Audio output is choppy and stops when accessing settings or using mic

Hello everybody,

after using Manjaro for some time on my Laptop I also installed it on my main Computer which I use for gaming and general media consumption. I dual boot with Windows 10 for some games that simply don’t run on Linux (eg. due to Anticheat, …)

Today I wanted to play some games via Steam that should be natively supported: Apex Legends and CS:GO. After Apex kept crashing at every start of a round I quit it and started CS:GO.
As my random mates didn’t hear me ingame I checked the audio assignments for both input and output.
Some weeks ago I bought a brand new Behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD off of Amazon.

So what I observed was that whenever I click at the corresponding icon at my icon bar the sound cuts out completely. That’s not exclusive to CS:GO as I found out just now, also Firefox playing some kind of media (Twitch, Youtube, …) won’t give me anything - for Firefox I need to refresh the site, for CS:GO I need to change through the available profiles (analog/digital mono/stereo input/output) until it magically starts to output audio again on my preferred profile (Digital Stereo Duplex).
What is exclusive to CS:GO (as I didn’t use any other application yet) is that whenever I use Push-to-Talk audio cuts out completely, too! Then I need to restart the game, without changing system audio, to get that output back - until I want to use PtT again.

I already read that this kind of audio interface is problematic since Kernel > 5.10 as Behringer seemingly changed something about their Hardware or Software but no one is really sure about that.
As troubleshooting steps I followed the findings of another thread on this forums respectively the reddit equivalent (I am not allowed to post links): creating a file under /etc/modprobe.d/ with both options snd_usb_audio implicit_fb=1 or options snd_usb_audio quirk_flags=0x20010 just removes the interface from my audio settings after a reboot.

Currently I am running Kernel 5.19.1-3 but also tried 5.15, 5.18, 5.19-rc and 5.10 - the latter at least lacked the choppy audio but I didn’t check (yet) if the audio ‘muting’ or ‘cutting out’ persists.

If anyone could suggest what to do - other than sending this UMC202HD back - I’d be really grateful.
Also, if any additional info is needed just point it out and I’ll add that ASAP.


EDIT1: I’ve tested said scenario with Kernel 5.10 and interestingly today the problem is exactly the same; well, the output channel of my interface wasn’t detected on a cold boot while the input was. Weird.
I’ll check if my Laptop is capable of running at least CS:GO, otherwise I have to find another computer to check if that may be the problem.

https://nandakumar.org/blog/2022/02/umc202hd-linux.html

1 Like

Kernel has been patched recently for this interface
Linux-Kernel Archive: [PATCH 5.18 0008/1095] ALSA: usb-audio: Add quirk for Behringer UMC202HD

The patch was not included with kernel v5.19.1, but it is included with kernel v5.19.4 on Testing Branch
quirks.c - sound/usb/quirks.c - Linux source code (v5.19.4) - Bootlin

You can wait for next update to stable branch or change to testing branch
Switching Branches - Manjaro Wiki

As I was curious I changed the branch to testing following the linked wiki entry.
Switched to Kernel 5.19.7-1 which fixed the issue just like you said.

Thank you very much - both of you.

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