[pulseaudio-discuss] Occasional heavy click from default speakers, new in openSUSE Leap 15

[Colin Beckingham]

On May 25 openSUSE released a new distro update Leap 15 including
pulseaudio 11.1
While in general sound works very well, there are occasional loud clicks
from default speakers
These loud clicks occur when loading a page in a browser or launching
Audacity for example
A web page will begin to load and all will be quiet until some
advertising element loads
at which point there may be, or may not be, a short set of loud clicks
from the speakers
even if the speakers are not set as the default device.
Once these initial clicks are done the rest of any true audio plays
correctly.

If the sound device has been recently used then there likely will be no
click,
but after say 20 minutes of no audio activity then calling one of these
applications
even if it does not play any audio, will very likely produce these
initial loud clicks.

Not sure how to troubleshoot this to get more info.
This behaviour was not seen in the previous version of openSUSE.
Any suggestions for next step?

[Tanu Kaskinen]

Post by Colin Beckingham
On May 25 openSUSE released a new distro update Leap 15 including
pulseaudio 11.1
While in general sound works very well, there are occasional loud clicks
from default speakers
These loud clicks occur when loading a page in a browser or launching
Audacity for example
A web page will begin to load and all will be quiet until some
advertising element loads
at which point there may be, or may not be, a short set of loud clicks
from the speakers
even if the speakers are not set as the default device.
Once these initial clicks are done the rest of any true audio plays
correctly.
If the sound device has been recently used then there likely will be no
click,
but after say 20 minutes of no audio activity then calling one of these
applications
even if it does not play any audio, will very likely produce these
initial loud clicks.
Not sure how to troubleshoot this to get more info.
This behaviour was not seen in the previous version of openSUSE.
Any suggestions for next step?

Does this happen without pulseaudio? Try this:

pasuspender -- bash
aplay -f cd -D hw:0 /dev/zero
exit

The first command starts a new shell, and while the shell runs,
pulseaudio won't touch the hardware. The last command exits the shell,
at which point pulseaudio will again access the hardware. The aplay
command will play silence - does that produce the same clicks?

This might be fixable in the kernel driver, here are instructions for
filing alsa bugs: http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Bug_Tracking

[Colin Beckingham]

Post by Tanu Kaskinen

Post by Colin Beckingham
On May 25 openSUSE released a new distro update Leap 15 including
pulseaudio 11.1
While in general sound works very well, there are occasional loud clicks
from default speakers
These loud clicks occur when loading a page in a browser or launching
Audacity for example
A web page will begin to load and all will be quiet until some
advertising element loads
at which point there may be, or may not be, a short set of loud clicks
from the speakers
even if the speakers are not set as the default device.
Once these initial clicks are done the rest of any true audio plays
correctly.
If the sound device has been recently used then there likely will be no
click,
but after say 20 minutes of no audio activity then calling one of these
applications
even if it does not play any audio, will very likely produce these
initial loud clicks.
Not sure how to troubleshoot this to get more info.
This behaviour was not seen in the previous version of openSUSE.
Any suggestions for next step?

pasuspender -- bash
aplay -f cd -D hw:0 /dev/zero
exit
The first command starts a new shell, and while the shell runs,
pulseaudio won't touch the hardware. The last command exits the shell,
at which point pulseaudio will again access the hardware. The aplay
command will play silence - does that produce the same clicks?
This might be fixable in the kernel driver, here are instructions for
filing alsa bugs: http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Bug_Tracking

Thanks for this nice suggestion. As you say, suspending pulseaudio and
then running the aplay (in my case 'aplay -f cd -D hw:1,0 /dev/zero'
fits the bill) does produce the clicking. Clearly an alsa issue. Many
thanks.

[Tanu Kaskinen]

Post by Colin Beckingham

Post by Tanu Kaskinen

Post by Colin Beckingham
On May 25 openSUSE released a new distro update Leap 15 including
pulseaudio 11.1
While in general sound works very well, there are occasional loud clicks
from default speakers
These loud clicks occur when loading a page in a browser or launching
Audacity for example
A web page will begin to load and all will be quiet until some
advertising element loads
at which point there may be, or may not be, a short set of loud clicks
from the speakers
even if the speakers are not set as the default device.
Once these initial clicks are done the rest of any true audio plays
correctly.
If the sound device has been recently used then there likely will be no
click,
but after say 20 minutes of no audio activity then calling one of these
applications
even if it does not play any audio, will very likely produce these
initial loud clicks.
Not sure how to troubleshoot this to get more info.
This behaviour was not seen in the previous version of openSUSE.
Any suggestions for next step?

pasuspender -- bash
aplay -f cd -D hw:0 /dev/zero
exit
The first command starts a new shell, and while the shell runs,
pulseaudio won't touch the hardware. The last command exits the shell,
at which point pulseaudio will again access the hardware. The aplay
command will play silence - does that produce the same clicks?
This might be fixable in the kernel driver, here are instructions for
filing alsa bugs: http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Bug_Tracking

Thanks for this nice suggestion. As you say, suspending pulseaudio and
then running the aplay (in my case 'aplay -f cd -D hw:1,0 /dev/zero'
fits the bill) does produce the clicking. Clearly an alsa issue. Many
thanks.

As a workaround you can remove module-suspend-on-idle from
/etc/pulse/default.pa. PulseAudio will then keep playing silence all
the time, so the pops related to opening the device won't happen.