Created attachment 587299 [details] output of pulseaudio -vvvvv while crackling is occurring. Description of problem: Sounds, such as the skype audio, are crackly and indecipherable. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.25-3.fc16.i686 kernel-PAE-3.3.7-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-utils-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-module-bluetooth-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-libs-glib2-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-module-gconf-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-gdm-hooks-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 pulseaudio-libs-0.9.23-1.fc16.i686 How reproducible: Start an audio program such as skype. Startup sound and subsequent audio are all crackly. Additional info: pulseaudio -vvvvv reports lots of underruns while the crackling occurs. Killing pulseaudio and running skype against the alsa drivers directly works fine. This regressed in the past month or so. It was working fine earlier in the the F16 release stream. Hardware: Asus EEE PC 1201N # lspci -v -s 00:08.0 00:08.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP79 High Definition Audio (rev b1) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 83ce Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23 Memory at f9f78000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel # lsmod | grep snd_hda snd_hda_codec_hdmi 31469 1 snd_hda_codec_realtek 121580 1 snd_hda_intel 32323 0 snd_hda_codec 102795 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13236 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 81170 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd 62853 9 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm,snd_timer snd_page_alloc 13709 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
I am noticing that my laptop CPU (Intel Atom) is now automatically being clocked down from 1.6GHz to 600MHz quite often; I presume this is in response to a thermal signal. My understanding is that this is new behavior with recently implemented kernel-side frequency scaling. At the slower clockspeed, pulseaudio becomes unusable in the way I report in this bug. So I'm willing to chalk this bug up to the new cpu scaling system, and thermal sensitivity on my laptop.
assigning to kernel
I removed .pulse/ (with files from a previous installation, eventually!) and haven't had any issues since. (It's only a few days ago so I'm not sure if that will work for anyone else and if this bug is about the same crackling sound I was experiencing. Anyhow, it might be worth a try.)
Are you still seeing this with the 3.4 or 3.5 kernel updates? If so, does the suggestion in comment #3 help?
I am seeing this bug with 3.6.1-1.fc17.x86_64 kernel. Restarting pulseaudio daemon helps for a time. Strangely sometimes the problem is present in VLC but not in Dragon player. After pulseaudio restart VLC works fine too.
Try "yum remove alsa-plugins-pulseaudio" and open the mixer and change the default device.
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