PulseAudio: Pops or crackling when moving volume slider

Greetings to all Manjaro users! I encountered an unpleasant issue with the sound when changing volume. On archlinux PulseAudio/Troubleshooting wiki page:
The first one is to unload module-suspend-on-idle. Turned out on Manjaro this moudle is unloaded by default anyway according to ~/.config/pulse/default.pa. So I guess this module is just irrelevant to my problem.
The second recommendation is to load module-udev-detect like this load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0, i.e. with timer-based audio scheduling disabled. This is what Fedora wiki recommend as well.

And here comes my main problem. This module is refusing to load with any parameters whatsoever:

$ pulseaudio -L "module-udev-detect"
E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Module "module-udev-detect" should be loaded once at most. Refusing to load.

Same thing goes on the journal every time pulseaudio starts:

$journalctl -f --user-unit pulseaudio.service
pulseaudio: Module "module-udev-detect" should be loaded once at most. Refusing to load
I use …
System:    Host: eugene-laptop Kernel: 5.10.7-3-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: GNOME 3.38.3 
           Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire A315-53G v: V1.21 
           serial: <superuser required> 
           Mobo: KBL model: Metapod_KL v: V1.21 serial: <superuser required> 
           UEFI [Legacy]: Insyde v: 1.21 date: 08/08/2018 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-8130U bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 4 MiB 
           Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 400/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.7-3-MANJARO PulseAudio 14.0-1

Has anyone faced this problem before? Is there any known solution? Please let me know.

Because it is already loaded.

1 Like

Oh, thanks a lot for pointing out my misunderstanding of the log message.

Ok, considering this, I corrected my self and did this:
$ pacmd unload-module module-udev-detect
$ pacmd load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
From now on the module seems to be loading as expected.

Unluckily, it turns out that these new parameter doesn’t really solve the problem with undesirable pops and cracklings, when changing the volume. Well, I was so close…
Any other ideas guys?

Oh, I figured this out, and in case someone runs into the same problem, it was module-sine causing the pops and crackling. Somehow ~/.config/pulse/default.pa was set to load this module and for some reason it interferes with the rest of the system sound. I just unloaded it and now everything works just fine.

it was module-sine causing the pops and crackling. Somehow ~/.config/pulse/default.pa was set to load this module

Manjaro does not by default create configuration file ~/.config/pulse/default.pa
A user would normally create it to replace the default configuration /etc/pulse/default.pa

There are only 2 other posts on this forum that mention use of module-sine and neither mention using ~/.config/pulse/default.pa
Alsamixer automute does not work
Hearing a lot of bad noise when no audio is playing (on battery)

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