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Asked: 2012-06-30 23:03:09 +0800 CST

Skype and VLC sounds sizzling, distorted, bad, crackling

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I have the same problem as described in the questions skype notification sounds sizzled and bad sound on login to skype. But it is not only the login, notification, but also when talking to somebody. I tried the solution to remove/re-install skype and most of the solutions in this questions, e.g. checking mixer, sound settings and installing alsa-hda-dkms (incl. system restart).
After installing skype (and even after upgrade to skype 4.0) in Ubuntu 12.04 (AMD 64) there was no sound at all. I followed the first step of the SoundTroubleshootingProcedure and at least there is now sound:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa; sudo apt-get update;sudo apt-get dist-upgrade; sudo apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils gdm ubuntu-desktop  linux-image-`uname -r` libasound2; sudo apt-get -y --reinstall install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils gdm ubuntu-desktop  linux-image-`uname -r` libasound2; killall pulseaudio; rm -r ~/.pulse*; sudo usermod -aG `cat /etc/group | grep -e '^pulse:' -e '^audio:' -e '^pulse-access:' -e '^pulse-rt:' -e '^video:' | awk -F: '{print $1}' | tr '\n' ',' | sed 's:,$::g'` `whoami`

The jittering sound would sometimes disappear, e.g. on the Echo-Testcall after replaying the recorded part. And I noticed that if I let music play in the rhythmbox and then start skype, the sound is fine. So I have a weak solution, but I would be glad it would work without this detour.

In VLC when I play, restart after pause I have to same jittering sound.

As requested: My sound card is a an "AMD High Definition Audio Device" called Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Hudson Azalia controller (rev01), subsystem Lenovo Device 21ea (according to sysinfo) on a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 525.

sound

9 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It's not just a problem with Skype, I believe it's a problem with, you've guessed it, PulseAudio.

    Workaround? Indeed there is.

    Disabling PulseAudio's Glitch Free Audio seems to have solved the crackling for me (which became unbearable on Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 2)

    To do this, edit the /etc/pulse/default.pa file in your favourite text editor.

    Search for the following line:

    load-module module-hal-detect

    and append "tsched=0" to the end:

    load-module module-hal-detect tsched=0

    restart pulse (or just reboot your system), and the crackling should be gone.

    Not sure what the side effects are by disabling Glitch Free Audio, but I can't seem to find any yet.

    UPDATE: If you don't have a line with load-module module-hal-detect, then search for following line: 

    load-module module-udev-detect

    and append "tsched=0" to the end:

    load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

    restart pulse (or just reboot your system), and the crackling should be gone.

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  2. If you suspect that it's pulseaudio causing you the problems, there might be an easier fix for you. I posted an article with step by step directions on my blog on how to fix bad sound in Ubuntu. This is a fix for Wine, but since it's a modification of a pulseaudio configuration file, it might be applicable to other similar problems.

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  3. The solution provided above by Robert worked for me. I had updgraded to 12.10 ubuntu and the new skype 4.0 upgrade had unusable sound (scratchy and distorted). editing per the instructions above and appending the following line to: load-module module-hal-detect tsched=0 in the /etc/pulse/default.pa file resolved the issue perfectly.

    For awareness, the upgrade to 12.10 caused the recognition of my Soundblaster card to fail to be the default. For some reason it now defaulted to thinking my NVIDIA graphics card was the default sound card. Skype would initially make NO sound.
    This can be corrected by following the directions in the Ubuntu forums post by billesboelle July 27, 2008. Here repeated for inclusiveness: I can't get Ubuntu to default select the pci card, after trying the settings from complete soundprob guide as below:
    It seems the index=0 function doesn't want to help me. Maybe its due to the fact that my machine registres 2 sound drivers with same name ? cat /proc/asound/modules gives this response: 

    0 snd_hda_intel  
1 snd_hda_intel  
2 snd_cmipci

    Any ideas,or something you wanna see before being able to help me. Btw, forgot to mention. If i try the index option, my pci can is removed from aplay -l and cat /proc/asound/modules.

    Configuring default soundcards / stopping multiple soundcards from switching Note: This section assumes that you have installed each soundcard properly.

    In a shell, type

        cat /proc/asound/modules

    This will give the the name and index of each sound card you have currently. Make a note of the names, and decide which one you want to be the default card.

    Now type

        sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

    At the very end of the file, add the following (assuming you have 3 cards with module names A, B and C and you want to have them in the order CAB)

    options snd-C index=0  
options snd-A index=1  
options snd-B index=2
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  4. Fix for ubuntu 16.04

    sudo vim /etc/pulse/daemon.conf find default-fragment-size-msec, in my case it was disabled, so remove ; at the begin of line, so it should look like default-fragment-size-msec = 5 (I replaced default value 25 by 5). Then just kill service pulseaudio --kill and ubuntu will restart pulseaudio, if it didn't happen by any reason, then just restart system.

    Now I can hear skype voice very clear.

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  5. Had the same issue on Archlinux. Turned out pulseaudio was causing this. Getting rid of pulseaudio restored clear sound in Skype for me. For Gnome-based distros like mainline Ubuntu it is probably impossible to remove pulseaudio since it is a dependency for most of the gnome stuff, including gdm, but on kubuntu, xubuntu and lubuntu this might actually work since they initially don't come with pulseaudio and the gnome bloatware, and if it got installed most likely it happened as a dependency for some other package that depends on gnome or its libraries.

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  6. I just removed pulseaudio from ubuntu 12.04 on my toshiba p875-s7200 and it fixed skype beautifully! sound went from crap to awesome :) note: I had to install alsa-hda-dkms to get sound at all on this laptop

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  7. This worked for me, ubuntu 12.10 /64, mb asus m4a785tdv-evo amd64 (audio VIA VT1708S)

    edited the /etc/pulse/default.pa (sudo pico /etc/pulse/default.pa)

    could not find load-module module-hal-detect

    so i just edited the line load-module module-udev-detect, so to have :

    load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

    saved changes and restarted the system. Now Skype seems fine. until now I had problems when using Skype with crackling/echo/noise which sometimes adjusted/stopped during the conversation (sometimes it fixed when closing the web browser) but sometimes it kept going all the time heavily compromising the conversation. Skype apparently was the only situation with audio problems for me.

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  8. Neither of the solutions posted so far worked for me on 14.04, but setting the audio module to alsa in Preferences->Audio->Output fixed it for me on vlc.

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  9. You should check your internet connection (http://www.speedtest.net for speed test).

    Also, as it works after RyhthmBox you could also try to update drivers (for sound card).

    It could also help other answerers if you told us what kind of sound card you have in your computer.

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