Arch Linux

thetazerlaser

Member

Registered: 2017-04-26

Posts: 5

Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

Picked up a Cyrus Soundkey dac to power my headphones the other day, alsa recognises it, and audio plays through it okay initially, however when listening to any audio, crackles gradually build up, until at around 3 minutes in very load crackling and distortion emerges. This affects all types of audio (ogg, flac, youtube videos etc), and disappears if I close the application and reopen it. I don't think its a pulseaudio problem, as it persists even when going directly through alsa in audacious/deadbeef. My guess is its something to do with a frequency mismatch or clock issues, as if I force deadbeef to resample my 44.1khz music to 48khz the problem goes away. I'm wondering then, why there seems to be an issue with regular 44.1khz playback, as I know the dac supports it, and my music is all at 44.1khz, so no resampling is necessary. Any ideas of potential causes of/solutions for the crackling would be greatly appreciated.

mathew7

Member

Registered: 2020-01-07

Posts: 4

Re: Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

While I'm not an Arch user (Xubuntu/Ubuntu-mate), I have the same problem with the Soundkey. I also have the Fiio X3-II and M5 which work great and Android is also good.
PS: From my knowledge, youtube is 48KHz, so resampling should not solve it.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,660

Re: Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

Well sounds like the DAC is lying to you and has issues with 44.1kHz playback  (this happens more often than you think). You can globally tell pulse to rather open the device with 48 by adjusting the default-sample-rate in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

FWIW when the issue appears, is anything telling logged in dmesg and/or

journalctl -b --user-unit pulseaudio

Last edited by V1del (2020-01-08 08:53:40)

mathew7

Member

Registered: 2020-01-07

Posts: 4

Re: Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

thetazerlaser, do you by any chance have an AMD system? I'm listening now on a surface go (yes, with ubuntu, win10 eliminated) with no issues. But plugging in my ryzen 3900 desktop I get the issues mentioned within 5 minutes (tested on spotify web player, with an without usb hub).
I also have some laptops I'll try in the morning (all Intels, but I may have access to another ryzen).
Kernels are 5.3.0-24 for surface and 5.3.0-26 for desktop, so very close.
Oh, failing mb is MSI B450 gaming itx/ac.

thetazerlaser

Member

Registered: 2017-04-26

Posts: 5

Re: Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

UPDATE: I resolved the issue by plugging the dac into a different usb port, one controlled by the cpu not the mobo chipset.

mathew7

Member

Registered: 2020-01-07

Posts: 4

Re: Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

Nice. Thanks for the tip. I also found a problem-free port on my main system.
What was strange is that I also had a Ryzen 1200/B320 system that did not show the problem. Guess I just got lucky where I plugged it in.

yellius_

Member

Registered: 2016-08-29

Posts: 4

Re: Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

I should have looked here earlier. I had the same problem with a miniDSP usbstreamer B (ADAT), ASRock B450 HDV 4.0 and Ryzen 3700X. I have compiled a custom kernel with additional tracing capability and have tried finding the culprit with a.o. rt-tests/cyclictest. Just plugging into another port fixed it for me also...! In case anyone is interested in debugging this let me know if I can post trace info or do other tests.

mathew7

Member

Registered: 2020-01-07

Posts: 4

Re: Crackling and distortion on usb dac after a few minutes of playback

Just a non-arch update, just tried using it on PS5 and has the same issue. Both ports.