Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 144769
Distorted sound with 2.6.10-1.737_FC3 and AC97
Last modified: 2015-01-04 17:15:19 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 Description of problem: When I loaded up on the new kernel-2.6.10-1.737_FC3, audio was distorted, especially on the high-end. Booting kernel-2.6.9-1.667 runs the audio perfectly. My board uses AC97 audio. The distortion isn't severe, as in guitar-amp distortion, but it's noticable especially on the high-end and it makes listening to music unpleasent. You probably wouldn't notice it just playing system sounds. It's not "jerky" mp3s, where the audio skips around, it's just distorted. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.10-1.737_FC3, snd_via82xx How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot up with 2.6.10-1.737_FC3 2. Launch any audio app that plays music. I use xmms. 3. Play an mp3, listen to the distorted high-end. Actual Results: Audio is distorted. Not severely, but enough to tell and enough to impair listening to mp3s. Expected Results: Audio should have played fine. It plays ok in 2.6.9-1.667 Additional info:
I have reported this also on the devel branch but with snd_intel8x0 there is NO sound at all. Going back fixes the problem either like above or to 1.1063_FC4. The culprit is the sound updates in the -ac8 patch.
I can confirm that with Vendor: Intel Model: Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller Module: snd_intel8x0 and 2.6.10-1.737_FC3 I get no audio, again booting kernel-2.6.9-1.681_FC3 fixes the problem.
I also don't get sound on the main speakers after upgrading to kernel-2.6.10-1.737_FC3.i686. Headphones still work. Downgrading to kernel-2.6.9-1.724_FC3.i686 makes the speakers work again. My system: Compaq Presario X1000 series (X1404) laptop, Intel AC'97 Audio Controller (82801DB/DBL/DBM, ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M). Relevant modules seem to be: snd_intel8x0m, snd_intel8x0, snd_ac97_codec.
I have also had a loss of sound on two of the three machines on which I have booted to the latest kernel (2.6.10-1.737) since the 10th January update. Previously there have been no sound problems at all. On one machine I have the following audio card: 00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 AudioController (rev 50) Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller In this machine it appears to detect the card OK, and I can play the test sound in the KDE control centre sound section, but the music players such as XMMS partly hang and definitely produce no sound at all. Mike
Also experienced loss of sound with kernel 737_FC3 on IBM R40 with 00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03) With the new 741_FC3 kernel, sound works again.
I have the loss of sound problem with both the 737 and 741 kernels with my Dell Dimension 2400 - running FC3 all updates current and sound controller details as: 00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
After reading the many comments in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=144742 I tried switching off headphone sense jack and line sense jack in Alsa Mixer and I now have sound back again with the 741 kernel in FC3 - so I presume there will be a fix released via updates at some point.
The distorted sound problem might be ESD doing software rate conversion from 44k to 48k, something that happened years ago with AC97 audio, though it was fixed more recently. ESD does a really horrible job at that, and it sounds hideous.
I use the kernel (2.6.9-1.667) which is included in the distribution of FC3. All sounds are distorted at my system.
Two days ago I tried to install FC3 freshly (instead of upgrading it from FC1). When booting FC3 for the first time and asked to configure the sound card, the test sound was clear and undistorted. However, in KDE all sounds were distorted. I think that other people have already reported the details of the sound problems in KDE. My sound card is a Soundblaster Live! 5.1, if that is of any interest.
I'm using kernel 2.6.10-1.770_FC3 freshly installed. M/B MSI k7N2 Delta with AC97. Athlon 2500+ and 512MB memory. All updates are installed. Sound Card detection finds the AC97 and plays the guitar sounds clearly. The RealPlayer plugin in FireFox is clear. Maelstrom and Tuxracer have garbled sound. The CD player finds the CD and goes through the the tracks, but no sound.
Here is a little more information that might help fix this bug. I killed the ESD daemon and played with manually specifying various settings. While nothing seemed to help, when I ran: esd -r 48000 in a terminal window, then tried various system sounds and Tux Racer, the sound came out correctly on my system. The default rate of 44100 apparently doesn't work well with some AC97 audio setups. Hopefully, this will help someone come up with a permanent solution. And, if anyone can tell me how to make this change permanent in some way, shape or form, I'd appreciate it! Sincerely, Brian Lusk
Created attachment 112163 [details] Copy of the esd.conf file containing the change outlined in my post, for example purposes.
Holy frijole, I think I have a fix! Edit /etc/esd.conf add " -r 48000" to the line that starts with "spawn_options=" Restart esd or re-enable sounds in the Start -> Preferences -> Sound dialog. Voila! Working sound! At least, for me. Sincerely, Brian Lusk
An update has been released for Fedora Core 3 (kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3) which may contain a fix for your problem. Please update to this new kernel, and report whether or not it fixes your problem. If you have updated to Fedora Core 4 since this bug was opened, and the problem still occurs with the latest updates for that release, please change the version field of this bug to 'fc4'. Thank you.
This bug has been mass-closed along with all other bugs that have been in NEEDINFO state for several months. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, this is the only method we have of cleaning out stale bug reports where the reporter has disappeared. If you can reproduce this bug with current FC3 updates, please reopen this bug. If you are not the reporter, you can add a comment requesting it be reopened, and someone will get to it asap. If you are not the reporter, but can reproduce this problem against FC4, please open a new bug. Thank you.