Slight sound "crackle/pop" in 14.04

Question

I have a slight sort of crackling noise coming through my headset when I play, well, anything. It doesn't seem to happen if I just open a youtube video and let it play, not touching ANYTHING else. But if I maximize and minimize a couple times it starts up (or if I am doing anything else on the comp e.g. chatting on steam).

I am new to Linux and I am using my SteelSeries Siberia v2 USB headset which has it's own usb sound card 7.1 simulator thing. More info here: http://steelseries.com/us/products/audio/steelseries-siberia-v2-usb

I tried editing pulse settings but I can't seem to get permission to do that. And I looked up how to just delete pulse and ended up deleting a bunch of stuff I shouldn't have and then had 0 sound and no system settings...I reinstalled everything is back to where it was.

Is there a workaround for this?

Solution 1

I had horrible clicking/popping sounds from my Logitech G35 USB headset. It worked fine on windows but not Fedora. There would be a painful sharp crack every now and again when music was playing, and every time I'd seek to a new spot in a track or on youtube.

The following additions to /etc/pulse/daemon.conf seems to have improved things, although I've only tested for about an hour. These options increase audio delays/buffer sizes, and reduces the sampling rate. It's pretty severe, so if it works start playing with the numbers to find a balance. Not sure which option is the main suspect yet.

resample-method = src-sinc-best-quality
default-sample-format = float32ne
enable-remixing = yes
default-sample-rate = 16000
deferred-volume-safety-margin-usec = 16000
default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 60
nice-level = -15

After saving, run pulseaudio --kill, pulseaudio --check and pulseaudio --start if no errors.

Update: Pretty sure the 16khz sampling frequency essentially removes the crackles with a low-pass filter. Ugly quality, but better than aching ears.

Solution 2

This sounds similar to a known bug and does not look to be fixed any time soon. I have a similar problem with a USB DAC adapter. There is a bug raised at launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1136110) but the only recommendation so far is to attach the device to a separate PCI USB2 device, not USB3, however even this is not guaranteed.

I have just ordered such a card from eBay and will hopefully see if it helps me soon.

Comments

[pragma]

For me default-sample-rate = 48000 did the trick, quality is still great.