Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Linux Mint 13 PulseAudio Stuttering

[ Note added 2012-07-17: the below was only a temporary fix. 13 days later, PulseAudio is stuttering again, with a vengeance. For now I'm watching this thread. ]

Recently my 64b desktop developed a bad stutter. I originally thought it was a rhythmbox problem, but it turned out to be a PulseAudio problem. The fix is here--thanks to MRA2011!

Summary:
In emacs or a lesser editor open /etc/pulse/default.pa, change this line:
   load-module module-udev-detect
to this
   load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

Then restart PulseAudio,
   pulseaudio -k

2 comments:

Jesse_hz said...

Holy shit. People are STILL having stuttering problems with FailsAudio?

I remember having these problems many years ago back when Pulse was new and I had been fooled into thinking that I needed a replacement for ESD.
After wasting a significant amount of time trying to get Pulse to work, I decided that removing it and using ALSA's built-in dmix was the best thing I could do.

I haven't had any problems with using just dmix, and like most users, I don't have any need for networked audio, so I don't understand why major distros like Ubuntu and Mint include it by default.

I'm guessing you've found a solution to this by now, but if not, then I strongly suggest that you just get rid of Pulse.

Jeff Martens said...

The simple explanation is a reluctance to go with something simple that does what most people want when there's something much more complicated that makes a very few people a little happier. It's the Microsoftization of Linux.