Sound in system and Rhythmbox is scratchy and skips

pythonscript · 2012-07-03 02:15:30

Two problems. Since a few hours ago, the sound on my system and in Rhythmbox has been *extremely* scratchy. I'm playing mp3 files through Rhythmbox, and in the system, the terminal beep is also quite scratchy. However, the scratches aren't present in Totem. I'm just using the standard ALSA configuration, I believe, since I don't remember installing anything special to make my sound work.

I thought it might have been a simultaneous playback issue, because although I don't *play* sound in multiple apps at once, I often have several apps that utilise sound open (e.g. Totem, Rhythmbox, etc.) I changed my /etc/asound.conf file to this, based on the wiki. This is my /etc/asound.conf:

# Use PulseAudio by default
#pcm.!default {
#  type pulse
#  fallback "sysdefault"
#  hint {
#    show on
#    description "Default ALSA Output (currently PulseAudio Sound Server)"
#  }
#}

#ctl.!default {
#  type pulse
#  fallback "sysdefault"
#}

# vim:set ft=alsaconf:

I thought maybe the update today broke this, but I don't know how to check which packages were updated today using pacman (or perhaps looking at modification times on files in /var/lib)?

The second problem is my sound skipping, in every application. This has been happening for several days. I checked the wiki and found that this problem can occur with a speaker system not being configured properly by the system, so I opened alsamixer to check the levels, as shown: Master (43), Headphones (100), Speaker (96), PCM (99), and Mic/Micboost, S/PDIF, and Beep are all muted. However, I still get skipping and scratchy noises even if I use headphones or my laptops normal speakers, without the speaker system plugged into the 3.5mm.

My audio controller is the built-in Intel device in my Lenovo SL510:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device 20f2
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47
	Memory at f2a00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

Any ideas for what I can check to figure this out?

Last edited by pythonscript (2012-07-03 02:17:48)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-07-03 02:15:30

Sound in system and Rhythmbox is scratchy and skips

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