Arch Linux

zcal

Member

Registered: 2010-01-13

Posts: 57

[SOLVED] Static, hissing, and popping in headphones

I recently started getting a constant static, hissing sound when I plug headphones into the audio jack on my laptop.  Sound does play through the headphones, though it's distorted with lots of crackling and popping.  The sound from the laptop speakers works correctly.  I've tested with a couple of different pairs of headphones and I get the same results.

I use ALSA and Pulseaudio.  I have tried what's suggested in the Wiki to troubleshoot this from both the ALSA and Pulseaudio angles.  I cannot pinpoint exactly when this started as I do not always use headphones, but I have also tried rolling back to a previous version of alsa-lib and uninstalling pulseaudio and pulseaudio-alsa.  None of this has helped.

There are a couple of things that I have noticed.

First, I cannot disable ALSA loopback because I do not have a loopback option in alsamixer, as the Wiki suggests that I should.

Second, I have found that the static, hissing noise in my headphones goes away if I enable the Headphone Mic in alsamixer, which in turn disables the Headset Mic and Internal Mic.  However, I get no sound through the headphones if I do this.  If I enable Headset Mic or Internal Mic, I get sound (plus static, hissing, and popping).

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Last edited by zcal (2017-12-30 04:40:32)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,707

Re: [SOLVED] Static, hissing, and popping in headphones

There have been a few kernel change related bugs in headphone jack detection recently, can you try with e.g. the lts kernel? And fwiw, are you using any power saving options (i.e. module parameters, TLP, laptop-mode-tools and the like) and have you tried disabling the respective knobs?

zcal

Member

Registered: 2010-01-13

Posts: 57

Re: [SOLVED] Static, hissing, and popping in headphones

Oddly, I am no longer experiencing the issue.  I've rebooted several times in an attempt to recreate, but headphone audio is now working correctly.  While troubleshooting, I rebooted several times and always experienced the problem.  I didn't make any system changes since I posted, so I'm at a loss as to what could've happened. 

I'm going to give it a day and see if the issue resurfaces.  If so, and if I can reliably reproduce, I'll roll back to an older kernel version and test.  I'm currently on 4.14.8-1.

Also, I don't have any power saving tools installed or specific options set.

Edit:
I've given this a couple of days and the issue hasn't resurfaced.  No idea.    I'm marking this as solved.

Last edited by zcal (2017-12-30 04:39:55)