Webcam/skype making terrible noise all of a sudden

My skype works fine. Every now and then (though multiple times a day). Suddenly a huge and loud buss occurs. It’s so bad I have to turn off my sound and shut down skype.

I don’t think it is related to skype though, but has something to do with webcam as well. Cheese is not storing images and I notice it occurs often together when I start up a webcam related application. I use opensuse 13.1 on dell xps 13. Never had problems with 12.3.

Any ideas which logs I could check?

On 2014-01-17 19:06, Dorax wrote:
>
> My skype works fine. Every now and then (though multiple times a day).
> Suddenly a huge and loud buss occurs. It’s so bad I have to turn off my
> sound and shut down skype.

Perhaps: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Skype_Noise


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

Thank you for the link. It seems I have exactly this kind of issue.

Thanks, I hope that is it, but it’s not a crackling noise. It is a very loud beeping sound.

Any other suggestions? Logs I can check? Skype is unusable and I need it for meetings at work. When somebody sends a chat, or sometimes without reason, the loud beeping starts. I close skype, open it again and when I get a call, the other person only hears noise. I have to reboot, then I have about 5 minutes before it starts again.

Can I check libraries? Update something? I tried installing skype from their website and the 2 unstable packages from opensuse. All have the problem, so I am starting to think it is something with my libraries?

Thanks for any advise.

Well, Skype is just not compatible with the latest PulseAudio included in 13.1.
Have you looked at the link given above and run it with “PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 skype”? That should cure that problem.

Or try to disable PulseAudio in YaST->Hardware->Sound->Other->PulseAudio Configuration. You have to logout/login (or reboot) for this setting to have full effect.

I just started skype with PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 skype. Let’s see how long it stays. Would be great! I will keep you posted!

Dorien

The post before this is the solution.

Now how do I get skype to start automatically each time with:

PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 skype?

?

Thanks.

Edit the “Exec=” line in /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop.

Or copy /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/ and edit it there. In this case you won’t need root rights, and even reinstalling/updating the “skype” package won’t overwrite your changes.

PS: If you are using KDE, you can just use KDE’s menu editor to edit the skype entry:
Just right-click on the K-Menu icon and choose “Edit menu entries”.