rankin
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jdd
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Rajko