Starting about a month ago, I started getting lots of crackling audio in games. Not sure what the issue is. It tends to be with loud noises, almost sounds like clipping.

Anyone else had this?

Edit: Fixed by installing realtime-privileges (arch) and adding my user to the realtime group

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    Usually crackling is buffer underruns. The sound hardware exhausts the buffered sound before the software can fill the buffer again.

    Larger buffer or less stuff slowing down whatever’s filling the buffer. I’m typing this with one hand while I eat pizza, but give me a few minutes and I’ll give you some suggestions.

    EDIT: Okay, took me a few hours instead of a few minutes.

    The PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC reference in another comment is a way to increase buffer size at the Pulseaudio level if the program in question is’re using pulseaudio (probably yes, as I think that WINE always goes through PulseAudio today).

    You can set this persistently and systemwide for PulseAudio in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf with the default-fragments and default-fragment-size-msec.

    For PipeWire, the newer system, you can set this at a per-user level using pw-metadata like so:

    https://wiki.debian.org/PipeWire

    choppy audio on systems with high load

    PipeWire’s lower latency compared to PulseAudio can lead to choppy audio on systems with high load.

    First view the quantum using the pw-top command and then increase the quantum value using this command, until the audio becomes smoother.

    pw-metadata -n settings 0 clock.force-quantum 2048

    Once you find the right quantum value for your situation, you can make the value permanent by creating a config file ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/choppy-under-load.conf with the following content and restart pipewire related daemons.

    context.properties = {
   default.clock.quantum = 2048
   default.clock.min-quantum = 2048
}

    I don’t know how the two typically interact today, unfortunately — most Linux audio systems to date have had some form of emulation of each other, which somewhat complicates matters. When I play back audio from mpv today using the PipeWire audio output plugin, I see a stream both in pavucontrol, which is PulseAudio’s mixer, and in pw-top, which is a PipeWire tool. Same thing happened with all of PulseAudio and ALSA and with ALSA and OSS in the past.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    2 days ago

    Your output is too high. Turn off any boosted audio settings, and take your volume down about 10%, or at least the mixer for the specific output for whatever game you’re playing.

    • ogeist@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Note that depending on your setup (please provide more info when asking for help) your audio might not be limited. In some cases you can set your volume way above 100%.

      Additionally in some applications you need to set the hz frequency that the program is running in Proton search for: PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30, 60 or 90

  • EntirelyUnlovable@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Does it specifically occur with games? Does a loud video produce the same result? Do you have different speakers you could try?

  • ag10n@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    Check alsamixer for an over boosted output. That’s what worked for me with the same symptoms

  • OutOfMemory@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Yes, I get this sometimes on my bazzite box. The audio is crackly for ~10 seconds after app start, then it smooths out (FF7R).