Arch Linux

Feanor612

Member

Registered: 2009-06-16

Posts: 1

kernel 2.6.30 & sound skips

After updating to the new kernel & associated packages in testing repo I noticed sound skipping when playing with mpd. It would skip a beat every minute or so, and changing the internal buffer or audio output didn't help (most often it made matters worse). I tried xmms2 and the skips there were unbearable - it would skip every fraction of a second, almost as if the song was being fast-forwarded. After explicitly setting audio_output_format in mpd.conf the music was OK, although I got the feeling it still skips every few hours or so (could've been occasional disk read issues though, no way to find that out). The problem was present also when attempting to watch movies (it'd skip video too, whenever sound would skip), or in every other non-jack media program with varying severity.
Yeah, a strange thing was that all the JACK apps were OK, even though JACK uses alsa as a driver too.
After downgrading the kernel all went back to normal.

lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801CAM IDE U100 Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:07.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev a8)
02:07.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev a8)
02:07.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller

It's not like I need help - as I said downgrading the kernel eliminated the issue. I just want to notify the devs of the problem so it doesn't make it to core repo.

The problem is identical to the one mentioned in this topic: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 87#p411987
As you can see there it also appeared after upgrading the kernel and disappeared after downgrading.

antonello

Member

Registered: 2009-03-28

Posts: 6

Re: kernel 2.6.30 & sound skips

same here with kernel 2.6.30 (from core) and audacious (horrible sound skipping)
reverted to 2.6.29 for the time being...

beej

Member

From: Bend, OR

Registered: 2009-01-27

Posts: 22

Website

Re: kernel 2.6.30 & sound skips

It's a regression in 2.6.30... :-(  FWIW, I get a lot less skipping if I play music with mpg123 than if I play with audacious.  It's nearly bearable. :-)

Here's some discussion and a patch:

http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/30291/

so hopefully we'll see it fixed in 2.6.31.

szal

Member

From: 41236.de

Registered: 2009-03-20

Posts: 5

Re: kernel 2.6.30 & sound skips

Same thing here w/ 2.6.30 and cs46xx. In addition it doesn't seem to be a "sole" problem of non-JACK apps; I also encountered skipping when streaming audio w/ IDJC.

Plus the intel8x0 doesn't work at all w/ Kernel 2.6.30 on my nForce2 sound chip; see my bug report and please vote for it.

Guess I, too, will downgrade to 2.6.29 for the time being.

Rgds

Sven

---

"make install, not war" (Benjamin Van der Jagt in the comment area of DistroWatch Weekly)

antonello

Member

Registered: 2009-03-28

Posts: 6

Re: kernel 2.6.30 & sound skips

I just discovered it's related to CPU frequency scaling: sound skips whenever CPU changes its frequency through cpufrequtils. Now I've temporarily remedied by changing the governor from cpufreq_ondemand to performance.

uname -a
Linux myhost 2.6.30-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jul 4 11:13:08 UTC 2009 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

cpufrequtils 005-2

Last edited by antonello (2009-07-11 21:35:21)

enito

Member

Registered: 2009-02-17

Posts: 50

Re: kernel 2.6.30 & sound skips

Hi, i get too this sounds skips...any tip? i dont use and not installed the cpufrequtils, so i assume my cpu is running to max speed everytime. Im using latest archlinux kernel 2.6.30, but still have skips when i use audacious...

greets

Convergence

Member

Registered: 2005-07-02

Posts: 377

Re: kernel 2.6.30 & sound skips

Same here, though xmms works fine!

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It's a very deadly weapon to know what you're doing
---  William Murderface