Crunchy popping sound every so often on YouTube videos

[tyebillion]

I am experiencing a crunchy popping sound every so often on YouTube videos played in Mozilla Firefox 54.0 (64 bit). This is happening about once or twice per video.

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Audio:     Card-1 Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel
           Card-2 NVIDIA Device 0fbc driver: snd_hda_intel
           Card-3 Logitech Webcam C310 driver: USB Audio
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-87-generic

[NoWinBob]

My hardware is very similar to yours.Youtube works fine on Google chrome,if you can't get it working on Firefox.

[tyebillion]

My hardware is very similar to yours.Youtube works fine on Google chrome,if you can't get it working on Firefox.

Nice one! I switched to Chrome / Chromium and no glitches so far, seems to sound crisper too.

Update
I spoke to soon, today I'm getting the occasional glitch in the audio on Youtube videos played in the Chromium browser.

I tried listening on headphones instead of using speakers and the glitch still sounds occasionally, although not as noticeable. So it must be a problem with my sound card hardware or a software problem.

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$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I'm listening to the built in audio.

[tyebillion]

I recorded this sound problem internally using "Audio Recorder" and the crunchy popping sound is present upon playback. Suggesting this is a software / driver problem rather than faulty speakers, although it could be a hardware problem with the computers sound.

Occasionally there is a continuous fuzz along with the regular audio when visiting some websites, which continues on all playback until the Firefox browser is restarted. The last website this happened on is: https://www.cgmagonline.com/reviews/bay ... on-switch/

I also noticed that the built in audio input is not shown in the sound input section of the system settings, only my web cam is there.

[Flemur]

I recorded this sound problem internally using "Audio Recorder" and the crunchy popping sound is present upon playback. Suggesting this is a software / driver problem rather than faulty speakers, although it could be a hardware problem with the computers sound.

Good to make a test rather than assume.

Could the sound be a CPU glitch? I'd describe that as a "gap" or "stutter", but who knows? You're more likely to get that if you're using a software EQ and/or pulseaudio is doing frequency conversions in software.

After I replaced a primitive onboard audio with a basic "Sound Blaster", I ditched (uninstalled) pulseaudio and never looked back because the SB can do what I used pulseaudio for, namely "record what you hear", frequency conversion and multiple sound input (mix).

If you want to test if pulse is the culprit, you can disable it and run chrome(/ium) using just alsa.
(FWIW, how to run firefox w/o pulseaudio: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=257818)
Or you can uninstall pulseaudio, reboot and use ALSA directly that way; you might need to check some audio settings. If you need pulse back, just reinstall it.

[mediclaser]

I did experience similar issue on my old single-core laptop using Mint 17.x. The cause of the popping sound was because something in the OS turns the speaker ON or OFF (at the beginning of a video and at the end). I knew it was the case because the laptop has built-in LED to indicate when the speaker is muted or not. The LED would turn ON or OFF at the same time as the popping sound.

But the issue eventually disappeared. I don't know exactly what fixed it.

Does this give you an idea?

[somelurker]

One way to narrow down the problem is by testing a sound file using a media player. That way, you can rule out the browser and Internet connection as causes.

It's not necessarily a hardware problem. If you are able, you can test the sound using the same YouTube videos in Windows also, to see if you hear the problem.

I went through a very similar, if not identical problem, and it was a nightmare: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=259469&start=40. Maybe some of the suggestions there will help you.

In my case, the problem didn't appear to be happening in Windows, so I'm fairly certain it wasn't a hardware problem. After trying numerous possible fixes posted by helpful members of the forum, I finally gave up and used a USB sound card to bypass the problem. If you don't already have one, the cheapest ones are less than $10. I haven't tested exhaustively yet, but the problem appears to be gone.

My best guess is that there was some kind of incompatibility between Linux's sound drivers (or another package) and my hardware. The problem seems simple enough, but there are numerous possible causes. See this page, for example: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pu ... leshooting

After trying the most obvious fixes, using a cheap sound card may be a practical bypass worth considering.

[Philipp91]

I recorded this sound problem internally using "Audio Recorder" and the crunchy popping sound is present upon playback.

So when you played that recording on another computer, you would hear the same popping sound in the same places?

I have a similar issue. I observed that the popping sound happens mostly when there is no sound from YouTube, e.g. in very short breaks between words/sentences. I do not hear the popping sounds when some music is running in the background. And when I record the audio that causes the popping sounds, they are not in the recording: When played back alone, it pops in the same places, but when played back with background music, there's no popping again, and also I definitely can't see anything at the times when the popping happens in Audacity's visualization of the sound wave.

Another thing we have in common is the NVidia card. Does your sound output go through that (HDMI/DisplayPort) or your regular analog output of the onboard sound card?