Audio issues with Tumbleweed (random stutters, cuts or glitches)

English Hardware
1

Hello.

I recently tried switching to openSUSE Tumbleweed as I had it recommended by a friend. Been loving it except for one issue, which is that my audio tends to randomly cut out for a second, stutter for a short moment or just glitch out.

My PC Specs are:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 6 Core
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 6GB
32GB RAM DDR4

At first I thought it was due to system load, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Neither my memory nor CPU usage spike up considerably to cause this.

It happens on a fresh install of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, only with Nvidia drivers (nvidia-video-G06) and Discord installed.

I did notice that the audio issues are a bit less frequent on PulseAudio instead of Pipewire, but they still persist and it’s really annoying since I use my PC to listen to music often.

Sometimes a small graphical stutter (as if the cursor got stuck in one place for a split of a second) occur, and usually they are shared with the audio one.

I feel like this might be an issue with how the system handles process priority or something, I’m not that advanced at Linux, more so I know the basic stuff. I did notice that my OpenSUSE install worked better (at least graphically) after using i915.enable_psr=0 in the bootloader, which is weird because I do not an Intel chipset or CPU.

Sorry for the lengthy post but I tried to put in as much information as I can think of. I’d love to use OpenSUSE as a daily driver but the audio issues make it a bit hard

2

Welcome to openSUSE Forums.

  1. Please start by sharing the audio hardware and environment details (run as regular user)…
    inxi -Aaz
    systemctl --user list-units | egrep "wire|pulse"

  2. Also, it might be helpful to understand which desktop environment in more detail as you also mentioned “graphical stutter”…
    inxi -GSaz

  3. Does the audio stutter largely present itself only when first playing an audio file or stream? Only when streaming from a browser?

  4. How are you listening to audio on your system? BT headphones, monitor, analog speakers?

Answers to the above might help others respond more meaningfully.

3

Hi, thanks for the response!

Here are the results of the commands

inxi -Aaz

Audio:
  Device-1: NVIDIA TU116 High Definition Audio vendor: ZOTAC
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 16
    link-max: gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s bus-ID: 29:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:1aeb
    class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 17h HD Audio
    vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 3
    speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 2b:00.3 chip-ID: 1022:1457 class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.15.3-1-default status: kernel-api with: aoss
    type: oss-emulator tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.4.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
    4: pw-jack type: plugin tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl

systemctl --user list-units | egrep “wire|pulse”

pipewire-pulse.service                                                                                                  loaded active running   PipeWire PulseAudio
  pipewire.service                                                                                                        loaded active running   PipeWire Multimedia Service
  wireplumber.service                                                                                                     loaded active running   Multimedia Service Session Manager
  pipewire-pulse.socket                                                                                                   loaded active running   PipeWire PulseAudio
  pipewire.socket                                                                                                         loaded active running   PipeWire Multimedia System Sockets

inxi -GSaz

System:
  Kernel: 6.15.3-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 15.1.1
    clocksource: tsc avail: hpet,acpi_pm
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.15.3-1-default
    root=UUID=33a3de40-c5a9-4b4b-8e2b-c276c01bbb4e splash=silent quiet
    security=selinux selinux=1 rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau mitigations=auto
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.4.1 tk: Qt v: N/A info: frameworks v: 6.15.0
    wm: kwin_x11 tools: avail: xscreensaver vt: 2 dm: SDDM Distro: openSUSE
    Tumbleweed 20250626
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660] vendor: ZOTAC driver: nvidia
    v: 570.169 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm non-free: 550/565.xx+
    status: current (as of 2025-01; EOL~2026-12-xx) arch: Turing code: TUxxx
    process: TSMC 12nm FF built: 2018-2022 pcie: gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s
    lanes: 16 ports: active: none off: DP-3,HDMI-A-1 empty: DP-1,DP-2
    bus-ID: 29:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:2184 class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.15 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.8
    compositor: kwin_x11 driver: X: loaded: nvidia unloaded: modesetting,vesa
    alternate: fbdev,nouveau,nv gpu: nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch display-ID: :0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 3286x1080 s-dpi: 101 s-size: 826x272mm (32.52x10.71")
    s-diag: 870mm (34.24")
  Monitor-1: DP-3 mapped: DP-5 note: disabled pos: primary,left
    model: Philips 227E4LH serial: <filter> built: 2014 res: mode: 1920x1080
    hz: 60 scale: 100% (1) dpi: 102 gamma: 1.2 size: 477x268mm (18.78x10.55")
    diag: 547mm (21.5") ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 1920x1080 min: 640x480
  Monitor-2: HDMI-A-1 mapped: HDMI-0 note: disabled pos: right
    model: LG (GoldStar) E1942 serial: <filter> built: 2012 res: mode: 1366x768
    hz: 60 scale: 100% (1) dpi: 85 gamma: 1.2 size: 410x230mm (16.14x9.06")
    diag: 470mm (18.5") ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 1366x768 min: 640x480
  API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: nvidia platforms: device: 0 drv: nvidia device: 2
    drv: swrast gbm: drv: nvidia surfaceless: drv: nvidia x11: drv: nvidia
    inactive: wayland,device-1
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 570.169
    glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660/PCIe/SSE2
    memory: 5.86 GiB
  API: Vulkan v: 1.4.313 layers: 2 device: 0 type: discrete-gpu
    name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 driver: N/A device-ID: 10de:2184 surfaces: N/A
    device: 1 type: cpu name: llvmpipe (LLVM 20.1.6 256 bits) driver: N/A
    device-ID: 10005:0000 surfaces: N/A
  Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo
    de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor gpu: nvidia-settings,nvidia-smi
    wl: wayland-info x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr

The stutter happens no matter if it’s a local audio file or a stream through a browser, though VLC did seem to work better (the glitches and stutters happened less often)
The audio from notifications (eg. Discord) is also a bit messy.

I listen through wired headphones, 3.5mm jack. I also have a monitor plugged in which has speakers, but I don’t use them.

4

Thanks for the additional information. I can only provide general advice here, but I would read the following references first, with a view to characterizing what you are observing. If you need further clarification, ask here.

This ArchWiki troubleshooting guide may be worth reviewing:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#Troubleshooting

This Manjaro how to discusses some parameters that can be adjusted to how with crackling in PipeWire:

There was also this recent bug report:
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1222755