After the usual "update" the sound output suddenly crackles (every second)

[Jay Lee]

Hello,

my Ubuntu "20.04.4 LTS" ran fine until the last update - but now the sound crackles, no matter which application, so it's a general problem. Since I have a dual boot system and everything sounds clean in Windows, there is no speaker or hardware problem.

However, I'm a bit overwhelmed when it comes to finding the cause or solving the problem, the Internet only gives instructions on how to proceed if you have no sound at all and/or Ubuntu doesn't want to/can't find the sound card. But that's not my problem...

How could I best proceed now to fix the sound?

 

[Condobloke]

What was included in the update ?

Edit to Add : Do you have Timeshift set up ?

 

[Brickwizard]

Do you have Timeshift or similar on your Ubuntu installation?
If so, the quickest way is to roll back to before the update, if all is ok then run update again, check what the updates include and if there are any related to sound un-tick them and just install the rest,

 

[Jay Lee]

Hi,

I was on a "business trip" for a few weeks and when I started Ubuntu for the first time on Monday, that is yesterday, there was an update. Of course I don't know what's new in the last 3-4 weeks or how many "regular" updates took place... I only got the "concentrated" update due to the 3-4 week break.

Where can I find out what was changed yesterday?

 

[Brickwizard]

I don't know if this still works in Ubuntu, open update manager [synaptic] look through the drop-down boxes for show history and open [this use to be the easy way]

 

[Brickwizard]

@KGIII is our Ubuntu expert, he should be on in a couple of hours

 

[KGIII]

Alas, I do not know everything - and I've never seen this particular problem.

There's this:

Crackling and delayed sound after upgrading to 18.04

I just upgraded to 18.04, and I noticed that the sound from my headphones, whether plugged into front or back port, was very crackling and slow/delayed. This issue didn't exist on 17.04/10. It also...

askubuntu.com

And this:

I hear crackling or buzzing when sounds are playing

Or this:

Fixing the Crackle and Pop in Ubuntu Sound

daedtech.com

 

[NorthWest]

Jay Lee asked:

Where can I find out what was changed yesterday?

You could have a look at /var/log/dpkg.log which holds the changes to the system with dates and times.
You can grep through the file with the terms "install", "upgrade", "remove" to see what's happened and when.

 

[Jay Lee]

Thank you all for your replies.
Especially @KGIII - your provided links did it...

First I did try the pulseaudio-modifications, "tsched=0" e.g., because they seem the most easy way.
But this did not had any effect.

Then I did exchange "pulseaudio" with "pipewire"... and until yet... all sounds "sound" clear and perfect again.

 

[KGIII]

Excellent! Glad it's sorted.

 

[Jay Lee]

Hello,

I have to make a small restriction

I followed this guide step by step and disabled "pulseaudio" and installed "pipewire" instead:

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-pipewire-on-ubuntu-linux

Everything worked, great sound....
...until the restart (the next day, than today)... then the sound was choppy again.

A quick check revealed:

It's "german", but you can still tell that "Pulseaudio" was selected as the default sound system again when the system started (although the instructions linked above actually clearly deactivate "Pulseaudio" and activate "Pipewire" as the default).


So I carried out the two instructions from the linked manual again, to deactivate "Pulseaudio" and to activate "Pipewire"...

... and the sound was immediately perfect again.

However, I now get the following message:

It says:

Connection Error: Connection refused
pa_context_new() failed: Connection refused


Now I'm a bit confused...

 

[KGIII]

Now I'm a bit confused...

Me too. Alas, I'm out of ideas. My only ideas were links that I found searching.

Hmm... What else did you change yesterday? I don't suppose you thought to make a backup after it started working?

 

[Jay Lee]

I did change nothing, after I have done the instructions of the pipewire-manual.
Hm... maybe I should remove pulseaudio from my system?

 

[KGIII]

At this point, you might as well try it.

 

[Jay Lee]

To come back to my problem...

After trying different things for a while now, I can summarize the following "facts":

1. I didn't have any sound problems until March, then I was on a business trip for 3 weeks. After the (cumulative) Ubuntu updates that were then carried out, the sound "jerked" or "cracked".
2. After some "sound problem" research, the only manual change I made was adding "tsched=0" to "default.pa" (but with no effect to the sound quality):
   
   nano /etc/pulse/default.pa => load-module module-udev-detect => load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
3. Then I installed "Pipewire" following this guide: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-pipewire-on-ubuntu-linux =>
   this worked right after the installation, but after booting, "pulseaudio" was active again:
   
4. Re-start "pulseaudio" with "killall pulseaudio" has no effect:
   
   
5. Manually deactivating "Pulseaudio" and activating "Pipewire" delivers the following output in the terminal and a good soundquality again:
   
   
   
   
6. Point 5 doesn't always seem to work. I will repeat procedure 5 again tomorrow.
   

 

[Jay Lee]

So... the day after...

Again only Pulseaudio, no Pipewire.

Same procedure as yesterday...

... but it failed.

Trying to enable pulseaudio again:

Fail.

Trying to "kill" pulseaudio:

Fail.

Yes, its german, but it just says: failure, error...

Funny side-effect: I can listen to mp3-music, using the "Strawberry" player... but I have zero sound from Firefox (no internet radio, no youtube... so I will restart my system yet)...

 

[Jay Lee]

After the restart... repeating the procedure from my post #16... the same results.
But instead of rebooting again... I did try:

... the sound came back... and even, it is again "only" pulseaudio...

... the sound is good yet... without "crackling" e.g.

 

[KGIII]

Nice. Yeah, I'd have never come up with that solution, not in a hundred years.

 

[Jay Lee]

Next update:

No matter what I've done so far, after a "restart" the sound was always bad, with crackling and cracking.

Today I tried the following (and only) for the first time:

And the sound was "nice" again.
However, I closed the terminal afterwards. To take the screenshot, I opened the terminal again and ran the command again.
...and then the sound was bad again.
Even further, multiple execution of the command has changed nothing, the sound remains the same (bad, crackling).

So I tried the following again:

This time it even worked and I just got a good sound with "Pipewire":

We'll just wait and see, what it looks like tomorrow...

 

[Jay Lee]

So I'm slowly going crazy with this sound topic...

Today, after switching on the PC and booting Ubuntu for the first time... the sound was perfect.

Let's see how long he stays that way...