Audio/Amarok(?) stuttering sound

Sammael · 08-15-2006, 07:05 PM

hi, i have problems with stuttering sound in amarok 1.42beta1. it's playing all right, bu every now and then when cpu usage goes up it stutters. but sometimes, cpu usage is continually high and no stuttering occurs. i only found out it's little bit better after i switcched off skype, but it still happens.

in kcontrol/sound system i checked run with highest priority and set maximum size of buffer. nothing helps.

is there any other place or config file where i could increase priority of audio or further increase the buffers?

my sound card is ATI IXP with ac97 chip, i use xine-engine in amarok. would be other engine better? if yes, which?

*EDIT*
i tried it with helix engine, it was worse, i wasn't able to get gstreamer engine running...

*EDIT*

thanks...

bluelightning · 08-16-2006, 11:20 PM

I've never used amarok, so I can't give you any advice specific to it. However if your CPU usage is normally less than 50% then spikes up to 100% only occasionally for no aparent reason, then there is probably an audio rate mismatch.

What types of files have you noticed the problem in? How often does it occur?

What sound interface is the xine-engine playing into? ALSA? OSS-emulation? ESD?

If it's possibly, try to repro the issue with aplay. Unfortunately, it will only play wav files. The reason I say to use aplay is because it typical is tied very closely to your sound device, which means there aren't nearly as many layers that can break inbetween.

If you have trouble finding a wav, you could try converting your file with ecasound. Again, I don't know about amarok, but it might have an option to save to wav like xmms does.

Sammael · 08-20-2006, 07:29 PM

Quote:

What types of files have you noticed the problem in? How often does it occur?

mp3 files and it occurs when i do something really cpu intensive.

Quote:

What sound interface is the xine-engine playing into? ALSA? OSS-emulation? ESD?

i am using ALSA

i tried to play a few sounds with aplay and it were okay, guess maybe it's because mp3 is longer and bigger?

thanks for your time

bluelightning · 08-21-2006, 02:45 AM

I noticed one of my systems has a little bit of a stutter (not bad enough for me to care about, but bad enough for me to test solutions). I happen to be using the dmix plugin on a usb sound device, and I was able to adjust the buffer_time in alsa to compensate. It seemed to help, but it's hard to tell. This page describes the process.

However, tweaking asound.conf is something I have spent hours upon hours learning (and I still don't know what a lot of the plugins do). So that link probably isn't something you'll easily understand. I will summarize it with something simple that will hopefully work.

Edit /etc/asound.conf. At the end of the file add these lines:

Quote:

pcm.!default
{
type plug;
slave
{
pcm "hw:0,0"; #you may have to adjust this if you have 2 sound cards
buffer_size 200000; #buffer size = 2 tenths of a second
}
}

Sammael · 08-26-2006, 06:39 AM

hi sorry about long response, but i recently installed gentoo linux, which can take a day or two to install.. but it was worth every second of it, i'd never believe, how fast my computer now is...

regarding the problem with alsa i had - i compiled alsa support in kernel and do not longer have this problem, i do not know if this was the issue, but may be, anyhow, thanks for all your time,

Sammael · 08-26-2006, 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bluelightning

Edit /etc/asound.conf. At the end of the file add these lines:

in suse i didn't even have this file