I seem to have issues where playing audio via Spotify or RhythmBox will just drop for less than a second. The music isn’t pausing (and the fact that it’s across two audio apps) which indicates it’s audio related.
I can watch videos on YouTube fine without any dropping of audio.
I’ve had journalctl --follow running in the background to see if I can spot anything but nothing. I’ve noticed that NetworkManager throw’s an info level log entry in there which is the following:
Perhaps you can narrow down the issue by identifying which process(es) are taking up much cpu, running htop or glances while music is playing and the dropouts occur.
Thanks @ivanhoe, I’ve been doing that and not noticed anything. Only problem with htop is that it updates quickly so not sure I’ll be able to confirm… Will keep trying though.
Hey @ivanhoe, I’ve used glances (really nice tool) and I’ve identified that wpa_supplicant seems to be a common process at the time of the audio drop. I’ve taken a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wpa_supplicant and I don’t seem to have anything under /etc/wpa_supplicant…
I’ve checked if this is streaming music only, but it’s not. Using Rhythmbox with local music is still showing the same issue and when wpa_supplicant shows in glances
But wpa_supplicant is only needed for WiFi connections. Can you switch off your Wifi on HW level? If so, and it still comes up, report back.
EDIT: To stop wpa_supplicant from running for good, the service needs to be masked. See:
The sudo systemctl disable wpa_supplicant + sudo systemctl stop wpa_supplicant will ONLY temporarily disablewpa_supplicant service until the network manager restarts and/or the system reboots.
So, to correctly and/or completely disable the wpa_supplicant service from running again in the future even after the network manager restarts and/or the system reboots is to mask the service, i.e.
systemctl mask wpa_supplicant.service
etc., as pointed out in this article. This will create a symbolic file
I’ve tried the first two commands to temporarily disable the service, which as you said won’t persist. I’ve masked it and I’m testing after a reboot…
So far I’ve not managed to replicate the issue…
Next steps, if this happens would be to do upgrades… I’ve dragged a bit behind, so once that’s done at some point this week I will need to revert the mask and see if updates have fixed it, if not what would you want from me to help diagnose the issue further?
One thing at a time, please…
An update of the whole system is highly recommended, asap! - To prevent any future mis-haps, it might be recommendable to additionally install the lts-kernel:
So, your solution has fixed the issue… not. one. single. dropout! So, thank you very much!
I will certainly be updating my install, been playing around with it and setting up some stuff when I get chance. Normally keep my OS very much up-to-date - promise