[Solved] Crackly audio

Rojikku · 2014-07-02 02:29:34

I'm running games through steam native, all games are therefore native, and not running through wine.
I have two monitors, 1600x900 and 1920x1080 respectively, running nvidia drivers.
I use the i3 window manager, and pulseaudio.
I went through here and installed every package I could find the name of, assuming it's a codec issue.
I would describe it as playing every other note, in a sense. About half of the notes sound great! The other half are pure static. It kind of switches between the two around every tenth of a second or so. It's pretty painful to listen to, but a bit less so than raw static. Also, does not sound pretty. Makes game less enjoyable.
I have the system requirements for all games and have run them perfectly fine, on max settings no less, in windows.
For those curious, I have a 660TI graphics card, 2GB edition.

If there's some command to list everything audio-wise I have installed I am unaware of it, but if you know one I will gladly post its output. I have gstreamer, farstreamer, alsa-utils, pulseaudio, pulseaudio-alsa, and ossp installed (I set the osspd daemon/service to run automatically...Not sure if that was a good idea or not).

If I launch Civ V, both monitors go black, I get the mouse (eventually), and have the same crackly audio. I then open the steam overlay, reset i3, switch workspaces, open xfce4-taskmanager, and kill the thing because that audio isn't fun. Note, many games fullscreen over both monitors, and it's extremely irritating. I don't like you like that. Stay in your box. Most of those are fixed by windowed mode and i3 managed fullscreen (At least one)

X3: Albion Prelude is just an excellent example of a game that runs great, but has bad audio, so I use it for testing if the audio issue is fixed.

I used sudo nvidia-settings to set the primary monitor (Unfortunately, I only know how to do that for my current session, though I saved it to xorg.conf (Default, think that was the file)). This fixed the issue for some games, but others, like Gratuitous Space Battles, is convinced my left monitor, the 1600x900, is the best damned thing it's ever seen. I run it in windowed mode, and just use fullscreen in i3 to play fullscreen, but it stays the same size even when I resize it or fullscreen it (As in, everything where the game wasn't is just black space, and the game stays in the upper left part of the window). I also can't change the resolution past 1600x900, because that monitor is apparently addictive.

So that's three issues:
Funky-not-fullscreening-ness
Bad-audio-ness
CivV-derp-ness

Any help on any of these issues is much appreciated, though bad-audio-ness is by far the one that irks me most. I'm convinced I need a codec, but I can't appear to find the existence of such a thing.

I would include some sort of logs, but I have no idea where to even begin- tell me where to look/what to do, and you shall receive (log wise).

Last edited by Rojikku (2014-07-07 23:02:54)

Korrode · 2014-07-02 05:10:10

Not sure about your audio issues, but regarding your video issues - this sort of thing is why i configure my monitors as 'separate X screens' (you can do it in nvidia-settings), to avoid full screen issues... however, it does mean no dragging apps from one screen to another, which i'm fine with as i designate screens (and workspaces) for certain tasks, but i know some people hate it.

Rojikku · 2014-07-02 05:39:46

That MIGHT be a good option, because, technically I can't drag ANYTHING.
I use i3, a TILING window manager. There IS no dragging.
I'm going to test that out, thanks for the recommendation.
Edit: Okay, so far my second monitor just kind of sits there...Gotta figure out how to get i3 to work over multiple xsessions. This doesn't seem like it's going to be what I do, but I'll keep derping with it.

Last edited by Rojikku (2014-07-02 05:54:35)

Korrode · 2014-07-02 06:02:33

I don't know much about i3, but you probably have to run a second session of it on the second screen. Off the top of my head (sorry at work - not on a Linux box right now) it's:

DISPLAY=:0.1 i3

(i assume the command to run i3 is simply "i3")

Last edited by Korrode (2014-07-02 06:03:24)

Rojikku · 2014-07-02 06:29:31

The command to run i3 IS simply i3, but it gave me "Display not found" when I did that. And every variation I could think of, from DISPLAY=1 to DIPLAY=:1.
If the i3 sessions are separate that's no good, though. I have hotkeys to each window, in a sense. And that doesn't work well if the hotkeys are separate and I have to switch monitors to use the hotkey. I appreciate the effort, though.
(I might have gotten it right once or twice, and it said window manager already running. I figured it was just trying my working display)

mah0 · 2014-07-02 12:25:01

Rojikku,
I had similar audio issue with skype (Realtek ALC662). Fixed it by doing this. But same audio glitches appeared in Civ V. Then I installed openal with this config and now it's all good.

$ cat /etc/openal/alsoft.conf
drivers=pulse

I hope you'll find it helpful.

Rojikku · 2014-07-02 18:55:11

Mah0, I already followed that guide. I then removed it because it didn't fix it, so I re-added it again. I installed openal just now, tried the config, and it hasn't solved it, but perhaps I need to restart or something?... Though I can't think of any reason I would need to, considering I restarted pulseaudio.
I appreciate the attempt greatly.
FYI: I tested this in X3, and then Civ V. Neither had correct audio upon testing.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-07-02 02:29:34

[Solved] Crackly audio

#2 2014-07-02 05:10:10

Re: [Solved] Crackly audio

#3 2014-07-02 05:39:46

Re: [Solved] Crackly audio

#4 2014-07-02 06:02:33

Re: [Solved] Crackly audio

#5 2014-07-02 06:29:31

Re: [Solved] Crackly audio

#6 2014-07-02 12:25:01

Re: [Solved] Crackly audio

#7 2014-07-02 18:55:11

Re: [Solved] Crackly audio

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