Distorted sound with Ubuntu

[Mister Mint]

jeefg, I did the test, but whether the rate is 44100 or 48000 makes no difference. However, I wrote in an earlier post (viewtopic.php?p=153285&sid=1a2e2843c2a8 ... 6d#p153285) that the noise also now appearred with AV Linux + JACK: That made me conclude that the noise was totally random, but when I listen several times now there's no noise with AVL + JACK (only with AVL + Pulseaudio), so maybe I was wrong in that post.

BTW, with AVL + JACK I only get sound in one channel / speaker now, don't know why

Afaics, the Qjackctl setup in the two distros are the same, except that the periods / buffer is 3 in AVL, and 2 in Ubuntu Studio, but changing it to 3 in US makes no difference with the noise.

About the PCI sound card, indeed my computer has a PCI express bus, but how to check if that's the cause of the problem I don't know, and as you both say I guess it isn't.

Code: Select all

sudo dmidecode -t slot |grep -A 4 -B 5 "In Use"

Handle 0x0010, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
	Designation: J6B2
	Type: x16 PCI Express
	Current Usage: In Use
	Length: Long
	ID: 1
	Characteristics:
		3.3 V is provided
--

Handle 0x0013, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
	Designation: J7B1
	Type: 32-bit PCI
	Current Usage: In Use
	Length: Long
	ID: 34
	Characteristics:
		3.3 V is provided

[j_e_f_f_g]

the noise now appeared with AV Linux + JACK...

there's no noise with AVL + JACK (only with AVL + Pulseaudio)...

AVL + JACK I only get sound in one channel / speaker now

There's something amiss in your trouble-shooting. You're getting conflicting results. Offhand, I'm guessing that you're not isolating one component at a time, applying one change, and observing the result. It seems like you're randomly applying changes, hoping that something will suddenly work, without carefully observing the full result of each change.

The net result is that you're introducing new problems with your changes, and not noticing what change has produced what behavior. You may want to check youtube for videos on trouble-shooting. It's supposed to be "a process of elimination", but what you're doing seems to be producing even more confusing results.

a PCI express bus, but how to check if that's the cause

If that's the problem, I would first try moving the audio card to a different slot. Sometimes, two slots may share an irq, and two devices in those slots will interfere with each others' operation. I would also get into the bios and disable everything that isn't necessary to boot your computer -- ethernet/serial/usb/bluetooth ports, motherboard audio, etc. If this fixes the problem, you need to turn things back on, one device at a time, in order to discover which piece of hardware is causing the problem. And when you find the culprit, see what resources it's using (ie irqs, ports) and check if your bios allows you to reassign those resources.

Remember: Process of elimination.

[artix_linux_user]

yeah, troubleshooting isnt easy.
Everything is a process - foss aint made by god in person...sometimes humans are making mistakes, even in the foss world.
I would never collaborate when having problems - allways solve problems with your own strenght, this way you wont depend on others so much,

[Mister Mint]

Ok thanks, and sorry for my late reply.

Well, in general I do try to apply one change at a time, but maybe at some point I have done something unconsciencely that has either started or stopped the noise. Maybe a change done in a different context that, for some reason not obvious to me, affected the sound. Okay, just speculating. Apart from the possibility of some hardware damage that makes the noise random, I have no idea why at one time AV Linux + JACK also had noise.

I have moved the card to another slot now, but the noise remains. So now I'll disable some things in BIOS and see what happens. There's a lot in there I don't know the meaning of, though, so I'd better read a little about those things first