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#1 2016-02-05 08:33:59

skongshoj
Member
Registered: 2015-03-30
Posts: 12

Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

Greetings, gentlebeings!

After upgrading to kernel 4.4 and going through the two-cold-boot ritual (and reconfiguring PulseAudio to use the proper default sink) to get I2S sound working on my XPS-13 9343, I've noticed an annoying issue: Whenever a sound stream starts (and when the computer boots), the speakers emit a loud and unpleasant "CRACK"/"POP" noise.

When the "POP" occurs, the following gets logged:

haswell-pcm-audio haswell-pcm-audio: FW loaded, mailbox readback FW info: type 01, - version: 00.00, build 77, source commit id: 876ac6906f31a43b6772b23c7c983ce9dcb18a19

This seems to indicate that the sound device loads firmware every time I start playing sound, probably due to some aggressive power management.

If I stop playing sound for 10 seconds or so, and then start a sound stream, the "POP" will be there, but not if I play one stream immediately after the other.

This is particularly annoying given notification sounds, which then start with a very loud pop.

Is there a known workaround, or better yet, a fix?

Last edited by skongshoj (2016-02-05 13:10:58)

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#2 2016-02-05 11:19:36

ymihc
Member
Registered: 2016-02-03
Posts: 21

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

You're right, it may be due to the power management. Try the following:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … g_playback

Edit: Please use code tags the next time, see Forum etiquette - Pasting pictures and code

Last edited by ymihc (2016-02-05 11:23:45)

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#3 2016-02-05 13:14:38

skongshoj
Member
Registered: 2015-03-30
Posts: 12

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

Yes, that was the very first thing I did. power_save is set to 0, and power_save_controller to N. I've also verified that it isn't a PulseAudio problem; it occurs even if I have disabled PulseAudio.

The problem *only* occurs when I'm using I2S. On HDA (and older kernels), there's no problem.

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#4 2016-02-07 02:01:19

skongshoj
Member
Registered: 2015-03-30
Posts: 12

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

Out of interest:

Does anyone with an XPS-13 9343 and the 4.4 kernel not have loud clicks and pops when starting an audio stream?

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#5 2016-02-08 01:12:59

michal3
Member
Registered: 2016-02-08
Posts: 4

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

I have the same model and see the same pops when starting audio.

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#6 2016-02-08 15:33:39

The Loko
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2014-07-23
Posts: 100

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

Do you use tlp, laptop-mode-tools or any other power manager? You will have to disable the sound power save mode from the power manager configuration too.

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#7 2016-02-09 19:00:38

michal3
Member
Registered: 2016-02-08
Posts: 4

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

I fiddled with various things here, and seem to have found a solution. Start up alsamixer and point it at the broadwell-rt286 device:
eg alsamixer -c0 or alsamixer -c1 (one of those will be the HDMI output, that's not the one you want).
I find if I mute the Front RECMIX source I don't get any more of those alarming cracking/popping sounds when I start audio playback.
@skongshoj does that help for you?

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#8 2016-02-10 19:19:54

krimson
Member
Registered: 2008-09-15
Posts: 11

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

skongshoj wrote:

Out of interest:

Does anyone with an XPS-13 9343 and the 4.4 kernel not have loud clicks and pops when starting an audio stream?

No issues on my 9343 with 4.4 kernel.

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#9 2016-02-10 19:42:35

tutu
Member
Registered: 2015-11-11
Posts: 30

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

krimson, when you connect a headphone in the 3.5mm jack, do you hear a popping sound while there is no audio being played? Are you using broadwell audio (I2S) or HDA?

Thanks for the info.

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#10 2016-02-16 10:16:12

jalgroy
Member
Registered: 2016-02-16
Posts: 1

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

Anyone found a solution to this? I'm still having this issue. michal3's solution didn't do anything for me.

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#11 2016-02-17 12:23:39

Shapeshifter
Member
Registered: 2008-03-11
Posts: 230

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

I also have this problem and it's awful. Especially when stopping playback, there is an ear-shattering pop. It even happens when skipping to different position in a video (firefox, HTML5 youtube playback)
Disabling power saving completely has no effect on this problem, i.e. setting:

options snd_hda_intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

and confirming

> cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
0
> cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller
N

With older kernels, when the chip used to run in HDA mode instead of I2S, there was also a pop but it was barely noticable.

I've muted everything that isn't necessary (like michal3 suggested) to no avail.

This is a serious issue, the popping noise is really, really loud. I've created a bug report on the kernel bug tracker, please confirm the issue there:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112611

Last edited by Shapeshifter (2016-02-17 12:25:28)

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#12 2016-02-18 12:13:59

skongshoj
Member
Registered: 2015-03-30
Posts: 12

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

I also tried muting RECMIX, to no avail.

It appears that module parameters to snd_hda_intel have no effect. Perhaps because they're only actually used for HDA devices, not I2S ones?

I've currently downgraded my kernel to 4.3 --- the very loud cracking and popping noises are intolerable.

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#13 2016-07-17 00:06:10

quixoten
Member
Registered: 2016-07-16
Posts: 1

Re: Loud "cracks" when starting audio in I2S on XPS- 9343

On my machine, I was able to confirm that the source of the cracking noise was an unmuted "Front RECMIX". By muting "Front RECMIX", no cracking noises are produced, even with everything else unmuted. Below are my settings as the appear in alsamixer ("Front RECMIX" is cutoff in my alsamixer and appears as "Front RE"):

            ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐     Dmic     Mic                        ┌──┐    Front     ┌──┐                       ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐    Front     ┌──┐
            │OO│     │OO│     │OO│     │MM│     │OO│                                         │OO│              │OO│                       │OO│     │OO│     │OO│              │OO│
            └──┘     └──┘     └──┘     └──┘     └──┘                                         └──┘              └──┘                       └──┘     └──┘     └──┘              └──┘
  71<>71                                                                    0     100<>100                              0<>0     0<>0
< Master >Headphon Speaker  Front DA Front RE  Waves   ADC 0 Mu ADC 1 Mu   AMIC     DAC0    HPO L   HPO Mux   HPO R    Media0   Media1  RECMIX B RECMIX L RECMIX M SPK Mux    SPO

I also found that I can mute everything but "Speaker", "Front DA", and "SPO" without losing sound, which may be a good starting point for others trying to troubleshoot:

            ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐     Dmic     Mic                        ┌──┐    Front     ┌──┐                       ┌──┐     ┌──┐     ┌──┐    Front     ┌──┐
            │MM│     │OO│     │OO│     │MM│     │MM│                                         │MM│              │MM│                       │MM│     │MM│     │MM│              │OO│
            └──┘     └──┘     └──┘     └──┘     └──┘                                         └──┘              └──┘                       └──┘     └──┘     └──┘              └──┘
  79<>79                                                                    0     100<>100                              0<>0     0<>0
< Master >Headphon Speaker  Front DA Front RE  Waves   ADC 0 Mu ADC 1 Mu   AMIC     DAC0    HPO L   HPO Mux   HPO R    Media0   Media1  RECMIX B RECMIX L RECMIX M SPK Mux    SPO

I tested various settings by toggling mute on "Speaker" while music was playing. When "Speaker" transitioned from muted to unmuted the cracking noise was produced if the configuration was "bad". Toggling mute on "SPO" had the same affect.

I also removed pulseaudio from my system as I was trying to troubleshoot, but I don't know that removing it had anything to do with my success in removing the cracking noises.

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