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Jedhless

Member

Registered: 2022-06-06

Posts: 16

[Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

Anyone notice the audio stuttering when using pulse audio in games a Steam proton update? For example in Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord it uses pulse audio specifically

Me being confused as hell I then remembered to check the arch website
and I saw this https://archlinux.org/news/undone-repla … replumber/

So I tried to uninstall wireplumber but that didn't exist on my system.
Then I reinstalled pacman -Syu pipewire-media-session (no effect)
then I uninstalled it completely using pacman -Rsu pipewire-media-session. I thought it would just bork the audio thru steam but it didn't. (Although it still had the stuttering)

I then realized that proton has its own debian-packages that has pipewire-media-session and pulse audio.
Which has its own directory for what packages in the .steam and .local under .steam/steam/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_soldier/soldier_platform_0.20220601.0/files in the share for pipewire and etc for pulse-audio
                                                                                                                                           (if this directory above ^ is incorrect for what proton use please post below.)
This is just a hunch of mine that this may be the case that proton has its own repositories it uses
Or it just a coincidence.

If anyone has a similar issue or knows what packages proton uses and what directory it is in on Steam please respond.

Last edited by Jedhless (2022-07-11 03:43:30)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,939

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

If you do not have the pipewire audio packages but are using pulseaudio or ALSA then steam won't invoke an entire sound daemon. Those are libraries it uses wireplumber and  pipewire are there for screen sharing and probably steamos uses , it will use whatever it finds during runtime on your system. What is your actual issue? If you do not have wireplumber installed and running yourself then proton will not be using wireplumber but libpulse if you have pulseaudio or direct ALSA if that's what's available. You can also install and start steam-native that will definitely "just" use system libs.

Also in general, proton has to my knowledge still standard wine audio support so a pulseaudio backend regardless. Whether this has an effect on your system or not epends on what you are actually running.

Are you using pulseaudio or plain ALSA? during a problematic situation what do you get from

sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
#If pulse
pacmd list-sinks
pacmd list-sink-inputs

Last edited by V1del (2022-07-08 08:22:32)

Jedhless

Member

Registered: 2022-06-06

Posts: 16

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

1 sink(s) available.
  * index: 0
	name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1>
	driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
	flags: HARDWARE DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY DYNAMIC_LATENCY
	state: RUNNING
	suspend cause: (none)
	priority: 9030
	volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB,   front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
	       balance 0.00
	base volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
	volume steps: 65537
	muted: no
	current latency: 1050.49 ms
	max request: 344 KiB
	max rewind: 344 KiB
	monitor source: 0
	sample spec: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
	channel map: front-left,front-right
	            Stereo
	used by: 2
	linked by: 2
	configured latency: 1999.82 ms; range is 0.50 .. 1999.82 ms
	card: 0 <alsa_card.pci-0000_01_00.1>
	module: 6
	properties:
		alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
		device.api = "alsa"
		device.class = "sound"
		alsa.class = "generic"
		alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
		alsa.name = "DELL S2319NX"
		alsa.id = "HDMI 1"
		alsa.subdevice = "0"
		alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
		alsa.device = "7"
		alsa.card = "1"
		alsa.card_name = "HDA NVidia"
		alsa.long_card_name = "HDA NVidia at 0xdf080000 irq 17"
		alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
		device.bus_path = "pci-0000:01:00.1"
		sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1"
		device.bus = "pci"
		device.vendor.id = "10de"
		device.vendor.name = "NVIDIA Corporation"
		device.product.id = "0fb9"
		device.product.name = "GP107GL High Definition Audio Controller"
		device.string = "hdmi:1,1"
		device.buffering.buffer_size = "352768"
		device.buffering.fragment_size = "176384"
		device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
		device.profile.name = "hdmi-stereo-extra1"
		device.profile.description = "Digital Stereo (HDMI 2)"
		device.description = "GP107GL High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI 2)"
		module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
		device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
	ports:
		hdmi-output-1: HDMI / DisplayPort 2 (priority 5800, latency offset 0 usec, available: yes)
			properties:
				device.icon_name = "video-display"
				device.product.name = "DELL S2319NX
"
	active port: <hdmi-output-1> 

 pacmd list-sink-inputs
0 sink input(s) available.
[jedh@Prinny ~]$ 

apparently its using alsa? It says in Bannerlord its using pulse audio.
Also my problem is after a proton update on steam I started getting broken up audio and audio stuttering during gameplay and in the menu's For Bannerlord. This also Happens in Space Engineers. I also have Valheim installed should I try to see if that has broken up audio as well? oh wait I need to do that command while the game is running? 1 moment also I am going on vacation and won't be able to respond for a few days after my next post IF i don't get service at my vacation location. I will be away from my current computer though.
So when I tried launching bannerlord the game crashed after 2 minutes of running which I suspect was from me doing sudo pacman -Rsu  pipewire yesterday. I reinstalled pipewire but I have to leave for vacation now. Cheers I'll be back in a few.

THIS HAS NOT BEEN SOLVED YET.
                                          - Thanks -Jedhless

Last edited by Jedhless (2022-07-08 19:11:46)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,939

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

You are somewhat randomly guessing at things that should not be related to anything. Proton is a fork of wine, all relevant audio components of wine that interface with your linux system should use pulseaudio (and there's definitely no pipewire involved - unless you use pipewire-pulse of course). If you suspect a proton update, have you tested a different proton version? Which proton version are you running? There might be a regression in proton, FWIW proton 7.0-3 works fine here for most of the stuff I'm running (primarily SFV and Hades currently), haven't tested experimental in a while, but that's, well, experimental, regressions and bugs should be expected.

if removing pipewire had ill effects then it would be much more likely to immediately fail as a core lib is missing and not after 2 minutes of running fine. Testing whether a native game works properly is definitely something you can do.

Again the pipewire dep within the steam runtime is primarily for screen sharing purposes if you are using steams screen/game share feature

However that nothing is using your pulse in these outputs might point to something (... you did run those while actively expecting to hear something right?), you didn't post the fuser command which happens to be one of the more interesting ones. For a more general check can you also post

pacman -Qs 'pipewire|pulse'
systemctl --user status wireplumber pipewire* pulseaudio

Jedhless

Member

Registered: 2022-06-06

Posts: 16

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

You were right about me missing a lib I definitely saw that doing sudo pacman -Rsu Pipewire removed some libs so I reinstalled pipewire to get those back. I will trying using proton 7.0-3 to see if that fixing my audio crackling and popping. And I'll try runing Valheim natively like you said.

Here's the output from the terminal in the meantime
First command

 $ pacman -Qs 'pipewire|pulse'
local/gtk-vnc 1.3.0-1
    A VNC viewer widget for GTK+
local/libcanberra 1:0.30+r2+gc0620e4-1
    A small and lightweight implementation of the XDG Sound Theme Specification
local/libpulse 16.1-1
    A featureful, general-purpose sound server (client library)
local/pipewire 1:0.3.54-1
    Low-latency audio/video router and processor
local/pipewire-media-session 1:0.4.1-2
    Example session manager for PipeWire
local/plasma-pa 5.25.2-1 (plasma)
    Plasma applet for audio volume management using PulseAudio
local/pulseaudio 16.1-1
    A featureful, general-purpose sound server
local/pulseaudio-alsa 1:1.2.7.1-1
    ALSA Configuration for PulseAudio
local/pulseaudio-bluetooth 16.1-1
    Bluetooth support for PulseAudio

The second command is for when the game is* actually running right?
I think the game was already crashing by the time I ran the previous posts' commands. So that's my bad.

Last edited by Jedhless (2022-07-11 02:21:53)

Jedhless

Member

Registered: 2022-06-06

Posts: 16

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

Ok here's what I found out. After I switched to proton. 7.0-3 my problems practically vanished. I started with audio popping as usual However after I switched the audio to stereo and restarted the game it fixed my problems. After the initial fixed I switched back to the headphones setting there wasn't as nearly much audio popping or crackling but in the menu's of Bannerlord where there is Music I could notice it. After playing a bit of multi I only noticed the popping using the headphones setting in Bannerlord in times of extreme lag with my connection to the server. I use headphones regardless but switching it to stereo fixed my problems in Proton 7.0-3. This issue hasn't been resolved in proton-experimental. I think this similar to the other forum post in gaming Audio popping with headphones in games. I will let you guys know if I have this problem again in proton 7.0-3

Last edited by Jedhless (2022-07-11 03:44:21)

Jedhless

Member

Registered: 2022-06-06

Posts: 16

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

Ok I have this problem again however only in extreme lag. Either computer performance or network. I have a cheap network card that is usb and I am honestly thinking there might be a better driver for this since the driver is a year old at this point. However this Does happen in Single-player. I reduced the resolution and that fixed my lag problem in it restoring the audio. I guess the problem before is the audio de-synced with the lag where I had perfect performance but the audio kept cracking and popping everywhere? I noticed this happening after I set to have steam use proton 7.0-3 for everything. I am not sure if that's why it happened or if the problem just delayed after I switched to proton 7.0-3? Either way this isn't a complete fix but it works for now. At least I can play single-player again. Going to try valheim and see what happens in native.

Jedhless

Member

Registered: 2022-06-06

Posts: 16

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

Valhiem Native and Proton 7.0-3 seem to have no audio issues. I guess Bannerlord has more of a performance hit? But I was lagging in Valhiem (framerate issues) with no audio bugs. Again if there is a Network Driver I should know about for my Network card that is more up to date maybe that will help? Anyways at least the audio issues for Bannerlord are inline with the game performance.

Last edited by Jedhless (2022-07-11 05:07:59)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,939

Re: [Solved-tmp] Audio pops with headphones in games proton-experimental

From a system package perspective you have all the correct/non-conflicting stuff here, so this might indeed be just a regression in Proton Experimental.