Bug 125163 – sound unintelligible while system idle

• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Guillaume Guénard 2006-03-05 19:14:48 UTC]

I experienced a problem with my sound support which could be decribed as follow:

1. I emerged ALSA from the alsa-driver-1.0.10-r2 and configured using alsaconf (from alsa-utils). Everything seemed to work fine. Modules and their dependencies inserted correctly. No error nor warning messages were issued.

2. When playing music with xmms, or any other multimedia application (at least those available as default within gnome) sound were inintelligible. It is neither distorted nor scratchy but rather a mess of different sound frequencies that sounds like robot language (R2D2 could probably understand it but I don't).

3. I noticed that the abovementioned sound issue disapeared when the system was  buzy (not using Idle process). I though solved the problem by running a dummy application (an infinite for loop coded in c). This isn't an very suitable solution since it tend to slow everything down, but it works.

Here is my lspci readout:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C693A/694x [Apollo PRO133x] (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP]
00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)
00:05.0 Communication controller: Rockwell International HSF 56k Data/Fax/Voice Modem (rev 01)
00:07.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 07)
00:14.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
00:14.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:14.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:14.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:14.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 PF/PRO AGP 4x TMDS

And the result of emerge --info:

Portage 2.0.54 (default-linux/x86/2005.1, gcc-3.3.6, glibc-2.3.5-r2, 2.6.12-gentoo-r6 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.12-gentoo-r6 i686 AMD Duron(tm) Processor
Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14
dev-lang/python:     2.3.5, 2.4.2
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.12
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r6
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.16.1
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.11-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon -pipe -O2"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon -pipe -O2"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig buildpkg distlocks sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 X alsa apm arts audiofile avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdr crypt cups curl eds emboss encode esd exif expat fam foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif glut gnome gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml idn imlib ipv6 java jpeg kde lcms ldap libg++ libwww mad mikmod mng motif mozilla mp3 mpeg ncurses nls ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline sdl spell ssl tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb vorbis xml xml2 xmms xv zlib video_cards_rage128 userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc"
Unset:  ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

My box is an (old) VIA-based (FIC AZ11) and AMD Duron drived system. I used gentoo 2005.1 i686 stage III, and the default USE setting.

If you have any advice about this problem, please let me know. For the moment, I don't even know where the problem is.

Best regard,

Guillaume.

[Comment 1 Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) 2006-04-18 11:16:59 UTC]

Can you reproduce with 1.0.11_rc5 version?

[Comment 2 Guillaume Guénard 2006-04-26 19:43:28 UTC]

The problem remains whole when upgrading alsa-driver to 1.0.11_rc5. The sound remains alterated unless the system is not idling.

[Comment 3 Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) 2006-10-01 22:15:48 UTC]

What about 1.0.13? In any case, please report this issue upstream, I cannot reproduce in any way.