Audio cracks in Linux Mint

[Tech N Gamer]

So, I've installed Linux Mint on a separate partition on my Gaming computer where Windows is on one partition and Linux Mint is on the other. However, when I'm in Mint, at times, the audio will crack with my headphones on along with them off and coming out of my monitor. Any help? The specs of my computer is:

• Intel Core i5-6400
• DDR4 8 GB
• NVidia GeForce GTX 970
  • VRAM 4 GB
• RealTek Ethernet, WiFi, and Audio Device.

I'm new to Linux and I'm used to Windows, the only reason I installed Linux is in case Windows decides to kill itself.

[DrMacintosh]

check your audio drivers playback frequency. 

[Tech N Gamer]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

check your audio drivers playback frequency. 

And how do I do that? I just stated that I'm new to Linux. If your confused, I'm talking about the Linux OS not Windows. Windows is working fine, besides the point of it slowing to a crawl when left on for to long. But that's not the point of the thread.

[DrMacintosh]

11 minutes ago, Tech N Gamer said:

And how do I do that?

idk, its Linux

[noahdvs]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

idk, its Linux

Could you be any more useless?

 

2 hours ago, Tech N Gamer said:

So, I've installed Linux Mint on a separate partition on my Gaming computer where Windows is on one partition and Linux Mint is on the other. However, when I'm in Mint, at times, the audio will crack with my headphones on along with them off and coming out of my monitor. Any help? The specs of my computer is:

• Intel Core i5-6400
• DDR4 8 GB
• NVidia GeForce GTX 970
  • VRAM 4 GB
• RealTek Ethernet, WiFi, and Audio Device.

I'm new to Linux and I'm used to Windows, the only reason I installed Linux is in case Windows decides to kill itself.

What are you doing when the audio cracks?

Audio Device isn't the actual name of your audio device. Do you have an Info Center app? If so, go to Device Information->PCI and find the real name of your audio device there in the Info Center app.

[Guest]

has the audio cracked in windows at all? 

 

check your sample rate. Here is a link that maybe for UNIX so it may not work. 

 

SAVE BACKUP FILES!!!

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/136583/why-would-alsa-sound-pop-crackle-and-be-generally-too-distorted-to-listen-to

[Guest]

Sorry for post farming, but if your cracking happens in windows at all, it's likely hardware issues. 

 

Mint is based off Ubuntu; in Ubuntu you can allow different drivers in your settings. Here is another potentially useful link:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2188405

 

i don't know how mint looks, but on Ubuntu you can search, by typing "settings." There should be a tab for drivers listed. 

[Tech N Gamer]

20 hours ago, noahdvs said:

Could you be any more useless?

 

What are you doing when the audio cracks?

Audio Device isn't the actual name of your audio device. Do you have an Info Center app? If so, go to Device Information->PCI and find the real name of your audio device there in the Info Center app.

I'm confused as to what the audio device is, Windows state's it's RealTek but Mint states it's Intel HD Audio. When the audio cracks, it will happen when some program is playing audio. I know it's not a hardware issue because Windows plays audio just fine. However, I do need to reinstall Mint due to a power loss during an update. So that's going to be fun.

 

4 hours ago, fpo said:

has the audio cracked in windows at all? 

 

check your sample rate. Here is a link that maybe for UNIX so it may not work. 

 

SAVE BACKUP FILES!!!

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/136583/why-would-alsa-sound-pop-crackle-and-be-generally-too-distorted-to-listen-to

Like I stated above, the audio works fine in Windows. I'll post if reinstalling Mint and upgrading it to 18.2 fixes the issue or not.

[noahdvs]

3 hours ago, Tech N Gamer said:

I'm confused as to what the audio device is, Windows state's it's RealTek but Mint states it's Intel HD Audio. When the audio cracks, it will happen when some program is playing audio. I know it's not a hardware issue because Windows plays audio just fine. However, I do need to reinstall Mint due to a power loss during an update. So that's going to be fun.

 

Like I stated above, the audio works fine in Windows. I'll post if reinstalling Mint and upgrading it to 18.2 fixes the issue or not.

Try plain Ubuntu 17.04 as well. You don't need to install it, just open up a live image and see if you have audio problems there.

[Tech N Gamer]

@noahdvs @fpo

Okay, so for some reason, Mint started working fine (everything but audio, testing that soon) by putting in:

pci=noaer
pci=nomsi

I have no idea what those do, I just found someone stating if you get graphical errors/problems or pci-e errors to do that.

 

Edit: Mint is doing this weird ugly fade thing.

[Tech N Gamer]

@noahdvs @fpo

Update, Ubuntu doesn't seem to have popping going on at random intervals, however, Mint 18.2 doesn't want to boot at all.

Edit: Mint partition is entirely gone, and currently trying to reinstall it. My UEFI has also switched from GRUB to Windows Boot Manager.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Tech N Gamer said:

@noahdvs @fpo

Update, Ubuntu doesn't seem to have popping going on at random intervals, however, Mint 18.2 doesn't want to boot at all.

Edit: Mint partition is entirely gone, and currently trying to reinstall it. My UEFI has also switched from GRUB to Windows Boot Manager.

What'd you do to your poor HDD!!! Lol jkjk. Hope you didn't lose anything valuable. 

 

Are yiu sure the mint is entirely gone? With a USB booted OS, you should be able to fully look through all hard drives. 

[Tech N Gamer]

2 minutes ago, fpo said:

What'd you do to your poor HDD!!! Lol jkjk. Hope you didn't lose anything valuable. 

 

Are yiu sure the mint is entirely gone? With a USB booted OS, you should be able to fully look through all hard drives. 

Yeah, I'm sure, I have ext2fsd installed on Windows, it didn't pop up. The Ext2fsd Volume manager didn't show it, and the bootable linux distro didn't show it. All that's their is empty, unformatted space.

[noahdvs]

Just FYI, you can install the Cinnamon desktop environment on Ubuntu. You don't need Mint to use it. If Mint is working fine now, there's no reason to switch, but you do have options.

4 hours ago, Tech N Gamer said:

@noahdvs @fpo

Okay, so for some reason, Mint started working fine (everything but audio, testing that soon) by putting in:

pci=noaer
pci=nomsi

I have no idea what those do, I just found someone stating if you get graphical errors/problems or pci-e errors to do that.

 

Edit: Mint is doing this weird ugly fade thing.

https://zombieprocess.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/aer-advanced-error-reporting/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Signaled_Interrupts

[Tech N Gamer]

16 minutes ago, noahdvs said:

Just FYI, you can install the Cinnamon desktop environment on Ubuntu. You don't need Mint to use it. If Mint is working fine now, there's no reason to switch, but you do have options.

https://zombieprocess.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/aer-advanced-error-reporting/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Signaled_Interrupts

I'll read those later, and Mint has dissapeared off my computer, so I'm going to reinstall it to see if that fixes anything.

Edit: For some reason, Mint doesn't like my computer anymore.

[Tech N Gamer]

@noahdvs

Now my computer won't even boot linux anymore, only Windows, this has really spiraled down hill quick.

Edit: Got it working, my computer would accept 16.04 LTS and not 16.04.2 LTS.

[noahdvs]

2 hours ago, Tech N Gamer said:

@noahdvs

Now my computer won't even boot linux anymore, only Windows, this has really spiraled down hill quick.

Edit: Got it working, my computer would accept 16.04 LTS and not 16.04.2 LTS.

Was Secure Boot disabled when you installed Linux Mint? Was there a Windows update recently? By 16.04, you mean Ubuntu, right? What about 17.04?

[Tech N Gamer]

31 minutes ago, noahdvs said:

Was Secure Boot disabled when you installed Linux Mint? Was there a Windows update recently? By 16.04, you mean Ubuntu, right? What about 17.04?

Secure Boot was never disabled in the first place, reason being that Ubuntu and Mint had secure boot keys. Yes, their was a Windows update, but that happened after Mint went beserk. By 16.04 I did mean Ubuntu. I did not try 17.04 as that said only 9 months of support were LTS is long-term-support, if 17.04 is the one I should of gone with, I did not know, I never really heard of things being called long term support and regular support. If I may ask, why is cinnamon running in software render mode?

Edit: Popping is back.

[Tech N Gamer]

@noahdvs

This is driving me insane; Secure Boot off, Windows stops working properly but Linux works fine, secure boot on, Windows and the UEFI BIOS looks and runs fine, but linux shit's itself. And, the audio popping hasn't gone away.

[noahdvs]

3 hours ago, Tech N Gamer said:

Secure Boot was never disabled in the first place, reason being that Ubuntu and Mint had secure boot keys. Yes, their was a Windows update, but that happened after Mint went beserk. By 16.04 I did mean Ubuntu. I did not try 17.04 as that said only 9 months of support were LTS is long-term-support, if 17.04 is the one I should of gone with, I did not know, I never really heard of things being called long term support and regular support. If I may ask, why is cinnamon running in software render mode?

Edit: Popping is back.

You're probably not better off with LTS Ubuntu than you are with regular release Ubuntu. LTS matters if you're running a business with lots of machines to keep updated or if you're running a server that you don't want to touch much. LTS releases only come every 2 years, so all the software in the repositories except for stuff related to security is going to be 2 years out of date by the time the next update comes.

 

I don't know why Cinnamon is running in software render mode. Your system may be using a version of Nouveau that doesn't support GTX 900 series video cards well. Nouveau is the open source Nvidia driver that comes out of the box on every desktop Linux distro, but it's not as mature as the AMD open source driver that comes out of the box. You'll probably need to install Nvidia's proprietary drivers anyway if you want good performance in games. You can get the latest proprietary Nvidia drivers by adding this PPA. From the sound of things, you should probably just move to another distro with more up to date software. Ubuntu 17.04 should be fine. You can install Cinnamon by putting sudo apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment in the terminal or by installing it in Synaptic Package Manager.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Tech N Gamer said:

snip

16.04 and 17.04 are basically the same. 16.04 is just last years version. It's the difference between windows 8 and 8.1 imo. 

 

Soneone may say "there were soooo many changes!" But I haven't noticed a difference between 12.04 and 17.04 sooooo... yeah. 

[noahdvs]

2 minutes ago, fpo said:

16.04 and 17.04 are basically the same. 16.04 is just last years version. It's the difference between windows 8 and 8.1 imo. 

 

Soneone may say "there were soooo many changes!" But I haven't noticed a difference between 12.04 and 17.04 sooooo... yeah. 

That's not really an accurate analogy. Ubuntu 17.04 has better support for newer hardware than 16.04 LTS because of the newer kernel/drivers and newer software in the official repositories. Using regular release Ubuntu gets you updates to all software every 6 months instead of every 2 years. That analogy would work better if we were talking about Unity in 16.04 and Unity in 17.04. AFAIK, there is no difference in Unity between those versions.

[Tech N Gamer]

6 hours ago, noahdvs said:

You're probably not better off with LTS Ubuntu than you are with regular release Ubuntu. LTS matters if you're running a business with lots of machines to keep updated or if you're running a server that you don't want to touch much. LTS releases only come every 2 years, so all the software in the repositories except for stuff related to security is going to be 2 years out of date by the time the next update comes.

 

I don't know why Cinnamon is running in software render mode. Your system may be using a version of Nouveau that doesn't support GTX 900 series video cards well. Nouveau is the open source Nvidia driver that comes out of the box on every desktop Linux distro, but it's not as mature as the AMD open source driver that comes out of the box. You'll probably need to install Nvidia's proprietary drivers anyway if you want good performance in games. You can get the latest proprietary Nvidia drivers by adding this PPA. From the sound of things, you should probably just move to another distro with more up to date software. Ubuntu 17.04 should be fine. You can install Cinnamon by putting sudo apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment in the terminal or by installing it in Synaptic Package Manager.

I fixed the software render problem, it was caused by Secure Boot (of all things), however, I have a new problem, Ubuntu fucked Windows badly, that I needed to boot from a recovery drive to fix Windows, and even then, Windows is hogging 25-30% CPU. And Ubuntu is crashing all over the place.

[noahdvs]

What a clusterfuck. Sorry you have to deal with that. Were you installing Ubuntu with Secure Boot enabled? If not, you should if you want to use Windows. However, I'm very surprised that Secure Boot of all things is causing problems. Are you sure things don't just happen to get better for some other reason when you disable it? Are you sure the noaer and nomsi settings stuck?

[Tech N Gamer]

1 hour ago, noahdvs said:

What a clusterfuck. Sorry you have to deal with that. Were you installing Ubuntu with Secure Boot enabled? If not, you should if you want to use Windows. However, I'm very surprised that Secure Boot of all things is causing problems. Are you sure things don't just happen to get better for some other reason when you disable it? Are you sure the noaer and nomsi settings stuck?

They stuck, I was able to install it with secure boot enabled. And yes, I'm sure. Asus only has Microsoft Secure boot with the help box saying that Windows 8 or higher can use it, and then it has other where it says non-microsoft OSes.