[SOLVED] Sound garbled just after booting

robertdaleweir · #1 30th January 2012, 06:56 AM

Hi
I have an issue which only occurs for about 20 or so seconds after a reboot (F16 Kernel 3.2.1 Gnome 3.2.1). VLC or skype or whatever are garbled, like there are two sources running, after a reboot. It always clears up but is very annoying. It is reproducible and seems to straighten out after an app (which uses sound,vlc,skype,etc) is running for awhile.
Can anyone suggest a way of finding what is going on? Dmesg shows no errors or warnings. Thanks...

robertdaleweir · #2 31st January 2012, 08:08 PM

Updated to Kernel to 3.2.2 and initial sound is still garbled. Has anyone experienced this problem?

robertdaleweir · #3 2nd March 2012, 04:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdaleweir

Updated to Kernel to 3.2.2 and initial sound is still garbled. Has anyone experienced this problem?

Hi again
I have installed a 32 bit F16 and this problem persists. I am running Kernel 3.2.7-1-f16.i686.pae and Gnome 3.2.1. I am still experiencing the garbled sound when first starting VLC after a reboot, as mentioned before.
Has anyone experienced this problem?

COKEDUDE · #4 2nd March 2012, 06:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdaleweir

Hi again
I have installed a 32 bit F16 and this problem persists. I am running Kernel 3.2.7-1-f16.i686.pae and Gnome 3.2.1. I am still experiencing the garbled sound when first starting VLC after a reboot, as mentioned before.
Has anyone experienced this problem?

Add something to your .bashrc to kill the pulseaudio process then restart it.

robertdaleweir · #5 2nd March 2012, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by COKEDUDE

Add something to your .bashrc to kill the pulseaudio process then restart it.

Hi
OK. I like your suggestion. I am not sure that I know the syntax for this action. I checked using 'systemctl -a' and did not see it, so I guess it is not run as a service. Maybe someone can help with the specifics. Thanks...

stevea · #6 2nd March 2012, 04:53 PM

Also - try a powerdown ,between reboot. I had a weird problem back on 3.1.x that made sound fail till I power-cycled. Reboot w/o powerdown did not clear the problem.

PabloTwo · #7 2nd March 2012, 05:26 PM

You can use the pulseaudio --kill and pulseaudio --start to stop and start the pulseaudio daemon. See if running those two commands, one after the other, straightens out the garbled audio situation.
It used to be that doing "pulseaudio -k|--kill" would kill pulseaudio but it would immediately re-spawn itself. I just tried that on my F16 and it didn't re-spawn.

---------- Post added at 12:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 PM ----------

I should add a caution on killing the pulseaudio daemon. When I did so just a few moments ago to test if the pulseaudio daemon would re-spawn itself, I immediately noticed one of my cpu cores went to 100% use. Using top to find the cause, I found it was my "volumeicon" tint2 panel systray applet. I had to kill that process and relaunch it (after restarting the pulseaudio daemon) to fix that issue.

So, if you do try "pulseaudio --kill", you might want to check with top right afterwards to see if anything on your system is glitched due to it's disappearance.

robertdaleweir · #8 3rd March 2012, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PabloTwo

You can use the pulseaudio --kill and pulseaudio --start to stop and start the pulseaudio daemon. See if running those two commands, one after the other, straightens out the garbled audio situation.
It used to be that doing "pulseaudio -k|--kill" would kill pulseaudio but it would immediately re-spawn itself. I just tried that on my F16 and it didn't re-spawn.

---------- Post added at 12:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 PM ----------

I should add a caution on killing the pulseaudio daemon. When I did so just a few moments ago to test if the pulseaudio daemon would re-spawn itself, I immediately noticed one of my cpu cores went to 100% use. Using top to find the cause, I found it was my "volumeicon" tint2 panel systray applet. I had to kill that process and relaunch it (after restarting the pulseaudio daemon) to fix that issue.

So, if you do try "pulseaudio --kill", you might want to check with top right afterwards to see if anything on your system is glitched due to it's disappearance.

Hi Pablo Two
Great suggestion and I will give that a try. I will post back when I get any definitive information. Thanks very much...

---------- Post added at 11:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:09 AM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevea

Also - try a powerdown ,between reboot. I had a weird problem back on 3.1.x that made sound fail till I power-cycled. Reboot w/o powerdown did not clear the problem.

Hi Stevea
I will give this approach a try. Do have any idea why a power down would be required? Thanks for your post...

robertdaleweir · #9 21st March 2012, 01:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robertdaleweir

Hi Pablo Two
Great suggestion and I will give that a try. I will post back when I get any definitive information. Thanks very much...

---------- Post added at 11:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:09 AM ----------

Hi Stevea
I will give this approach a try. Do have any idea why a power down would be required? Thanks for your post...

UPDATE
I have attempted to invoke the pulseaudio --kill and pulseaudio --start to resolve the Garbled Sound issue, to no avail.
I am now running VLC 1.1.13 Kernel 3.2.9 and Gnome 3.2.1 only to find that the Garbled Sound issue is actually worse. It appears to be unaffected by using the recommended work arounds. It has essentially rendered using VLC unacceptable.
This is very disconcerting, as I have enjoyed playing my DVDs using VLC. I will peal back the updates to see if I can get back what I used to have.

Chilly Willy · #10 21st March 2012, 03:21 AM

Versions back, VLC was "hit & miss" from version to version if it would work right or not.
It would go quite a few versions & then all hell would break loose.
Never knew what the next version would be that would fix it.
I got tired of it & now use MOVIE PLAYER. It's not perfect, but I got rid of all those weird issues.
It seems VLC is still "cursed" with this... to bad, because it is a good player, when it WORKS!

robertdaleweir · #11 13th April 2012, 05:21 PM

Hi
I have been forced to abandon VLC in favor of Movie Player. The garbled sound has gotten more persistent and nothing I try seems to help. I have used VLC on the Win platform but recently my friend has been experiencing issue on a Win 7 unit. Used to be it was better than Media Player (because of its cross platform ability) but not now, apparently.
Oh well so is life...