Bug 524462

Summary: Sudden "white noise" with pulseaudio
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Ralph Angenendt <ralph>
Component: kernelAssignee: Jaroslav Kysela <jkysela>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 11CC: dougsland, gansalmon, itamar, kernel-maint, lkundrak, lpoetter, wtogami
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i586   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2009-11-27 22:23:17 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description Flags
alsa-info --no-upload for the machine in question none

Description Ralph Angenendt 2009-09-20 14:24:08 UTC 
Description of problem:

I have two main applications using pulseaudio. One is xbmc (which keeps its pulseaudio channel open all the time), the other is mpd, which just connects to pulseaudio when it is actually playing. 

From time to time (two hours after a pulseaudio restart, several days after a pulseaudio restart) the music I play through mpd is suddenly replaced by white noise. All mixers are set to 100% (pulseaudio out, alsactl, mpd out, xbmc out)

When this happens, lowering the volume within mpd brings me to a level where the white noise goes away and I can listen to music again. Changing xmbc's output level and/or pulseaudio's general output level can help too. If I set it too low, music is distorted again, so the bracket in which a clear sound can be heard is very slim.

When the white noise suddenly appears nothing is logged, although the log level is set to debug. Setting this is the only change to the standard daemon.conf

Restarting pulseaudio brings the system back to the expected behaviour.

This is pretty bad, especially if you listen to music via headphones, as the white noise appears without warning.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

alsa-utils-1.0.21-2.fc11.i586
alsa-lib-1.0.21-3.fc11.i586
pulseaudio-0.9.15-17.fc11.i586

How reproducible:

Keep playing music.


Actual results:

Bleeding ears

Expected results:

Ears not bleeding, but okay.

Additional info:

Is there anything to make pulseaudio more talkative?
Comment 1 Lennart Poettering 2009-09-29 04:19:16 UTC 
Smells like a hw/driver issue to me.

The highest log level of PA is "debug", so if no output is generated when this happens this wasn't triggered by any state change in PA.

Which driver is this?

Please include the output alsa-info --no-upload generates here.
Comment 2 Ralph Angenendt 2009-09-29 11:34:17 UTC 
I didn't have this problem (no, no pulseaudio rant here) running on F10 with pulseaudio removed. So either something has changed in alsa or alsa and pulse don't play together well in this case ... 

But as removing pulseaudio on F11 removes bluez which I need, I cannot go that route.
Comment 3 Ralph Angenendt 2009-09-29 11:35:12 UTC 
Created attachment 362997 [details]
alsa-info --no-upload for the machine in question
Comment 4 Ralph Angenendt 2009-11-27 22:23:17 UTC 
Sorry, looks like it really is a hardware problem and the timing of the issue was just too good. After exchanging the sound hardware this hasn't happened anymore.