Here's what I've discovered: there's a "proper" workaround, and a very dirty hack. Both are below. (The hack was mentioned here, previously.)
"Proper" workaround:
Run:
sudo -H alsamixer
...and set PCM to something substantially below maximum. Having PCM at or near maximum causes crackling and distortion. Mine is at "-4.40, -4.80"--whatever that means. Then:
sudo -H alsactl store
The "-H" option tells sudo to use the current user's home directory instead of setting it to "/root". Not using this option will result in a "home directory /home/blah is not ours" error. This isn't necessary on all systems, presumably, and it can probably be done with "su", instead.
DIRTY hack:
To reduce the "crackling" in (some) multimedia apps at the expense of realtime performance, do this:
In /etc/pulse/default.pa, change this:
load-module module-udev-detect
...to this:
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
This is a very dirty workaround that bypasses PulseAudio's scheduling mechanisms in favor of the traditional interrupt approach. Use with caution.
I hope this helps you all, in case you haven't yet solved this problem. I previously posted this on another Arch thread, since it was the very first Google result; but since this thread seems to be having a similar problem, I thought it acceptable to "double-post" it here, just this once. :-)
]]>I already tried the suggested pulse audio fixes from the wiki:
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
and
default-sample-rate = 44100 // 48000 // 96000
]]>arecord -vv -d 4 /tmp/test-mic.wav && aplay /tmp/test-mic.wav
]]>I am using Gnome 3 with pulseaudio.
When I test recording with gstreamer-properties or Skype, terrible crackling comes along with my voice.
I tried
options snd-hda-intel position_fix=3
in
/etc/modules-load.d/alsa-base.conf
but none of 0,1,2,3 did help.
I tried nearly every possible mixer combination, none of them worked.
In windows my recordings are fine. And what really baffles me is this:
When I run pulseaudio through jack everything is fine aswell. But this is no longterm solution for me...
I start jack & pulseaudio like this:
jackd -r -d alsa &> /dev/null &
pulseaudio -L module-jack-sink -L module-jack-source &> /dev/null &
Any ideas why this is happening? Everything except recording is fine, if not perfect.
I am using the Realtek ALC888 codec.