Audio output deactivated / digital audio delayed

Hello everyone,

I have a similar / maybe the same problem as described here: Digital output audio delayed and popping

My default, not the only, scenario where this happens reproducible is playing back audio from a browser. I watch a video, pause it, continue, it takes about 3 seconds until I hear something. (The difference to the linked topic is that I did not change my source of playback.)

Now, I made an observation that might help in diagnosis. I have a Bose sound system with a display. The display shows the input it uses and “PCM 2.0” when playback is active. “PCM 2.0” disappears a few seconds after I paused the playback. I noticed that the delay happens exactly when the “PCM 2.0” disappeared. If my playback continues fast enough before that text disappears, no delay occurs. So I guess my sound system takes a moment to begin playback and the delay happens because some kind of connection is interrupted when I pause playback.

Now, how to turn off that interruption? Where does it come from?

I use a digital SPDIF optical connection. Following is my inxi -Fxz output. I use the audio device that is number 2 in the output. It’s the onboard chip of my motherboard.

System:
  Kernel: 5.13.19-2-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0
  Desktop: GNOME 40.5 Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Micro-Star product: MS-7B89 v: 1.0 serial: <filter>
  Mobo: Micro-Star model: B450M MORTAR MAX (MS-7B89) v: 1.0 serial: <filter>
  UEFI: American Megatrends v: 2.70 date: 04/21/2020
Battery:
  Device-1: hidpp_battery_0
  model: Logitech MX Vertical Advanced Ergonomic Mouse
  charge: 10% (should be ignored) status: Discharging
CPU:
  Info: 6-Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 2
  rev: 0 cache: L2: 3 MiB
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
  bogomips: 86424
  Speed: 3607 MHz min/max: 2200/3600 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz):
  1: 3607 2: 2057 3: 2133 4: 2056 5: 2056 6: 3601 7: 2155 8: 2057 9: 3597
  10: 1922 11: 2166 12: 2197
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590]
  vendor: Sapphire Limited driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus-ID: 26:00.0
  Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.13 driver: loaded: amdgpu,ati
  unloaded: modesetting resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo>
  OpenGL: renderer: Radeon RX 570 Series (POLARIS10 DRM 3.41.0
  5.13.19-2-MANJARO LLVM 12.0.1)
  v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.3 direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Ellesmere HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 470/480 / 570/580/590]
  vendor: Sapphire Limited driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 26:00.1
  Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 28:00.4
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.13.19-2-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.38 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
  vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: r8169 v: kernel port: f000 bus-ID: 22:00.0
  IF: enp34s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.7 TiB used: 1.05 TiB (61.5%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Kingston model: SA2000M81000G size: 931.51 GiB
  temp: 40.9 C
  ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB
  ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: SanDisk model: SDSSDA120G size: 111.79 GiB
  ID-4: /dev/sdc vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 192.02 GiB used: 155 GiB (80.7%) fs: ext4
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p6
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 98.4 MiB used: 570 KiB (0.6%) fs: vfat
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 45.1 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 43.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 1801
Info:
  Processes: 425 Uptime: 7h 29m Memory: 15.58 GiB used: 6.05 GiB (38.8%)
  Init: systemd Compilers: gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: 1537 Shell: Zsh v: 5.8
  inxi: 3.3.08

Thanks in advance.

Switch to a supported kernel as that one is EOL, or switch to a LTS kernel.

Same story as bellow, decide what server is running, but not both.

The interruption might be due to PulseAudio module module-suspend-on-idle
that module will suspend an audio sink after a few seconds of inactivity to save power

The PulseAudio module can be unloaded temporarily with this command

pacmd load-module module-suspend-on-idle
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suspend-on-idle was the culprit indeed. Thank you!

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