sound crackling with feisty libasound2 in some apps

An additionial data point, the same install and sound card on an intel G965 board shows the same behaviour. So I think a hardware issue can be ruled out, unless alsa-lib 1.0.13 is using some new code path in the driver that <=1.0.11 isn't.

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add the output requested at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSoundProblems ? Thanks in advance.

Righto.

The driver for the onboard Intel HDA is not loaded.

tail -2 /proc/asound/oss/sndstat:
Mixers:
0: Cirrus Logic CS4297A rev 4,Cirr

No asound.conf or .asoundrc...

/proc/interrupts:
           CPU0 CPU1
  0: 361954 0 IO-APIC-edge timer
  1: 2 0 IO-APIC-edge i8042
  7: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge parport0
  8: 35 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
  9: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi
 14: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge libata
 15: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge libata
 16: 97327 171947 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth0, uhci_hcd:usb3, libata, i915@pci:0000:00:02.0
 17: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb6, libata, libata
 18: 2 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb7
 19: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb2, uhci_hcd:usb5
 20: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb4
 21: 94142 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi CS46XX
NMI: 0 0
LOC: 358071 357865
ERR: 0
MIS: 0

Oh forgot one:

$ asoundconf list
Names of available sound cards:
CS46xx

I too have a Turtle Beach sound card that played fuzzily and also very quiet; model MOH8738-6CH-KR. Before that card I was happily using a *very* similar C-Media CMI8738/PCI-6ch-LX (both say 8738 and 6CH) on Dapper and Edgy; that C-Media card became very quiet when I upgraded to Feisty, which is why I tried the Turtle Beach card.

My Kubuntu Submission ID is 54334ad6557b59cb94a746a6f6150bfd from the C-Media setup under Edgy.

I just replaced both card with a Sound Blaster which sounds great, however, so I have no output to run for you on the older cards, sorry :(

You know... I'm getting more and more convinced the problem is with moc's output code. I am unable to recreate the issue in any other application. It IS possble that the newer alsa-lib exposed an underlying bug in the moc alsa playback code. For what it's worth, moc with OSS output appears to work fine.

I can confirm the crackling with several other applications, mplayer, vlc, and totem. The crackling is new to feisty. Setting to OSS output does seem to resolve the issue with vlc, but with mplayer -ao oss does not fix the crackling... I guess it's something of a mixed bag. I am willing to provide any configuration/console outputs requested.

As stated in the subject line, I upgraded from Edgy to Feisty and everything worked out very well; I have issues with VLC playback of music files in that it crackles.

I followed the instructions of someone on the Ubuntu forums to get sound working again, as shown below:
<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=402321&highlight=sound+quality>

What should I post up in order to give information to help debug this problem?

Attached sound file with all necessary information.

Possibly related/duplicates Bug #103025.

I rebuilt alsa-lib 1.0.13-2 from Debian unstable and installed resulting libasound2 and cracking seems to be gone.
Can anyone of you verify this? Problem seems to be in one of the Ubuntu provided patches.

It looks like the culprit is debian/patches/63_improved_resampling.dpatch, after disabling this patches, the sound is normal again.

What is the possibility of (successfully) disabling the patch on one's own?

Is it better to simply wait until a fix comes out through the official servers or should I recompile libalsa on my own?

I'd prefer the former, since I don't trust myself to do recompiles unfortunately...

If you're unsure, then it's probably better to wait for official fix. Although, official fix could be released sooner if more people could confirm the fix/workaround or investigate matter more further :)

I recompiled libasound2 with the patch commented out from the patch list. No more crackling!1!11. So I suggest dropping it for now. (O_O @ the patch contents)

This patch remains present in upstream 1.0.14 alsa-lib. I can revert it for testing post-Tribe1 (gutsy), but as it's not a _critical_ bugfix, I'm not going to propose it for feisty until it has received further testing in gutsy.

yeah, 1.0.14~rc4 (in Debian unstable) contains the changeset in question and there's no problem with the sound.

alsa-lib (1.0.14-1ubuntu1) gutsy; urgency=low

  * Merge from Debian unstable, remaining changes:
    - debian/control: Adhere to DebianMaintainerField,
    - debian/patches/*.dpatch: Remove - incorporated into upstream,
    - debian/rules: Pass --with-plugindir=\$${prefix}/lib/alsa-lib \
      to configure targets (Debian #428334).
  * New upstream version fixes LP: #33736, LP: #97004.

alsa-lib (1.0.14-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * Patch management switched to quilt. This is more comfortable.

  [ Jordi Mallach ]
  * Bump shlibs to 1.0.14, as new symbols have been added.

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc4-2) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Jordi Mallach ]
  * debian/control:
    - add XS-Vcs-Browser and XS-Vcs-Svn headers.
    - Build-Depend on gcc-multilib only on the available architectures
      (thanks Frank Lichtenheld; closes: #424310).

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc4-1) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * New upstream release candidate.
  * Added gcc-multilib to Build-Depends. Thanks Bastian Blank and Matthias
    Klose. (closes: #422513)

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc3-2) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Jordi Mallach ]
  * debian/control: fix typo which broke hppa build (closes: #420999).

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc3-1) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * New upstream release candidate.

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc1-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * New upstream release candidate.

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * Added arch armel to libasound. (closes: #408766)

alsa-lib (1.0.13-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * Added XS-X-Vcs-Svn field in control.
  * Make recording sound on Thinkpad t20 with chip Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24
    work (closes: #410863)
  * Urgency medium to serve this feature to etch users. This is fixed in 1.0.14
    version and doesn't need be patched there.

 -- Daniel T Chen <email address hidden> Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:48:21 -0400

Can we expect updated packages for feisty anytime soon?

Not until it has been tested in gutsy.

Sounds reasonable :D I think the problem is the same as described at : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sdl-mixer1.2/+bug/66483
Would it be safe to down or upgrade to the alsalib versions from either edgy or gutsy. Would either lib work with the current kernel modules?
Thanks!