Audio crackling in performance mode

Support Sound
1

Hello,

I am on the latest Manjaro GNOME. When in performance mode, all audio starts crackling. When set to balanced mode audio works alright. Happens both with pipewire and pulseaudio.

It happens on all Kernels after 5.4., but not on 5.4.

How can I fix it? Thank you.

System Details Report

Hardware Information:

  • Hardware Model: Lenovo Lenovo IdeaPad S145-15IWL
  • Memory: 16.0 GiB
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-8565U × 8
  • Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 620 (WHL GT2)
  • Disk Capacity: 496.1 GB

Software Information:

  • Firmware Version: ASCN40WW
  • OS Name: Manjaro Linux
  • OS Build: rolling
  • OS Type: 64-bit
  • GNOME Version: Not Available
  • Windowing System: Wayland
  • Kernel Version: Linux 5.4.259-1-MANJARO
2

If noise is audible using pipewire and pulseaudio, I suggest disable power-saving for ALSA audio device temporarily

sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save <<< 0

and also try this in addition to previous change

sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller <<< N

Changes are not persistent and can be reverted by reboot

3

Thanks for the message!

Unfortunately, these commands did not work. Any other ideas?

4

I suggest turn off PipeWire

systemctl --user stop pipewire-pulse.socket pipewire-pulse.service

and test audio playback direct to ALSA device: ALC236 Analog
( CARD=HDA Intel PCH DEV=0 or CARD=0 DEV=0 or hw:PCH,0 )
HW probe of Lenovo IdeaPad S145-15IWL 8... #1e700d65ea: aplay

If there is no crackling, issue is within PipeWire

If crackling is still audible in ALSA it is not a PipeWire issue

5

Thank you. I tried this with “speaker-test -c 2” but the test is done with pink noise, which means I can’t tell if there is any crackling.

6

speaker-test has additional options for test sounds:

speaker-test(1) — Arch manual pages

[-t | –test pink|sine|wav
-t pink means use pink noise (default).
-t sine means to use sine wave
-t wav means to play WAV files

Default .wav files are located in /usr/share/sounds/alsa

speaker-test -dhw:0,0 -c2 -l3 -twav
7

Hello, and sorry for the delay. I just got time to try this.

I turned off PipeWire and tried with the command you gave. There is audible crackling in the test.
So, this means it’s an ALSA issue? How do I go about solving it?

Thank you.

8

It is unlikely to be just an ALSA issue or crackling would be audible for all power states

I suggest you get full ALSA diagnostic for both power states

sudo alsa-info.sh --stdout >> alsa-performance.txt

and

sudo alsa-info.sh --stdout >> alsa-balanced.txt

and install meld (or similar) to compare the data in both text files
different timestamps are not relevant and can be disregarded

If you find any relevant differences in ALSA configuration, upload both text files to an online pastebin and post links to uploaded data here

9

Thank you.

Here is the alsa-balanced.txt
https://pastebin.com/bvqPSgjr

And here is the alsa-performance.txt
https://pastebin.com/yN3q3bvn

There were several differences between the files in Meld, but I could not understand anything since I am not an expert. Maybe you can help figure things out.