The connector I was referring to way back in an early reply is #7 on p.23, DVI.


Right, but in fact, the buttons on the front panel, p.18, work great and quicker than keyboard shortcuts.

Excellent! Looks like, unless the distortion is still bad, this may wrap it up. I'll test distortion later today and post back to close this thread and either close the issue entirely, or open a new thread on distortion.

I've been on the east coast (US) and will begin my trip home to the Pacific Northwest (US) later today, so will be on a train without a connection for three days. After I post back this afternoon, will be offline until then.

Thanks again!
Optiker

aus9 and Shadow_7...

Thanks to both of you for your help. At this point, both headphones and speakers are working with the same "crackling" noise. It isn't constant, but is mainly at the "attack", ie., when the sound begins from silence. I will just tolerate it for now. It's more annoying with voices (LibreVox recordings) and in games (Torchlight II via PlayInLinux-->Wine) but also present with music, but I will live with it for now. Possibly I'll start a new thread when I get home in a few days, or may try a different distro first.

One final question, and if it will take too much explanation, let's leave it for another time as I won't have time for much other than reading one or two replies at most.

At various times, like when I plug in or remove headphones, I get a message from KDE saying that a device has been removed and asking if I want to permanently remove others not being used. For example, here's what I got last time:
==============
KDE detected that one or more internal devices were removed.
Do you want KDE to permanently forget about these devices?
This is the list of devices KDE thinks can be removed:
Output: HDA Intel, STAC92xx Analog (Default Audio Device)
Output: HDA Intel, STAC92xx Analog (Direct hardware device without any conversions)
Output: HDA Intel, STAC92xx Analog (Direct sample mixing device)
Output: HDA Intel, STAC92xx Analog (Hardware device with all software conversions)
==============

It seems to me that because I'm swapping back and forth between headphones and speakers KDE thinks I'll no longer need the removed device, so is asking to remove the four of the five, not being currently uswed. I've been declining, but think I can probably check the box to not ask again. Is that correct?

I think that's it for now, so will check for replies over the next few hours, then be disconnecting from the Internet. Before I shut down, I'll close this thread, but let it stand until then pending replies to this post.

Thanks! It's been an education.
Optiker

nope, your speakers need analog sound device

pls do not check that box as I have no idea how you would uncheck it in the future.

2) No need to reply until later, but crackling occured with a model=string ?

3) otherwise stay with PA and consider
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...s_or_crackling

I've had crackling, but I use a jackd layer. Which can co-exist with alsa and pulseaudio, but it's not the default, or intuitive to setup. With jackd, changing the periods to 3 instead of 2 fixed the crackling. But it's been a long time since I've used the hda-intel card that's on the motherboard. And at that time, kernel upgrades made noticeable changes to the driver of that card. Back in the 2.6.15-ish days.

Pulseaudio is happiest at 48kHz. New-er versions of pulseaudio 2.x+ are supposed to support non-48kHz modes, but sometimes life is more sane if you're not a beta tester. And if your distro is dated, you might not have the choice.

I tend to avoid SPDIF / IEC958. To much headache for little to no gains. Then again most of my media options are stereo only. And all of my audio gear is still analog only.

aus9...Too late...already checked. No problem. It simply means that, since I told it to NOT remove any of the devices, when I checked the box, it would not remove them, nor would it prompt me by asking if it should in the future, forcing me to intentionally, manually remove them if I ever need to. That is, the default is "Don't remove." Am I missing something?
If you're referring to the options line in etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, it is currently: options snd_hda_intel model=dell-m27
Uh...that's a bit beyond my level.

At this point, it looks like the sound is working pretty well. At one point, listening to an audio book (MP3 format) using VLC, I closed the lid of the computer and was off for hours. When I opened it and logged back in, and resumed the audio book (without having closed VLC, just paused), the crackling was pretty bad. I closed VLC, but don't recall if I rebooted - I think I did. The sound with the audio book in VLC was then clear again without crackling.

At this point it is tolerable. I don't think I want to pursue this further at this time since I have other issues to address. For example, now that I'm home, I want to test using this system to output streaming movies to my flat panel TV. That's for another thread, after I test to refresh myself with the issue.

Thanks!
Optiker

Hi Shadow7...Thanks for the reply. The first paragraph is a bit beyond me. The second, looks like it's worth it for me to browse around PulseAudio to see if there's an option for selecting frequency. Here's what I find in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf:
=================
; default-sample-rate = 44100
; alternate-sample-rate = 48000
=================
I don't see anything in any of hte other .conf files in that folder.

Thanks!
Optiker

yep when you start paman, it tells you what your current quality is like

most sound devices can do the 44 Khz so that why its the default
if your can do better it can go higher than 48.

Try changing your configuration from these:

; default-sample-rate = 44100
; alternate-sample-rate = 48000

to these:

; default-sample-rate = 44100
; alternate-sample-rate = 48000
default-sample-rate = 48000
alternate-sample-rate = 44100

and restart pulseaudio.

$ pulseaudio --kill
$ pulseaudio --start

(if autospawn = yes (the default), then --start will be redundant as it auto restarts)

The ; is a comment so those are more informative than actually used lines of configuration. You might need to adjust alsamixer settings for the samplerate. It depends on the hardware and you probably can't adjust it while pulseaudio is running.


Crackling tends to be the resampling of audio done poorly. When it's not an actual hardware issue. CDs tend to be 44.1kHz aka 44100. And DVDs tend to be 48kHz aka 48000. The resampling between the two can create crackling if done poorly. If a system is taxed, it can cause the sampling conversions to be cut short and other influences. And pulseaudio can be a real resource hog.

So if CDs play fine and DVDs crackle, there's your suspect. Or vice versa with DVDs fine and CDs crackling. Before 2.x+ of pulse, pulseaudio wouldn't start for me if my soundcard wasn't set to 48kHz with alsamixer. And other quirks depending on versioning and hardware. So 48kHz is the safer bet in my opinion. And hda_intel supports up to 192kHz, so it should be an option for you.

BTW, pulseaudio is up to version 4.0 now (June 2013). The 2.1 perviously hinted at is july 2012-ish. It's almost 2014. Not that that should matter, just making an observation.

aus9 and Shadow_7...

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner. Since i got home, have been busy with catch-up, so have hardly turned my Linux notebook on. I hope to get at it within the coming week, so will try what you suggest.

Thanks!
Optiker

Good intentions, but haven't done it due to other projects. I have been using it, and generally the sound is OK. The exception is when I switch to full screen, for example, when viewing a video. Then the crackling/popping happens, and stops when I switch out of full screen. However, it's tolerable, so I'm going to just live with it until I get a chance to try your suggestions.

Incidentally, the main new project is building a new desktop computer. I'll be posting a question someplace on this forum regarding installation of dual-booted Linux (with Win7).

Thanks!
Optiker