Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

WeeGerGai · 2025-03-22 17:23:52

Hello everyone, I'm not sure if this should be posted here or in Multimedia, but here goes. I have been using Linux distros for almost a year, but there has been an issue in each one that has driven me to insanity at this point. I am using pipewire, and though I am almost certain that this is a hardware issue, I am picking at straws at this point because I don't know what exactly could be the hardware problem, provided it is one.

The issue in particular for each of the distributions (EndeavourOS, Fedora, and currently Arch) I've used has had slight differences, but has been triggered by the same things.

The popping and scratching starts when an application performs graphical updates (which is strange considering it's an audio problem, but bear with me.) Particularly, any movement of the UI in Audacity or Blender (With the GPU Accelerated renderer, Cycles, ESPECIALLY) causes scratching noises while that application is open. The worse offender is Blender, which, if open, causes a constant scratchy noise, that changes pitch and frequency depending on if there are graphical updates or not. For example, scrolling in a browser makes the scratching more frequent, or moving the viewport in Blender, or even moving the mouse in some cases (seemingly randomly). If I close Blender, the scratching is less prominent but it remains until a full reboot of the system. Additionally, doing anything in Audacity activates a similar problem, though it does not matter if I keep it open or close the program, from that point on, alt-tabbing, focusing a different application, or doing anything that makes some graphical update (with audio playing) will cause irritating clicks.

I am currently using the Line Out for my headphones & speakers, which has yielded louder and more frequent scratches and clicks as opposed to USB, but all audio outputs have had this problem.

A big thing to note is that having pavucontrol open while the application switching clicks occur makes them quieter and less frequent if that makes sense? There's less clicks every time that happens.

Things I've tried:

Changing pipewire.conf and pipewire-pulse.conf settings (quant, sample rate, headroom), which only made things worse, so I reverted them.
Changing alsa session timeout to 0 in wireplumber.conf
Changing rtkit-daemon ExecStart to have the --no-canary flag.
Turning off power saving parameter in
```
/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
```
(I know there's a realtek codec module too but that one doesn't have parameters from what I gathered)

I'm sure I've also tried other things that I cannot remember in the past, but it's safe to say nothing worked, and I've scoured basically every forum and link the internet has to offer. Has anyone else had a similar problem with this codec or CPU?
The only thing that I can think of now is buying a new sound card but that also seems illogical considering the clicking is also present in USB devices, not just the line out devices. To be fair though, I don't know much about how motherboards process audio devices.

Some specifications, if they matter:

Kernel: Linux 6.13.7-arch1-1 (though the issue is prominent regardless of kernel version in my experience)
DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.3
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS
Sound Chip: Realtek ALC1220
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT

Any help would be appreciated.

jonno2002 · 2025-03-22 20:05:08

found this, not really the same issue but the solution may work for you, worth a shot anyway:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1 … art-0.html

WeeGerGai · 2025-03-22 20:50:26

jonno2002 wrote:

found this, not really the same issue but the solution may work for you, worth a shot anyway:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1 … art-0.html

Unfortunately that did not do the trick. Though I wasn't expecting it to after checking my boot options and seeing that SME was not an option on my board.

seth · 2025-03-22 20:51:57

You're somehow picking up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroma … stic_noise - source is likely your GPU?
Just to be sure, you're also getting this from "mpv -ao alsa"?

WeeGerGai · 2025-03-22 20:56:43

That could definitely be the issue, at least with the static, the clicking is different.

What exactly should I be getting from "mpv -ao alsa"? Sorry, all the information in my post is just observation not anything I've found out of place.

seth · 2025-03-22 20:59:55

If the noise is actually from some latency introduced by the sound daemon, skipping said sound daemon would skip the noise.
If you get the same sound pattern directly on alsa, at least you know it's not because pipewire is transcoding the output (44/48Hz etc)

WeeGerGai · 2025-03-22 21:02:49

Well I just tried it with sound and video files, both of which caused no issues.
The static does appear on YouTube videos and the like, so that's good to know.
What should I do/check from here?

Last edited by WeeGerGai (2025-03-22 21:03:14)

seth · 2025-03-22 21:05:30

tbc, this is while you'd otherwise induce the problem (eg. w/ blender)?
YT in your browser will stress the system substantially more than "mpv some.mp3"
Alternatively, "mpv some.mp3" does but "mpv -ao alsa some.mp3" does not cause the noise?

WeeGerGai · 2025-03-22 21:12:23

It appears as though while blender is running with cycles, the noise (with an mpv instance) is independent of everything. While a render job is running it's audible but unaffected by mpv (if that's what you're asking).
Additionally, mpv with or without -ao alsa sounds fine.

seth · 2025-03-22 21:19:02

So you're getting the noise w/o any actual sound playback?
Coil whine, test whether it's (also) coming from the CPU, eg. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Stress_testing#stress

There's no software fix for this, but you can try to mitigate it w/ powermanagement settings.

WeeGerGai · 2025-03-22 21:24:43

The CPU is not causing any problems it seems.
And yet we still have 2 issues,

1. The clicking from application switching and graphical updates (not the same as the static)
and 2, which I didn't expect to bring up in this thread, is that the power management section in system settings freezes, and then crashes, the system settings due to a ddcutil problem, which I tried rolling back as per a different thread, but powerdevil throws an error with ddcutil <2.1.0, and crashes with anything >2.0.0.

seth · 2025-03-22 21:33:32

1. different noise, likely same cause.
Try to globally export LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1

2. you should open a neew thread for this and post the backtrace there, powerdvevil will likely not help you here, though.
Esp. not for the GPU, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU … nce_levels and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU#Overclocking (obviously you'd want to underclock the GPU)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-03-22 17:23:52

Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#2 2025-03-22 20:05:08

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#3 2025-03-22 20:50:26

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#4 2025-03-22 20:51:57

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#5 2025-03-22 20:56:43

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#6 2025-03-22 20:59:55

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#7 2025-03-22 21:02:49

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#8 2025-03-22 21:05:30

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#9 2025-03-22 21:12:23

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#10 2025-03-22 21:19:02

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#11 2025-03-22 21:24:43

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

#12 2025-03-22 21:33:32

Re: Constant Scratching & Clicking sounds

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