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radsteve

Member

Registered: 2022-03-26

Posts: 3

Pulseaudio increasing latency because of an ALSA error

Hello there,

I'm trying to get PulseAudio Latency to 6-10 ms, but it doesn't work. I found a topic on the manjarno forums, which did help a bit.
But the latency is at 20ms (in this case even 30). I checked the logs and it said this:

● pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2023-05-10 18:10:17 CEST; 8min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pulseaudio.socket
   Main PID: 1210 (pulseaudio)
      Tasks: 10 (limit: 18931)
     Memory: 47.8M
        CPU: 43.098s
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pulseaudio.service
             ├─1210 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal
             └─1282 /usr/lib/pulse/gsettings-helper

Mai 10 18:10:20 arch pulseaudio[1210]: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write.
Mai 10 18:10:20 arch pulseaudio[1210]: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_usb_audio'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
Mai 10 18:10:20 arch pulseaudio[1210]: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.
Mai 10 18:10:27 arch pulseaudio[1210]: Too many underruns, increasing latency to 20.22 ms
Mai 10 18:10:42 arch pulseaudio[1210]: GetManagedObjects() failed: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
Mai 10 18:11:25 arch pulseaudio[1210]: Too many underruns, increasing latency to 25.22 ms
Mai 10 18:11:33 arch pulseaudio[1210]: Too many underruns, increasing latency to 30.22 ms
Mai 10 18:12:36 arch pulseaudio[1210]: ALSA woke us up to read new data from the device, but there was actually nothing to read.
Mai 10 18:12:36 arch pulseaudio[1210]: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_usb_audio'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
Mai 10 18:12:36 arch pulseaudio[1210]: We were woken up with POLLIN set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.

How do I fix it?
Using Pulse 16.1

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,837

Re: Pulseaudio increasing latency because of an ALSA error

What are you actually trying to do (you don't want pulseaudio 10ms latency, you want to do something™ that you think gets fixed by getting pulse to sub 10ms latency, what exactly is that? https://xyproblem.info/ ) and why do you think your hardware can give you sub 10ms lateny when provided evidence suggests you can't? The wakeup error is generally not considered problematic. If you want actual low latency guarantees to the extent that is possible you'll probably want to use jack and the realtime-privileges package.

Last edited by V1del (2023-05-10 16:51:41)

radsteve

Member

Registered: 2022-03-26

Posts: 3

Re: Pulseaudio increasing latency because of an ALSA error

What are you actually trying to do (you don't want pulseaudio 10ms latency, you want to do something™ that you think gets fixed by getting pulse to sub 10ms latency, what exactly is that? https://xyproblem.info/ ) and why do you think your hardware can give you sub 10ms lateny when provided evidence suggests you can't? The wakeup error is generally not considered problematic. If you want actual low latency guarantees to the extent that is possible you'll probably want to use jack and the realtime-privileges package.

Well, I'm using a VST Host and a loopback and it's really irritating with a lot of latency and I'm trying to achieve less latency. With JACK, the problem is, my in and outs are not on the same port and are different cards, so I don't understand how I can use it with that, and haven't really found anything regarding that. Would be nice if someone would be sharing that information.