22.04.4 LTS audio and video constantly freezing/cutting out during meetings

**fenreer** · May 24th, 2024

Hi! I just set up my work laptop -- a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 -- and I installed Ubuntu 22 LTS on it. I would have used the latest LTS, but the antivirus software that I'm mandated to install only supports 22 LTS.

Everything works except audio/video during meetings. My audio constantly cuts out and my video constantly freezes. It's so bad that I have to dial in to the google meetings because my team hears my audio constantly cutting out. I checked my internet connection, first by monitoring wifi and pinging meet.google.com (low latency and no spikes during meetings), then by disabling wifi entirely and using a Cat-6 RJ45 cable directly to my router. Even hard-wired into the router, I still get freezing constantly in meetings. Interestingly however I can play YouTube videos with no video or audio freezes at all both on wifi and hard-wired to the router. I also ran top during the meetings and nothing seemed wildly off or out of the ordinary. I checked CPU temps also, they're hovering around 35 degrees C which isn't out of range for this laptop. Syslog/journalctl doesn't show me anything that might indicate what the problem is.

I'm using i3 as my window manager but that shouldn't matter. Here's some info on my graphics and sound hardware:

lshw -c video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:64:00.0
logical name: /dev/fb0
version: dd
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi msix vga_controller bus_master cap_list fb
configuration: depth=32 driver=amdgpu latency=0 mode=1920x1200 resolution=3840,2160 visual=truecolor xres=1920 yres=1200
resources: iomemory:1c0-1bf irq:62 memory:1c00000000-1c0fffffff memory:78000000-781fffff ioport:1000(size=256) memory:78500000-7857ffff

lshw -c sound
*-multimedia:0
description: Audio device
product: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0.1
bus info: pci@0000:64:00.1
logical name: card0
logical name: /dev/snd/controlC0
logical name: /dev/snd/hwC0D0
logical name: /dev/snd/pcmC0D3p
logical name: /dev/snd/pcmC0D7p
logical name: /dev/snd/pcmC0D8p
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0
resources: irq:91 memory:785c8000-785cbfff
*-usb
description: Video
product: Integrated Camera
vendor: 8SSC21D67479V1SR39S056X
physical id: 1
bus info: usb@3:1
version: 10.13
serial: 0001
capabilities: usb-2.01
configuration: driver=uvcvideo maxpower=500mA speed=480Mbit/s
*-multimedia:1
description: Multimedia controller
product: Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD]
physical id: 0.5
bus info: pci@0000:64:00.5
logical name: card2
logical name: /dev/snd/controlC2
logical name: /dev/snd/pcmC2D0c
version: 63
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=snd_pci_ps latency=0
resources: iomemory:1c0-1bf irq:90 memory:78580000-785bffff memory:1c10000000-1c107fffff
*-multimedia:2
description: Audio device
product: Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD]
physical id: 0.6
bus info: pci@0000:64:00.6
logical name: card1
logical name: /dev/snd/controlC1
logical name: /dev/snd/hwC1D0
logical name: /dev/snd/pcmC1D0c
logical name: /dev/snd/pcmC1D0p
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0
resources: irq:92 memory:785c0000-785c7fff
*-usb:1
description: Audio device
product: USB PnP Audio Device
vendor: JMTek, LLC.
physical id: 2
bus info: usb@5:1.2
logical name: card3
logical name: /dev/snd/controlC3
logical name: /dev/snd/pcmC3D0c
logical name: input27
logical name: /dev/input/event17
version: 1.00
capabilities: usb-1.10 audio-control usb
configuration: driver=usbhid maxpower=100mA speed=12Mbit/s

That last USB device is a standalone microphone that I got to try to circumvent the audio issue, but it doesn't matter which microphone I use (built-in or standalone), the audio issues persist. I'm willing to troubleshoot this, but if I can't fix it soon I'm going to have to ship this laptop back to the company I work for and ask for a Mac instead...

Thanks in advance!