Arch Linux

pilaf

Member

Registered: 2013-11-20

Posts: 3

ALSA sound dies after a few minutes of mic capture

Every time I use the mic + some audio playback (e.g. Mumble + a game, Audacity recording + video player, etc.) eventually sound output dies completely. It doesn't happen immediately, instead everything seem to work just fine for about 5 minutes, after which all ALSA playback stops working, and there's no way to bring it back other than rebooting. Mic capture seems to still work after that happens, it's just playback that stops working.

My sound card is an on-board Realtek ALC889. PulseAudio is not installed, although I did fiddle with it for a while hoping it would solve the issue, with no luck.

Typically when playback stops the app doing the playback complains about an underrun, although different settings have yielded different log messages (e.g. using PulseAudio vs. pure ALSA).

Not sure what kind of info would be useful to diagnose this, so I'm dumping some configs and outputs:

[pilaf@optimus ~]$ aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
sysdefault:CARD=MID
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    Front speakers
surround21:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1
    HDA NVidia, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=2
    HDA NVidia, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3
    HDA NVidia, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output

[pilaf@optimus ~]$ arecord -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
sysdefault:CARD=MID
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    Front speakers
surround21:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=MID,DEV=0
    HDA Intel MID, ALC889 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

[pilaf@optimus ~]$ speaker-test 

speaker-test 1.0.28

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 2229 to 4458
Period size range from 1114 to 1115
Using max buffer size 4456
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 1114
was set buffer_size = 4458

[pilaf@optimus ~]$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     45117  4 
snd_hda_codec_realtek    67127  1 
snd_hda_codec_generic    63126  1 snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hda_intel          26327  6 
snd_hda_controller     26727  1 snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_codec         108552  5 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_controller
snd_hwdep              17244  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                88487  5 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_controller
snd_timer              26614  2 snd_pcm
snd                    69340  18 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
soundcore              13031  2 snd,snd_hda_codec

# ~/.asoundrc

pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer  {
        type dmix
        ipc_key 1024
        slave {
                pcm "hw:0,0"
                period_time 0
                period_size 1024
                buffer_size 4096
                rate 44100
        }
        bindings {
                0 0
                1 1
        }
}

ctl.dmixer {
        type hw
        card 0
}

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: ALSA sound dies after a few minutes of mic capture

Try the module options, e.g.:

options snd-hda-intel bdl_pos_adj=64

And the various types of model.

pilaf

Member

Registered: 2013-11-20

Posts: 3

Re: ALSA sound dies after a few minutes of mic capture

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried setting bdl_pos_adj to 64 and 1 (32 is apparently the default, so I tried values different from that). Both settings caused kernel panic on boot, so I discarded them.

I also tried setting model=6stack, as that seems to be the model that best matches my hardware, but the problem persisted regardless. I haven't tried other model settings yet, I may try a few in the coming days, as testing each new setting takes quite some time (I need to reboot and wait for the problem to trigger).

Any other suggestions are welcome.