Audio looping/freezing for a few seconds

Started like 2 weeks ago, first I noticed in games, occasionally the game freezes and the sound loops for like 2 seconds.

Thought it’s a proton issue, but today it happened while I was listening to music on spotify and while watching youtube too.

ryzen 5700g, gnome wayland, updated system.

can you report

inxi -Fza

https://0x0.st/oR_y.txt

you can add theses options on boot kernel
“iommu=pt amd_pstate=passive”
see How to use AMD P-State in Linux 5.17

about audio , are you using HDMI ?
if yes there is this regression , just wait next update

The kernel parameters didnt help. Not using HDMI for audio, just a regular headphone jack.

have you checked with pavucontrol ?

No, what should I look for?

Check the tab named as “Configuration” in the upper right corner of pavucontrol. Maybe, you have to click on the > to get there. (And turn your output volume down, while experimenting.)
:wink:

If that doesn’t help, check out the EnOS-Discovery site.

I have no idea how pavucontrol is supposed to help with troubleshooting… Maybe I forgot to mention, but this looping and screen freezing happens once or twice in an hour.

On the configuration tab of pavucontrol you can change the audio-sinks (software) in use. It sometimes helps to get over sound troubles one may encounter.

Thanks for the suggestion, I have three profiles in configuration, I guess that’s what you meant by sinks. But changing them didn’t help, same behavior.

Might not be an issue with the audio system, because the whole system stutters when the sound is looping, like gameplay or video playback. Maybe it even happens when I use some desktop app and don’t listen to anything, It’s just not that noticeable if I don’t move the mouse while it happens.

It’s just really annoying during gameplay, usually in the worst moments it happens.

Are you using Linux kernel version 6.1.x? Because it seems that the problem is happening to me as well.
The problem usually appears when I’m watching youtube videos and playing games.

My current workaround is to switch to the LTS kernel

Yes I’m on 6.1, I also noticed the stuttering happening while not listening to audio, the UI just becomes slow for a second sometimes, it’s hard to notice without audio.

Thanks for the tip. Do you have an AMD cpu?

Yes I do, I’m using AMD Ryzen 3 5300U on Lenovo Ideapad 3 14ALC6

1 Like

Just to throw in a surprise, I was seeing jumps in YT videos, where they froze momentarily every minute or so then continued, with an “Intel inside” machine (CPU, integrated graphics, Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth … the lot).

Reverting to the LTS kernel from 6.1.x fixed it.

Nice, so it’s not just an amd issue. Anyone knows where you should report these kind of bugs? Probably a kernel bug.

It’s been reported to Red Hat and there are a lot of reports around, particularly against Fedora. As RH are a prominent contributor to the kernel, the issue should be picked up.

2 Likes

found the bug on the arch tracker https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/77340
and more details here https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216989
maybe it’s a firmware issue, need to try the lts kernel now, see if it fixes this.

edit: looks like my bios had this issue on windows too https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/newupdate-l1-79-asrock-deskmini-x300-beta-bios-l1-77-agesa-combo-v2-pi-1-2-0-7.17527/

I’m just a bit afraid of bios flashing…

It’s not dangerous if you exactly follow the instructons. Always make sure power supply isn’t disconnected during the process.