disable automatic output switch off on silence <SOLVED>

[ashultz]

hi! i've just upgraded from linux mint 18 to 19.3. it's all good, but the following sound problem.

i'm using analogue output of a built-in sound card. it all ok about the sound playback. but after few seconds of silence the output seems to be disconnected internally (?), resulting in noise coming from an amplifier, just like when my pc is turned off.

i never experienced things like this before the upgrade. so i believe it's not a bug but the feature to turn off unused sound device when there is no signal, but it makes a problem for me. yes, i know, that i should make all the equipment carefully grounded to avoid hearing noise like this. but i guess, this feature may be just disabled.

[ashultz]

discovered the solution. the issue caused by the pulse audio module "module-suspend-on-idle" loaded. maybe i could change the way the device is suspended, but i decided to turn off the feature.

i could just comment out the following line in puse audio config (/etc/pulse/default.pa):
load-module module-suspend-on-idle

but it is recommended to work it out the other way with additional user config (~/.config/pulse/default.pa):
.include /etc/pulse/default.pa
.nofail
unload-module module-suspend-on-idle
.fail

now the module is not listed in pulse modules list (pactl list modules). fixed.