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Compizfox

Member

Registered: 2015-08-06

Posts: 20

Popping sound from speaker when no sound is playing

Hi,

On my laptop there is an annoying popping sound every 1-2 seconds when no sound is playing and when on battery. The popping noise goes away when any sound is played.

My audio chip, as reported by aplay, is as follows:

card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC283 Analog [ALC283 Analog]

I already narrowed it down to snd_hda_intel's power saving mode, which is automatically enabled by TLP. The popping noise dissapears after running

echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

, and I made this 'fix' persistent by setting

SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=0

in /etc/default/tlp.

However, I feel this is more of a workaround than a true fix. First of all, I suppose this has a detrimental effect on the battery life (although I don't know how large, if even significant, this effect is)? Second, the popping sound is still there when booting/shutting down or suspending/resuming the laptop.

Is there some underlying issue that can be fixed instead, other than simply working around the problem by disabling the power saving?

Last edited by Compizfox (2017-08-02 16:11:53)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,074

Re: Popping sound from speaker when no sound is playing

No this is how it works. The popping can be heard on startup/shutdown because your card is powered up/shutdown respectively. If you enable powersaving this is the tradeoff you take into account. That it is that "audible" is because of a hardware issue/cheap speakers/wrongly shielded electronics etc.

Compizfox

Member

Registered: 2015-08-06

Posts: 20

Re: Popping sound from speaker when no sound is playing

I see, thanks for your reply.

I wonder why the same issue does not happen under Windows if that's the case? Does Windows not make use of this power save mode?

Also, what's interesting, after resuming the laptop, when the power saving mode is enabled again (echo 1 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save), the popping sound does not appear again. Only after disabling and enabling it again, the popping starts again.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,074

Re: Popping sound from speaker when no sound is playing

The same as with the kernel module, Windows doesn't enable that by default either (as far as I remember, has been a while since I booted in there but there should be a checkbox in the Realtek utility). Waking up from suspend is also a bit of a special case, and depending on when you enable it again there's a chance that the power save simply didn't kick in yet or there might be a bug that the setting isn't properly restored from suspend (but mentioned if you check the sys path) and only with an explicit disable/enable cycle you start it again.