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Installed on a new PC with an ASUS H97M-Plus motherboard, got everything to work except the audio.

While I have sound, and the mixers and volume controls appear to work correctly, the audio is very distorted. The speaker-test command for example emits a series of loud pops, which continue for about 5 seconds after being stopped. The system alert sound repeats about 20 times, getting shorter on each repeat (bit like a skipping CD), an mp3 in vlc sounds dreadful, but for HD video in VLC or playing a video in youtube, sound is for the most-part OK.

I have tried everything and almost anything suggested on this issue, all the suggestions make it only very slightly better (or worse).

What it is not:

  • something I installed - boot from live USB has the same issue.

  • PulseAudio (killing it and using VLC direct to alsa is just as bad).

  • helped by changes to the intel-hda driver arguments (tried many of them such as disable power management, disable msi, model=asus, model=generic, model=auto, none of these resulted in any change in behaviour).

  • outdated/corrupted alsa/audio drivers - reinstalling results in the same behaviour.

  • A conflict with the Graphics card - it occurs even when that is removed.

  • An IRQ conflict - see /proc/interrupts below

    cat /proc/interrupts
           CPU0       CPU1       CPU2       CPU3       
    0:         16          0          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      timer
    1:      32306        193        147        107   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
    5:          0          0          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      parport0
    7:          7          0          0          0   IO-APIC-edge    
    8:          0          0          0          1   IO-APIC-edge      rtc0
    9:          0          0          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   acpi
    16:    1760713      10458     490808     424669   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb1, ath9k
    17:       1012         62         49         44   IO-APIC-fasteoi 
    22:        577          0          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi 
    23:         46          1          4         10   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb2
    41:     718982     157194      22770      10318   PCI-MSI-edge      xhci_hcd
    42:      39688     164281     587946     296079   PCI-MSI-edge      ahci
    43:         12          0          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      mei_me
    44:     419627          0        195       7504   PCI-MSI-edge      eth0
    45:        915          0          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      snd_hda_intel
    46:     533177      14245       7497       7726   PCI-MSI-edge      nvidia
    47:          0          0          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      snd_hda_intel
    NMI:         27        139        138        133   Non-maskable interrupts
    LOC:    3254256    2931833    2913952    2776206   Local timer interrupts
    SPU:          0          0          0          0   Spurious interrupts
    PMI:         27        139        138        133   Performance monitoring interrupts
    IWI:     137941     104702     117956     109883   IRQ work interrupts
    RTR:          5          1          0          0   APIC ICR read retries
    RES:    1229699    1197933    1276401    1194185   Rescheduling interrupts
    CAL:       2473       2524       2531       2830   Function call interrupts
    TLB:      93921     105819     135776     115012   TLB shootdowns
    TRM:          0          0          0          0   Thermal event interrupts
    THR:          0          0          0          0   Threshold APIC interrupts
    MCE:          0          0          0          0   Machine check exceptions
    MCP:        116        115        115        115   Machine check polls
    ERR:          7
    MIS:          0
    

Internal audio is IRQ 45, GFX card audio is IRQ 47.

Output of alsa-info.txt is too long for here, so it is at http://pastebin.com/3wegASFh

The odd thing is, if I make the application playing audio consume more CPU (eg by rolling mouse over some links or scrolling up and down, the audio will 'come-good' while that activity is occurring.

Is there anything that can fix this, or it just a matter of waiting for better driver support?

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1 Answer 1

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I did eventually find the problem - the card was configured for 24-bit samples, but alsa was outputting 16-bit samples (hence the weirdness). So far, the only remedy was to boot windows, change the card to 16-bit, then reboot ubuntu.

edit: well that works until the machine goes into standby, then the old problem is back. I give up.

edit2: Eventually upgraded the kernel from 3.13 to 3.14. Audio fixed.

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