Audio skips or stutters in Lucid

[HandeH]

...
Updating ALSA to 1.23 appears to have resolved the issue (or as fredknex said, if it's not completely resolved, it's alot better than it was)
...

My friend's Compal JFL92 (ALC268) has been suffering from this issue for a couple of months (at least). Does updating ALSA really work?

[isantop]

We haven't had any reports of this issue since the upgrade to 11.04 came out. Are you running the latest version of Ubuntu?

[HandeH]

It is running Lucid Lynx and does not matter if you boot with the current kernel or the older ones (e.g. 2.26.32-24 or newer).

The issue is experienced also with 11.04 and 11.10 live CDs, but the playback audio is working with 10.04.2 live CD. All 32-bit.

I think, an interesting thing is that in 10.04.2 live CD there is the same versions of the following packages than in the up to date and broken installation:
alsa-base
alsa-utils
bluez-alsa
gstreamer0.10-alsa
libasound2
libasound2-plugins
linux-sound-base
pulseaudio.

[HandeH]

I just turned to a workaround: I bought an external USB sound card (A-Link SU51).

[HandeH]

Still a problem in Precise 12.04-beta1. A bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/882566

[Rodney9]

I am having this skip/stuttering problem on Xubuntu 11.10 64bit, very frustrating. Gets worse when I plug in my USB speakers.

Rodney

[HandeH]

I am having this skip/stuttering problem on Xubuntu 11.10 64bit, very frustrating. Gets worse when I plug in my USB speakers.

Rodney

Hi Rodney,
if you are still using Xubuntu/Ubuntu, you can try a workaround found here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...566/comments/6

It helped for me. Now I'm able to listen to music through the native sound card of my Compal JFL92 (Serval?) and do not have to use an external USB sound card in Lucid 10.04. Also the 12.04 (beta 2) now turned out to be usable OS for this Compal

Before trying that workaround you can just try to make a change in your BIOS settings: AHCI configuration = Disabled.

[andrewdied]

I'm also seeing the issue in ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit) on my serp4. I'd seen it in older ubuntu releases as well. One interesting bit is I only see it in gnome -- if I log into kde instead video/sound (like from http://www.watchtheguild.com) plays 100% normally. This was a fresh install from CD for 12.04.

The "killall pulseaudio" set of instructions does certainly kill pulseaudio. What do I turn on to get sound again? Alsa is installed.

Update: After I rebooted with pulseaudio killed, the stuttering came back and I can't change the sound volume with the F7/F8 keys or the sound icon in the top right of the gnome desktop.