I’m using OpenSuSe 11.1 i586 GNOME on a HP Pavilion dv5035nr laptop. I had some trouble with audio, but it seems working well, except for flash.
Sometimes, when I play a video online (youtube.com for example), I get a distorted horrible noise (braaaawp) for a couple of seconds before the clip starts.
I get no output in the terminal that would suggest a problem. I know that PulseAudio and flash don’t agree very well, but this didn’t happen to me using Ubuntu 8.10 (which also uses pulse).
The problem is that I cannot fully remove pulseaudio without killing gnome-desktop. I can remove a bunch of its packages, but last time I tried that I got stuttering and skipping problems with audio playback in banshee…
I can fully remove it if I use KDE. But when I tried that, my audio playback also had terrible issues (several times my login and logoff sound would not work and I would get a message saying there was a problem with my audio device). Also gstreamer needs pulseaudio, so without it I had limited gstreamer capabilities which led me to not having the mp3 fluendo plugin and thus amarok was useless…
A further mystery: when I run firefox on a terminal I get an unusual output
Currently in use: 1 blocks containing 64.0 KiB bytes total.
Allocated during whole lifetime: 997614 blocks containing 70.2 MiB bytes total.
Sample cache size: 0 B
User name: candres
Host Name: suse
Server Name: pulseaudio
Server Version: 0.9.12
Default Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci_1002_4370_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0
Default Source: alsa_input.pci_1002_4370_sound_card_0_alsa_capture_0
Cookie: 339defb5
What strikes me as strange is this line:
Default Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Because when I go to Yast -> Sound -> Edit
The first item on the list is: AC97 codec clock (default 48000 Hz) ac97_clock. Could this be a conflict of output sound frequencies between ALSA and PulseAudio? Could this be the reason for the initial horrible sound when using flash?
It seems I’ve finally found the problem… but I have no clue how to solve it…
grep -i pulse /var/log/messages:
Mar 1 00:54:17 suse-linux pulseaudio[8998]: main.c: High-priority scheduling enabled in configuration but not allowed by policy.
Mar 1 00:54:17 suse-linux pulseaudio[8998]: core-util.c: setpriority(): Permission denied
Mar 1 00:54:17 suse-linux pulseaudio[8998]: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.Mar 1 01:47:18 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 36.75 ms
Mar 1 01:52:08 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 34.00 ms
Mar 1 01:54:47 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 68.00 ms
Mar 1 02:13:09 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 136.00 ms
Mar 1 02:24:58 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-source.c: Your kernel driver is broken: it reports a volume range from 18.00 dB to 18.00 dB which makes no sense.
The last line is the one that particularly interests me. It seems my alsa-driver is screwing up
yeah, I have that installed, but the problem remains. It seems my problem is related to a sound driver bug I have, and that is being manifested by PulseAudio…Audio in linux is truly ‘a mess’
If I had a nickel for each time I have heard somebody say that… Anyway, there is an option to disable PulseAudio in Yast -> Sound. In the lower right corner of the window, there is a drop down box labeled “Other”. Click on that and you will find “PulseAudio Configuration” where you should be able to enable and disable PulseAudio. If that doesn’t work then my next suggestion would be to file a bug report. Include the output you currently have in the bug report.
I only said audio in linux is a ‘mess’ because I was quoting what one of the pulseaudio developers said at a recent conference regarding audio in linux, see for yourself: LPC: Linux audio: it’s a mess [LWN.net]
I already submitted the bug report in bugzilla. I’ve caught the attention of the ALSA maintainer of my sound driver. Now I’m pretty sure my ALSA driver is not functioning correctly and PulseAudio is making a big deal out of this. Here is how I found out:
grep -i pulse /var/log/messages
Mar 1 00:54:17 suse-linux pulseaudio[8998]: main.c: High-priority scheduling enabled in configuration but not allowed by policy.
Mar 1 00:54:17 suse-linux pulseaudio[8998]: core-util.c: setpriority(): Permission denied
Mar 1 00:54:17 suse-linux pulseaudio[8998]: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
Mar 1 00:54:18 suse-linux pulseaudio[9008]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
Mar 1 00:54:18 suse-linux pulseaudio[9008]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
Mar 1 00:54:27 suse-linux pulseaudio[9100]: pid.c: Daemon already running.
Mar 1 01:02:06 suse-linux pulseaudio[3394]: main.c: High-priority scheduling enabled in configuration but not allowed by policy.
Mar 1 01:02:06 suse-linux pulseaudio[3394]: core-util.c: setpriority(): Permission denied
Mar 1 01:02:06 suse-linux pulseaudio[3394]: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
Mar 1 01:02:06 suse-linux pulseaudio[3396]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
Mar 1 01:02:07 suse-linux pulseaudio[3396]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
Mar 1 01:02:07 suse-linux pulseaudio[3396]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
Mar 1 01:02:15 suse-linux pulseaudio[3463]: pid.c: Daemon already running.
Mar 1 01:46:02 suse-linux pulseaudio[3441]: main.c: High-priority scheduling enabled in configuration but not allowed by policy.
Mar 1 01:46:02 suse-linux pulseaudio[3441]: core-util.c: setpriority(): Permission denied
Mar 1 01:46:02 suse-linux pulseaudio[3441]: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
Mar 1 01:46:03 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
Mar 1 01:46:03 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
Mar 1 01:46:03 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
Mar 1 01:46:12 suse-linux pulseaudio[3529]: pid.c: Daemon already running.
Mar 1 01:47:18 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 36.75 ms
Mar 1 01:52:08 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 34.00 ms
Mar 1 01:54:47 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 68.00 ms
Mar 1 02:13:09 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 136.00 ms
Mar 1 02:24:58 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: alsa-util.c: Device hw:2 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 16000 Hz.
Mar 1 02:24:58 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: alsa-util.c: Device hw:2 doesn't support 2 channels, changed to 1.
Mar 1 02:24:58 suse-linux pulseaudio[3452]: module-alsa-source.c: Your kernel driver is broken: it reports a volume range from 18.00 dB to 18.00 dB which makes no sense.
This line is the one that concerns me the most. And I think it is the direct responsible for causing my flash distortion. (If I uninstall PulseAudio, the distortion goes away, so clearly the problem is not only of my ALSA driver atiixp). If I uninstall PulseAudio (or at least the parts that I can without causing dependency problems), I won’t be able to play sounds from different sources at the same time. That, however, is happening to me anyways (with pulse)…I get interference and audio glitches when I’m listening to music on banshee and I’m using gmail or playing a video on youtube (these two require flash).
It’s strange that I didn’t have this problem in Ubuntu 8.10. I would go back, except that I like OpenSuSe better in any other respect except audio…