Hello, this is my first post on this or any Linux forum. I've been using Linux for about two years, but until now I've always been able to solve my problems by using Google to search the various forums. I am using Gentoo and Gnome.

The problem I'm having now is that I'm getting a crackling/sizzling noise from my speakers and headphones. It happens whenever there is a program open which plays audio: foobar2000 (wine), vlc, hulu desktop, the youtube player, etc. It makes the noise regardless of whether or not the programs are playing anything, but stops when all such programs are closed. The volume of this noise remains constant when I turn the volume up and down, even if I turn the volume all the way to zero. It does however stop when I use "mute". As far as I know this started happening on its own, and not because of something I changed. I'm putting this in "software" instead of "hardware" because I do not have this problem when I log in as root, which is the only other user on this machine.

I found two threads here that seem related:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...sounds-304930/

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-audio-141221/

These indicate that my problem is related to pci card interference or overusage, but neither provides a solution and as far as I know that doesn't explain why this only happens for one user. All other audio crackling related threads that I could find say that it is related to the volume, which mine is not.

Any help is appreciated and of course pointers on forum etiquette are also welcome, this being my first post and all.

Try a diferent player like mplayer, or even an entirely different backend like xine or pulseaudio

Thank you for your reply. I am about to leave the house and won't have time to try switching out software until late tonight, but I'll give it a shot. If you have a chance, could you please explain why you think that might work?

Edit:

I should explain that the reason I haven't tried what you suggested before is that I understand very little about the way Linux handles audio. What exactly would xine or pulseaudio be replacing? And I should have worded my question differently: Do you suspect that this is the solution to my problem, or is it just the first step in diagnosing the problem?

Try creating a new user and testing as the new user. This might help zero in on the scope of the problem.

If they work just fine for new user, this would indicate that something was screwy specifically with old user's config files, but for the life of me I have no idea what it might might be.

1 members found this post helpful.

Good idea, Frank, thanks. I'm currently logged in as a new user called "test" and the aduio is crystal clear, or as clear as this little netbook is capable of, anyway. So, the problem is most likely a configuration error that's specific to my user. That's interesting. Does anyone have any idea what it could be?

EDIT:

The noise is now gone as my normal user as well. I I probably should have included in my first post that a week or two ago it made this noise for about ten minutes and then stopped. More recently the noise was there for several days, and so I assumed (incorrectly, it looks like) that an intermittent problem had become permanent. During the several days, though, the root user was not having the problem.

It's difficult to troubleshoot a problem I'm not having, but I don't know whether or not it's going to come back. How should I mark this thread?

Intermittent problems are the worst kind.

You have my sympathy.

Is there a source of interference anywhere near, like, maybe, a refrigerator on the other side of the wall? Admittedly it's a long shot, but a new refrigerator on the other side of the wall killed the RS-232 serial comm of one of my ex-company's access control servers once.

The computer that's having the issue is a laptop. I didn't try taking it out of the house while I was having the problem, but I did have it in several rooms. Next time it happens I'll try using it somewhere away from the house. Thanks for your help.

The issue came back for a couple of hours earlier today, but was behaving differently. It was only there when something was playing instead of whenever any software was running that could play sound, and I got it to go away by muting and unmuting a bunch of times. I'm still hoping someone has seen something like this before...

What I recommend is that you clean off all the dust from all the connectors and from inside the case. I've also found that any voltage variation in the case can cause noise in the speakers, and that noise is much more common with bad speakers and a bad sound card.

I took the access panel off the bottom and blew the case out with an air duster. Some dust did some out of a vent near the audio ports. I can't get to any of the connectors without taking the case apart a lot more than I've ever attempted to. I have an Ubuntu bootable flash drive ready so that if it happens again I can try it from a different OS.