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Accepted
Murray
Asked: 2020-05-20 20:20:47 +0800 CST

Ubuntu 20.04 - After last update, speakers are buzzing unless I open the sound settings window

  • 772

The last update that came through looked like a kernel update.

Suddenly my speakers started buzzing. It stops whenever I open the Gnome sound settings window. So now I've just got the sounds settings window open all the time in the background on a different workspace.

If I close the sound settings window, the buzzing starts again shortly after.

Is anyone else experiencing this? My speakers are plugged in via the headphone jack. I have tried different speakers with a different cable and the same thing occurs. Laptop internal speakers seem to be fine.

sound speakers

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I've had the same thing and followed the instructions on this solved thread and it hasn't had any fuzz/buzzing since.

    https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2417018

    Really simple open the terminal, sudo su and then password. Then enter gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf. It will open a text document, at the end of the document copy and paste the following code:

    options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

    Save, restart and it should be fixed!

    Hope this helps.

    • 29

  2. If, like me, the accepted answer didn't work for you, it could be because your power saving settings are managed by tlp. Those settings can be found in this file here:

    /etc/default/tlp

    If you open that file with your favourite editor, you should find something like:

    # Enable audio power saving for Intel HDA, AC97 devices (timeout in secs).
# A value of 0 disables, >=1 enables power saving (recommended: 1).
SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_AC=1
SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=1

    And you can disable by changing those values to 0

    You'll need to restart tlp as so:

    sudo tlp start
    • 4

  3. In my case the accepted answer did not work. What worked was turning off power save in /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save file by replacing 0 with 1 (you need to have root privileges).

    You can also use these commands:

    cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
    echo "0" | sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

    Source: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/weird-static-noise-in-headset-on-ubuntu-20-04-a-4175681180/

    EDIT: Unfortunately, the power save settings reset after the reboot. I didn't find better solution though.

    • 1

  4. I had the same problem. After Ubuntu was updated my external sound card Focusrite start buzzing, especially on low frequency sound.

    After reading some topics i found that problem can be with kernel.

    In my case i had 5.13.0-39-generic kernel version and after update to 5.17.2.051702-generic problem disappeared.

    topic which helped: https://www.how2shout.com/linux/how-to-change-default-kernel-in-ubuntu-22-04-20-04-lts/

    Steps which helped me:

    • check version of kernel uname -r
    • download bash script wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pimlie/ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh/master/ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh
    • make executable chmod +x ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh
    • move that file to /usr/local/bin
    • check available version ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh -c
    • update to the latest version sudo ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh -i
    • reboot
    • 1

  5. Since it's the one of the top google results related to "Ubuntu update sound noise" searches, I'll add my own answer.

    After update to 21.10 (if memory serves), bit later today - to 22.04 - my laptop's headphone output was buzzing like hell, with speakers, with headphones etc.

    so, alsamixer, setting auto-mute to "enabled" et voilaenter image description here

    I don't know what is auto-mute, or why it affects sound in such a harsh manner, but that worked. Maybe I should find out related config options. Didn't reboot yet

    • 0

  6. nothing worked for me, i had to install and configure tlp and now have a little little noise

    as mentioned, sound powersaving should be disabled so the sound more or less stops the noise

    https://linrunner.de/tlp/settings/audio.html

    so,

    1. install tlp
    2. configure tlp at /etc/tlp.conf
    • 0