Arch Linux

themusicalduck

Member

Registered: 2011-07-04

Posts: 123

[SOLVED] Annoying and loud popping from Audiobox USB sound interface.

EDIT: Fixed thanks to V1del's solution below.

I have an issue where my speakers will make very loud clicks and pops, always when resuming playback on something. It happens mostly for videos (youtube, mpv) of any kind. Sometimes it happens for music playback too (Clementine).

It also pops loudly on power up and shut down.

I'm assuming it's something to do with powersaving, but I just cannot find any information on how to disable it for USB soundcards. I can for normal soundcards, but not USB ones.

Also occasionally, if I unplug and replug my soundcard while media is playing of some kind, the sound will come back horrifically distorted and loud, until I stop and refresh whatever media is playing (this ties in with another problem, which is that my USB soundcard is not always recognised on boot and I keep having to unplug and replug it).

I have an up to date system running Gnome 3.22.2 and Pulseaudio 10.

I also use an Olimex USB isolator.

Can anyone help me out? I'm worried about the damage I'm doing to my expensive speakers and headphones.

Last edited by themusicalduck (2017-03-22 00:14:06)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Annoying and loud popping from Audiobox USB sound interface.

That is normal, it's just your USB receiving/losing a signal and being initialized, the fact that it pops is a hardware "issue" and shouldn't damage anything. In order to prevent it during a normal session (it will remain on shutdown/poweron) you might want to try and adjust exit-idle-time to a negative value in your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to prevent pulse from exiting when no client is connected. If that wasn't already enough disabling/commenting

load-module module-suspend-on-idle

in your /etc/pulse/default.pa should prevent pulse from releasing the device and thus keep it open for the remainder of the session. Of course both of these suggestions will sacrifice powersaving features for availability. Remember to restart pulse to make any of your changes to these files have an effect

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio