Horrible distortion on Skype sounds only

[momist]

I don't know where to look for this. My system is a new(ish) motherboard, MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 with on board sound and AMD A75 chipset. Although capable of 4/5.1/7.1 channel modes, I use only the green line-out socket to feed a set of Logitech speakers. 2+bass.

The sound works pretty well in everything except the Skype notification tones, which are broken, horrible and crackly. Very occasionally, it comes through cleanly, but mostly it's horrible, sometimes just a harsh white noise. I thought I had cured it by installing the pulse volume control, and adjusting the system sounds, but it was only a temporary fix. Other system sounds seem clean enough now, although none last as long as a Skype notification. Music sounds very good, as does audio from Youtube etc.

Maybe this is a case of inappropriate drivers for the motherboard, or simply because the non updated Skype doesn't work well in Linux any more (but I didn't notice a problem before I changed the Mobo). Can anyone point me in a suitable direction to look?

Thanks.

[MartianStorm]

I'm using an AuzenTech X-Fi and I have the same issue. The source of the problem is Pulse itself.

[hexabit]

I don't know if this is related but on my Linux Mint 16 XFCE amd64 when I install ai32-libs
I had the same sound distortion on Skype, when I uninstalled those libs the sound back to normal again...

[nomko]

There's some solution given here: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/get-sound-working-in-skype-with-ubuntu.html. Maybe that fixes your problem(s).

[hexabit]

There's some solution given here: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/get-sound-working-in-skype-with-ubuntu.html. Maybe that fixes your problem(s).

Acctually when I tried this solution it got worse... for me worked also this:

Code: Select all

$ nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

and add "tsched=0" at the end of line, so it reads:

Code: Select all

load-module module-udev-detect use_ucm=0 tsched=0

[MrD]

There's some solution given here: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/get-sound-working-in-skype-with-ubuntu.html. Maybe that fixes your problem(s).

Acctually when I tried this solution it got worse... for me worked also this:

Code: Select all

$ nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

and add "tsched=0" at the end of line, so it reads:

Code: Select all

load-module module-udev-detect use_ucm=0 tsched=0

I lost my sound icon in the taskbar after doing this. My volume control buttons don't work either. I had Skype audio, but so did everyone down the corridor in my accommodation. Either that or I had to use an external speaker and lower the volume manually on that.....

[sheldon-mint]

I found the solution, and a cause of the problem, on [url]http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/get-sound-working-in-skype-with-ubuntu.html[/url].

The first thing I did was to add my username to the pulse-access group, using the command

Code: Select all

gpasswd -a paul pulse-access

That worked for about 5 minutes, and then returned to the distortion.
The second thing I did was read the above webpage, and modify file /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop, change the 'Exec=' line to read 'Exec=env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 skype %U'.

The single command to do this is

Code: Select all

sudo sed -i 's/^Exec=.*/Exec=env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 skype %U/' /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

[MartianStorm]

There's some solution given here: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/get-sound-working-in-skype-with-ubuntu.html. Maybe that fixes your problem(s).

Acctually when I tried this solution it got worse... for me worked also this:

Code: Select all

$ nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

and add "tsched=0" at the end of line, so it reads:

Code: Select all

load-module module-udev-detect use_ucm=0 tsched=0

This worked for me in LM15, now the issue is back in LM16 and the above solution doesn't work anymore, instead pulse fails to load when I add this line to the config file. In addition, now I can't even listen to music with foobar without sound artifacts. Pulse is gettin' better 'n' better with every iteration...