Crackling sound

[Calza]

Hi, I just updated my Ubuntu box and now I hear crackling sound when I play games on ScummVM. For instance, the characters moving in Gobliins 2 turn out to be really annoying, because every time they take a step they emit a sort of static noise.

I noticed similar problems with ZSNes, so I think it's an issue related to SDL + PulseAudio. I know these two software had some problems coexisting in the past...

Any helpful ideas?

[Calza]

Rough solution: just remove PulseAudio. It's a shame that such a widespread distribution like Ubuntu does not provide a serious support for the audio system, a fundamental part of the OS.

Using ALSA, everything works just fine. It's a bit sad to adopt this kind of workaround in 2011, but I can't spend more time on this issue.

If someone has a better suggestion, please let me know.

[eriktorbjorn]

SDL has, at least optionally, support for several different sound backends. You could try the SDL_AUDIODRIVER environment variable to see if that makes any difference, I guess.

[tsoliman]

The problem with pulseaudio is that it is constantly using your soundcard so even when trying to use ALSA directly you may get "device in use" unless pulse was going through dmix and you are also going through dmix (EDIT: or you have a proper sound card with hardware mixing but that's rare these days)

I personally subscribe to the "just remove pulseaudio" mindset myself.

[Calza]

@eriktorbjorn: I already tried that, but thanks for your suggestion. Sadly, it does not work: the only thing I was able to achieve was to make ScummVM freeze upon closing, making PulseAudio crash ?_? That's quite funny

@tsoliman: yes, it's terrible, completely pervasive in the system. I will continue removing PulseAudio until either it becomes better or Ubuntu provides better support to it.

Thanks again!