Arch Linux

balthamaisteri

Member

Registered: 2014-09-02

Posts: 26

Youtube freezes KDE on certain sound devices.

Hi,

I am using a wireless JBL headset with a USB dongle, which works well in general. However, I occasionally encounter an issue where YouTube videos fail to play when this headset is selected as the audio output device. Recently, the problem has escalated so that the KDE desktop environment now freezes for approximately 10 seconds at a time, and these freezes persist until I either close the browser or temporarily switch the audio output device. The issue is resolved by temporarily switching to a different audio output device (and then switching back to the headset).

What logs should I check?

Using KDE and Linux 6.14.7-arch2-1

Thanks

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,723

Re: Youtube freezes KDE on certain sound devices.

systemctl status pipewire wireplumber pulseaudio

For PW/wireplumber, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePl … t_settings
For pulseaudio (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PulseA … do_no_play but actually) use pipewire-pulse (PA is deprecated and you cannot reasonably run two sound daemons at the same time either)

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

balthamaisteri

Member

Registered: 2014-09-02

Posts: 26

Re: Youtube freezes KDE on certain sound devices.

I was watching youtube video with that "working" output device, everything was fine. Then I opened a game's store page from steam and trailer started to run. System freezed for 10 seconds. I could hear the audio, but thats it.

systemctl status pipewire wireplumber pulseaudio

Unit pipewire.service could not be found.
Unit wireplumber.service could not be found.
Unit pulseaudio.service could not be found.

I am confused. I was sure that I was using wireplumber.

edit:

systemctl --user status wireplumber is working

I will check the log when this happens again.

Last edited by balthamaisteri (2025-06-01 18:12:33)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,723

Re: Youtube freezes KDE on certain sound devices.

Sorry, forgot the "--user"

I opened a game's store page from steam and trailer started to run.

In steam or in the browser?

I will check the log when this happens again.

"sudo journalctl -b -δ", δ >=0 will get you a random amount of older journals (δ boots ago)

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

balthamaisteri

Member

Registered: 2014-09-02

Posts: 26

Re: Youtube freezes KDE on certain sound devices.

> In steam or in the browser?

in Steam.

balthamaisteri

Member

Registered: 2014-09-02

Posts: 26

Re: Youtube freezes KDE on certain sound devices.

Now got that error again (with hyprland wm)

spa.alsa: front:1p: (125 suppressed) snd_pcm_avail after recover: Broken pipe

systemctl --user restart wireplumber.service

did nothing.

I found a topic and created .config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/default.conf file with:

context.properties = {
        default.clock.quantum     = 2048
        default.clock.min-quantum = 1024
        default.clock.max-quantum = 4096
}

After that restart worked.

Last edited by balthamaisteri (2025-06-27 18:34:17)