Sound in 14.04 is crackling, popping, skipping and echoing

[ClayJ]

Hello,

I've posted this in launchpad already, but I'm hoping to get some help here. I installed 14.04 over an old install of ubuntu (formating the partition) and kept the /home folders that were on a different drive. The audio has not worked properly since installation, including system sounds. The audio seems to echo and skip with crackles and pops. I've tried the adding tsched=0 to /etc/pulse/default.pa, which did not work. During boot there is a message displayed saying snd_hda_codec/snd_hda_intel has bad taint, and something about trace events, but the computer does boot. I do dual boot with Windows 8.1, but it is on another hard drive. My motherboard is an asus gryphon z97 with a Realtek ALC892 audio chipset.

I posted my alsa info here: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=cd...c3b85a165b8fb7

Thanks

[matthayllar]

I feel your pain. My sound crackles and sounds sort of like what a bad analog connection might sound like if someone were twisting the connector. I thought I had a cable problem until I realized it does it through SPDIF, 3.5mm, and HDMI outputs, and this is the ONLY OS it happens in. I too have screwed with the files in the /etc/pulse/ directory more than anyone ever should ever have to. I managed to lessen the problem, but it just caused side effects in other areas. Bad sound is a deal breaker. PulseAudio and ALSA are both junk, and they're smearing crap on what is otherwise a great OS. Take the amount of time I've spent screwing with the sound, convert that into money, and I could have bought 10 Windows licenses by now. Windows may be stupid, ugly, and boring, but at least she puts out.

[paul146]

Mine does something similar, but it only does it when i switch to headphones. It went away one while watching youtube. I have tried both front and rear jacks and 2 diff headphones. they work fine on my cell phone and other computer that runs windows. The sound is fine thru my HDMI cable to my moniter.

hopefully our issues are related.

[ngujay]

I'm also having the same issue with my Asus Z97-A board that's using the Realtek ALC892 codec as well.

I've been testing around to see when it happens. I've only messed around and tested for around 2-3 hours. From my experience it happens usually when buffering and playing media at the same time: e.g. Watching a YouTube video. When i migrate into different tabs, while audio is still playing in one (or more) tab(s), the audio will crackle and become very distorted. I find that the audio will just progressively get worse. I'll extensively check out the Windows side of things tomorrow because I dual-boot.

[Yellow Pasque]

@ngujay: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...x/+bug/1321421

[ClayJ]

Thank you Temujin,

The following worked for me, as per your link.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and added the following line to the bottom:

options snd-hda-intel vid=8086 pid=8ca0 snoop=0

Sound works fine now. Your link says it is something that is being patched in kernel 3.15, so the above may only need to be a temporary fix.

[ngujay]

Thank you Temujin,

The following worked for me, as per your link.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and added the following line to the bottom:

options snd-hda-intel vid=8086 pid=8ca0 snoop=0

Sound works fine now. Your link says it is something that is being patched in kernel 3.15, so the above may only need to be a temporary fix.

This also worked for me.

Thanks Temujin

[Yellow Pasque]

You're welcome. The fix should land in Ubuntu 14.04.1 and 14.10.

[DrJohn999]

Same problem here on Asus Z97-A: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2229310

Switching to HDMI audio thru the monitor works fine. Have to give it a try over Bluetooth phones at some point.

[jh71]

As the others, I added the line
options snd-hda-intel vid=8086 pid=8ca0 snoop=0
to alsa-base.conf, and this solved the bad noise.
But now my wireless usb adapter disconnects regularly (every 5 minutes or so), and this is very annoying.
I have the same problem with 2 different wireless adapters.
For the moment, I have written a small script to restart network-manager automatically.
I tried to install linux 3.15 kernel, but then I only get a blank screen.

Any idea what can be wrong with the wireless ?
It is related to this line in alsa-base.conf, because I do not get these disconnects when I comment it out, but then the crackling noise returns.