Artix Linux Forum

skipping sound in USB sound cards (not Artix specific)

18 August 2021, 11:35:47

one of the reasons i started playing with Artix was to see if it solved a problem with external USB sound cards - the problem...

once the card is in use for about 15-20 minutes, such as listening to music (source doesn't matter), the sound starts to skip every second or two - often this is described as "popping", but it's more like the sound stops (silence) for 100 ms or so, then plays ok for 1-2 seconds before repeating

this occurs with Manjaro and Artix (KDE, PulseAudio) and with the Schiit Hel 2 and ARC MK2 AMP/DAC combos

seems to me this could be a fundamental USB problem/configuration issue, but i don't know

nothing on the Arch wiki has helped me

Re: skipping sound in USB sound cards (not Artix specific)

Reply #1 – 19 August 2021, 06:17:22

Have you tried without pulseaudio to see if there is a difference?

I removed the pulseaudio packages except one: libpulse.

I installed qastools which offers a nice and very practical mixer :
sudo pacman -Sy qastools

Then I listed my audio cards:
cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                      HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfce60000 irq 96
 1 [Generic        ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfc900000 irq 98

I created/modified  /etc/asound.conf

And added this to select card1:
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

**********

To see the names of the loaded modules:
cat /proc/asound/modules
 0 snd_hda_intel
 1 snd_hda_intel
 2 snd_usb_audio

To see the cards and their numbers:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [HDMI]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                      HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfce60000 irq 96
 1 [Generic]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfc900000 irq 98
 2 [Camera]: USB-Audio - USB 2.0 Camera

To set snd_usb_audio position :
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture#Set_the_default_sound_card

Re: skipping sound in USB sound cards (not Artix specific)

Reply #2 – 19 August 2021, 08:14:20

You could also check power settings in powertop, there can be some sort of USB autosuspend

Re: skipping sound in USB sound cards (not Artix specific)

Reply #3 – 21 August 2021, 21:17:56

Don't forget to install volumeicon.
 It's keybind to control volume without pulse audio.