Poor Audio, Audio failure

I get really cruddy audio, and it usually goes dead after a few minutes.

OS: Ubuntu - Feisty Fawn 64-it
Proc: AMD Anthlon 64-bit
Audio: On board - MSI K9 Platinum with ATi chipset

I'm having the same problem
In the startup script, I have disabled the three audio drivers in all possible combinations with the following results
#ESD OSS ALSA
#1 1 1 Bad Crackling
#1 1 0 Bad Crackling
#1 0 1 Some Crackling
#1 0 0 No Sound
#0 1 1 Some Crackling, sound speeds up and slows down
#0 1 0 Bad Crackling
#0 0 1 Some Crackling, sound dies after 3 minutes
#0 0 0 No sound

1 means enabled, 0 means disabled
Obviously the level of crackling is subjective and it just goes by what I'm hearing over a timespan of about 5 minutes, so don't yell at me if the readings are inconsistent with each other.
"Crackling" adjective applies to all sounds: UI, ambient, and streaming, but I was mostly paying attention to streaming during my tests. I tried two different audio streams over two days. With at least one of the streams, it is possible to play it outside of SL using Rhythmbox. It sounds fine.

ASUS F3T series laptop
Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
AMD Turion 64 x2
Dedicated NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 256MB
Built-in Intel High Definition audio compliant audio chip
SoundBlaster Pro Compatible

same problem here, broken/no audio, in-game streams are horrible. seems to have been broken after the latest release

Fedora 7 (32 bit)
Intel 3.0ghzHT
NVIDIA geforce 7600GT
SB Audigy 1

everything else on my system sounds fine, including other apps that use ALSA

Most soundcards default to running at 48kHz sampling rate (as used on DVDs and for "Pro Audio" these days. But most "games" sound content is at 44.1kHz (CD Audio) sampling rate.

So, if you get "crackling" or other artifacts it *may* be due to your sound layer (ALSA most likely, even if you use it with SL through a ESD or OSS layer) having to resample the 44.1kHz sound up to 48kHz before handing it over to the soundcard.

Good news is that most "48kHz soundcards" support running at 44.1kHz sampling rate, too. But you must tell them to do so.

So, to give it a try, create a file named .asoundrc in your home directory, containing:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
channels 2
period_time 0
period_size 2048
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}

bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 0
}

The "rate" setting forces your card to 44.1kHz. There are other settings you may want to experiment with (e.g. increase period_size and/or buffer_size). Google for "asoundrc" or "asound.conf" will tell you more.

If your SL currently uses ESD for sound output you may try OSS instead (either via kernel-level ALSA-OSS-Emulation enabled, or via the "aoss" wrapper command, running SL via "aoss ./secondlife" command).

Hope that helps. Have fun

Thanks for the tip Wanda. I'll have to give this a try when I get home. I noticed the same issue on both my "old" P4 box and my brand new Core2 box -- popping and skipping. Only on the on-board audio, though. I ended up fixing this in two ways... originally I wrapped second life with the artsdsp and the arts daemon seemed to buffer it enough to work around the issue (though it also added a slight delay to everything). This worked fine most of the time (but sometimes would cause SL to get flaky for unknown reasons). The second solution was to finally take my old Audigy from my even older Windows box and use that instead of the on-board sound. Only guess I have is that the hardware mixing caused less issues than the software mixing of the on-board sound card. Would be nice to be able to use the on-board sound, though and free up a pci slot.

The tips didn't help. How about concentrating this topic in the first one:
/263/9e/217645/1.html#post1725068
?

That' s it... sudo apt-get esound. If you have the ESD plugin for PulseAudio, let apt remove it!
Tested 32/64bits.
Set the Sound Configur in Ubuntu for Automatic and use ESD software mixing.
In the secondlife script force ESD by uncomenting the OSS and ALSA BAD variable.
100% now!

Nods .. am sure I've posted this before. But in KDE land:
Edit the secondlife file to only use ESD
Run "artsdsp -m esd -terminate -nobeeps &" just before you run secondlife.
Also.. Under "Control Centre - Sound System" set full duplex and use Alsa.
If you get crackling you can force the rate to 48kHz here as well.

Since I upgraded to gutsy I had terrible crackling sound in SL and I couldn't get sound from any other programs while SL was running.
If I started SL first and then Rhythmbox, it wouldn't play any files because it couldn't access the sound device (or something like that) and if I started Rhythmbox first, SL wouldn't have any sound. This thread fixed it.

Installing "esound" through Synaptic made the sound work when using ESD (i.e. having "export LL_BAD_ESD=x" commented out), but all sounds were 0,5-1 sec late.
Then I made the .asoundrc file as Wanda Sands posted and tried different settings and found that using the aoss wrapper and uncommenting "export LL_BAD_ESD=x" (thus making SL use OSS) coupled with the .asoundrc file makes all SL sounds work perfect, no crackling and no delay, and I can Listen to music through Rhythmbox.

Thank you, this thread!
And others might find this info useful.

ps. if I use the aoss wrapper and no .asoundrc file, SL crashes as soon as I click "login".

Hey neat! Works here as well in Debian. Had to remove the "Full Duplex" option from the KDE Sound System settings and added the "aoss" to:
export LL_WRAPPER='aoss'
inside the secondlife start script.

There are card specific setups here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix
Which are a good start point for tweaking the .asoundrc Wanda posted if you have problems.

Since I made the .asoundrc file as Wanda Sands posted (at least, I think it's since I made it), Rhythmbox have been skipping sometimes when playing music files. The skips are small and wide apart, but still an annoyance. The skips sound like if you shook a discman, it only lasts for a splitsecond and I'm not sure if it stops playback for that splitsecond, the sound just disappears for that splitsecond or if it perhaps actually skips a little forward in the song, but at any rate, it is notably enough for me to note it without listening for it when it happens.

looking at http://alsa.opensrc.org/.asoundrc and http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix#Hardware_Configurations_-_.7E.2F.asoundrc_Files doesn't really help me much in understanding the .asoundrc file Wanda Sands posted.

Does anyone know if the .asoundrc file could be responsible for the skipping in Rhythmbox and how I could possibly fix it?

Uh probably not the answer you wanted. But ....
I have like totally fixed it dude!
I ripped the SoundBlaster Live out of wife's computer, and gave her my C-Media 8 Channel beasty. Windows has no troubles with the C-media, and Alsa in Linux uses the hardware mixing on the SoundBlaster. Now I just leave everything at Debian defaults, no .asoundrc or anything. SL grabs the oss emulator just fine and the card mixes it along with whatever Alsa apps I play as well.
I think the Alsa wiki has a list of which cards have hardware mixing.

Thanks, the KDE post #8, solved my main sound issues no more music sounding like it's underwater. Only thing is I did not notice much change by using artsdsp -m esd -terminate -nobeeps &, however the other changes in sound center and in the 2l startup script made the diff, it's at least enjoyable to listen to.

Still not quite the same quality say if I use amarok to listen to a sky fm feed.

But I happy with it for now.