Audio sounds fine on Youtube but is distorted on Clementine and SMmplayer

Support Sound
1

Hello everyone.

In the last 6 months I am trying to make Manjaro Linux my default/main OS.
My daily driver sort of speak.
Now that Steam is so good and Bottles can handle my Diablo needs, I see no reason not to.

But last month I had the misfortune that my onboard sound card Failed/Died somehow and
I was forced to buy a new PCI-express sound card.

$ inxi -A
Audio:
Device-1: C-Media CMI8738/CMI8768 PCI Audio driver: snd_cmipci
Device-2: AMD Ellesmere HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 470/480 / 570/580/590]
driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound API: ALSA v: k6.0.0-1-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: yes
Sound Server-2: PipeWire v: 0.3.58 running: yes

When I play a video on Youtube, it all sounds normal/OK.

But when I play an MP3 on Clementine or a video file on SMplayer, it sounds distorted.

In order to give you an exact idea/picture of what I am hearing, I recorded a small
10-second sample with my phone and I uploaded it as an unlisted video on Youtube on this link:

  • In my Windows 10 system, the audio card sounds fine on all scenarios,
    youtube, video player, audio player…etc

  • Has anyone encountered anything like this?

The fact that it sounds just fine in the browser/Youtube scenario,
makes me think that I might have misconfigured something.
Is there a way for me to do a TOTAL RECAL or RESET of my sound setup on Manjaro?

  • Any suggestion would be appreciated.

If you need more data from my side, please ask.

PS:
I have disabled the onboard Realtek Sound card via the BIOS,
since it was unusable anyway.

2

Hello @logan11 :wink:

Your sample sounds pretty much like slow motion audio… :face_with_peeking_eye:

So if in your browser everything works correct, then there must be an issue with smplayer/clementine or pipewire/pulseaudio.

Maybe the problem is just that both are running:

Disable one of them:

systemctl --user disable --now pulseaudio
3

Hi @megavolt

I tried both commands but the distortion remains:

$ sudo systemctl --user disable --now pipewire
Failed to connect to bus: No medium found

$ sudo systemctl --user disable --now pulseaudio
Failed to connect to bus: No medium found

$ inxi -A

Audio:
Device-1: C-Media CMI8738/CMI8768 PCI Audio driver: snd_cmipci
Device-2: AMD Ellesmere HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 470/480 / 570/580/590]
driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound API: ALSA v: k6.0.0-1-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: yes
Sound Server-2: PipeWire v: 0.3.58 running: yes

4

It is a user service and not a system service, so without sudo…

5

Thank you for the tip megavolt

I got these messages:

[logan@loganman ~]$ systemctl --user disable --now pipewire
Warning: Stopping pipewire.service, but it can still be activated by:
pipewire.socket

[logan@loganman ~]$ systemctl --user disable --now pulseaudio
Warning: Stopping pulseaudio.service, but it can still be activated by:
pulseaudio.socket

[logan@loganman ~]$ inxi -A
Audio:
Device-1: C-Media CMI8738/CMI8768 PCI Audio driver: snd_cmipci
Device-2: AMD Ellesmere HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 470/480 / 570/580/590]
driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound API: ALSA v: k6.0.0-1-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: yes

Clementine still sounds distorted though.

6

Aha!
Plot Twist / Update

If the Youtube video is playing in the background, and I play something simultaneously on Clementine and/or SMplayer, then they sound fine.
Even if I MUTE the youtube video but sill let it play in the background, the other two programs sound just fine.

How the heck is that happening?

The plot thickens!!!

7

Your sample sounds pretty much like slow motion audio

If audio seems to be playing at incorrect speed it would be either:

  • Failure to resample sink-input stream to sink output stream
  • A resampling error in either the audio player or PulseAudio
  • Audio playback speed has been changed in audio player

I suggest checking PulseAudio configuration settings for resampling and sample rates

pulseaudio --dump-conf | grep sampl

and the Sample Specification for PulseAudio sink outputs

pactl list sinks

And check sink-inputs for all audio players in different audio states

pactl list sink-inputs

I expect the optimal and sub-optimal sink-inputs will have differences in Sample Specification

8

You are right on the money nikgnomic.

The first command shoes this:

$ pulseaudio --dump-conf | grep sampl
resample-method = auto
avoid-resampling = no
default-sample-format = s16le
default-sample-rate = 44100
alternate-sample-rate = 48000
default-sample-channels = 2

When the sound is problematic I see this output:

$ pactl list sinks | grep “Sample Specification”
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 48000Hz
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 48000Hz

$ pactl list sink-inputs | grep “Sample Specification”
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 48000Hz
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 48000Hz

When I start playing the Youtube video simultaneously and the sound is normal,
the output changes to this:

$ pactl list sinks | grep “Sample Specification”
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 48000Hz
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 48000Hz

$ pactl list sink-inputs | grep “Sample Specification”
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz

How can I TELL to the audio card “you will use 44100Hz and you will LIKE it…”?

9

CMI8738 is an old audio codec (1990s) but should be able to play s16le 48000Hz if it is Legacy audio SB16™ compatible
Brief Notes on C-Media 8338/8738/8768/8770 Driver — The Linux Kernel documentation

How can I TELL to the audio card “you will use 44100Hz

reconfigure the alternate-sample-rate from 48000Hz to 44100Hz

tee ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf <<< 'alternate-sample-rate = 44100'

I also suggest changing resample-method to use speex resampler (to maintain audio quality if audio is downmixed from 48000Hz)

tee --append ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf <<< 'resample-method = speex-float-3'

Reboot system or restart PulseAudio to load user reconfigurations

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio
10

I would like to thank you @nikgnomic and @megavolt for your time and efforts.
Your tips helped me to learn a little bit more about how the audio system works in Linux.

Unfortunately I was not able to fix the issue. I tried to implement the solution but no luck.
I even tried different Live CDs to test the audio.

  • Manjaro KDE Live CD
  • Kubuntu Live CD
  • Current Linux Mint Live CD
  • Older Linux Mint Live CD (released on 2017-2018)

In all the cases the Audio playback issue was as problematic as described in the original post.

I was thrown back to the fist “dates” I had with Linux, in the early 2000s
when I was trying distros like Mandrake, Suse…etc.
It was the time of software-assisted 56 kbps modems and software-assisted onboard audio cards.
Which naturally did not have any drivers so the experience was like a silent movie of the 1920s.

So I decommissioned my problematic motherboard (Asus PRIME-X570-P)
which I will reuse as a home NAS or something.

I bought a new motherboard (MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK) which seems to work OK.

I think they even both have the same Audio Codec / Chip.

Anyway now my Audio device setup looks like in the screenshot, and it plays audio and video fine.
I guess the new audio chip is named “AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio” now,
and not Realtek… or something like it was on the old one.

screen-1-audio-system-info
screen-1-audio-system-info1583×1435 292 KB

I will leave it as is now for fear that if I cough or even look at it a funny way,
it may commit suicide just to spite me.

Thank you again for your time.

PS:
I don’t know if this counts as a “Resolved” type of conclusion.
I guess not because the CMedia card was working fine on Windows 10.
I just could not get it to work on Linux.

11

I am marking your comment as the solution because a modern onboard audio device is capable of much better quality and reliability than the CMI card on any OS

MSI specifications show that under the generic AMD Starship/Matisse name this motherboard has a Realtek ALC1200 codec, that can support studio quality audio up to 24bits/192kHz
But for real world use, it can run HD audio (24bits/48kHz) easily with minimal additional load on the rest of the system

1 Like
12

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