[Solved]Alsa funkiness (sound breaking)

Question

(Note: I originally thought this was a steam issue, but turns out it's not only steam that can break my sound (see the update on the bottom))
I get an issue with Steam where I get a short (less than 1s) sound on repeat/loop (usually it's some part of the message notification sound, or a trailer that I was watching) sounding a bit like a broken record, randomly occurring after keeping steam open for long periods of time in the background. Only fix I've found so far is to restart steam.
I have the Enlightenmen 18 Window Manager.
Notable errors:
Fontconfig error: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 70: non-double matrix element
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 78: saw unknown, expected number
[0706/170950:ERROR:object_proxy.cc(239)] Failed to call method: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.NetworkManager was not provided by any .service files
[0706/170950:WARNING:proxy_service.cc(958)] PAC support disabled because there is no system implementation
PulseAudio connect failed (used only for Mic Volume Control) with error: Access denied
** (steam:7341): WARNING **: Could not initialize NMClient /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager: The name org.freedesktop.NetworkManager was not provided by any .service files
(steam:7341): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent.
[0706/171536:ERROR:reference_audio_renderer.cc(46)] Not implemented reached in virtual void media::ReferenceAudioRenderer::OnCreated(media::AudioOutputController*)
[0706/171536:ERROR:reference_audio_renderer.cc(50)] Not implemented reached in virtual void media::ReferenceAudioRenderer::OnPlaying(media::AudioOutputController*)
[0706/171657:ERROR:reference_audio_renderer.cc(54)] Not implemented reached in virtual void media::ReferenceAudioRenderer::OnPaused(media::AudioOutputController*)
AL lib: pulseaudio.c:612: Context did not connect: Access denied
I don't have any reliable method to reproduce the issue, and it does not seem to output an error of it's own in the terminal output when it occurs. I have noticed that this is more likely to occur when steam has been open for prolonged periods. I am not using pulseaudio, just Alsa. I also noticed when I was running a Wine game (not through steam) that this issue occurred, and it seemed to contaminate the sound outputs for whine too (I got like a "double" sound for every sound effect the game played). If the sound was completely broken on steam and making a loop like I explained at the start of this post and then I close steam while the Wine game is running, the sound from steam will remain until I shut down the game too (i.e. seems that this isn't just breakage internally in steam, but in alsa itself)
The one thing I have tried to solve this was install lib32-libpulse, this did not seem to fix the errors nor the problem. I imagine installing pulseaudio could fix this problem, but pulseaudio downright hates my sound card, so I would rather not use it.
I also have two other issues too that are less severe.
1: Mouse cursor sometimes gets locked in steam instance (Right clicking will show the steam context menu, pressing "stop" in that context menu will solve the issue. This sometimes happens when I use "Ctrl + C"(copy) or "Ctrl + V"(paste) when I'm typing in the discussions)
2: Fullscreen videos will not go fullscreen (they will only fill the steam window)
Update:
I found a bulletproof way to make a similar issue occur.
If I open facebook in firefox, and get a message notification while I am playing a movie in Cmplayer (my media player of choice) the sound in CMplayer breaks (but firefox's sound keeps working normally)
Update2:
I was rather desperate to get this fixed so I installed pulseaudio as much as I despise it, the quality of my audio is damaged by it, but this problem was as I suspected fixed by installing it. I am guessing pulseaudio is set up partially to prevent issues like this one, but I would relaly prefer not to have it. This does not rid me of all the errors however (reference_audio_renderer errors persist) but it does create a new error for steam:
[0706/215704:ERROR:alsa_output.cc(684)] Failed querying delay: Input/output error
Last edited by rabcor (2014-07-11 16:28:34)

Answer 1

I always had to have an asound.conf in the name of upmixing 2.0 to 5.1 This is the content of my asound.conf before I made the changes. I also had a problem with a game where I had crackling noises on 48khz so I had to tell alsa to force 96khz (or 44.1khz but since my card supports 96khz that's what I went with) to avoid that.
pcm.!default {
slave.pcm "surround51"
slave.channels 6
type route
# Front and rear
ttable.0.0 0.7
ttable.1.1 0.7
ttable.2.2 0.6
ttable.3.3 0.6
# Center and LFE
ttable.4.4 1
ttable.5.5 1
# Front left/right to center
ttable.0.4 0.5
ttable.1.4 0.5
# Front left/right to rear
ttable.0.2 0.5
ttable.1.3 0.5
Now it looks like this and everything seems to be working fine (except that mono sound only plays from my left speaker and I haven't defined a way to downmix 7.1 to 5.1):
pcm.dmixed {
type asym
playback.pcm {
# See plugin:dmix at http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html
type dmix
# Don't block other users, e.g. the Timidity midi-player daemon
# http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html
ipc_key_add_uid true
ipc_key 5678293
ipc_perm 0660
ipc_gid audio
# Don't put the rate here! Otherwise it resets the rate & channels set below, as shown by: cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params
slave {
# 2 for stereo, 6 for surround51, 8 for surround71
channels 6
pcm {
# mplayer chooses S32_LE, but others usually S16_LE
format S32_LE
#format S16_LE
# 44100 or 48000
# 44100 for music, 48000 is compatible with most h/w
#rate 44100
rate 96000
# http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html
# Maybe helps
nonblock true
type hw
card 0
device 0
subdevice 0
# mplayer2 chooses 1024
# period_size 512 with buffer_size 16384 stops crackling in xmame
# 320 breaks flash - https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=129458
#period_size 512
period_size 1024
#period_size 512
# 4096 might make sound crackle
# mplayer2 chooses 8192. Half-Life 2 chooses 16384.
# If too large, use CONFIG_SND_HDA_PREALLOC_SIZE=2048
buffer_size 16384
capture.pcm "hw:0"
pcm.!default{
type plug
slave.pcm "upmix20_51"
pcm.!surround20 {
type plug
slave.pcm "upmix20_51"
pcm.!surround40 {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixed"
route_policy duplicate
pcm.!surround51 {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixed"
pcm.upmix20_51 {
slave.pcm "dmixed"
slave.channels 6
type route
# Front and rear
ttable.0.0 0.7
ttable.1.1 0.7
ttable.2.2 0.6
ttable.3.3 0.6
# Center and LFE
ttable.4.4 1
ttable.5.5 1
# Front left/right to center
ttable.0.4 0.5
ttable.1.4 0.5
# Front left/right to rear
ttable.0.2 0.5
ttable.1.3 0.5
Is there a better way for me to achieve the results of the above config? Because I'm all ears.
Last edited by rabcor (2014-07-08 11:09:23)