No sound after using Skype

cardogar · 04-08-2015, 09:33 AM

Dear all,

I'm writing this post because I'm quite frustrated and desperate. I don't know what to do.

I don't know why but the sound of my workstation mutes after several minutes of using Skype.

The thing is that I already had that problem when I was using ubuntu. After certain update the problem appeared and I was never able to solve it. So I decided to make a clean installation with a new distribution and I installed few days ago the new fedora.

After installation I managed to get sound in Skype but I have again the same problem. I start a conversation with Skype and a random number of minutes later the sound crashes. No sound at all.

I have also noticed that the streaming videos (i.e. youtube) do not "run" well after the sound crash. They show just too fast or freezing every single second.

When I reboot everything works fine. Videos show nicely and the sound works also fine. But if I use skype then the same thing again. I also tried to use Google talk with the same result: works for several minutes, then no sound.

I've also tried to use Skype in windows with a virtual machine, but I still have the same issue.

It cannot be the hardware because I've been using Skype for long time without problems. I tried to use speakers (I normally use headphones) but nothing changed.

I will really appreciate your help since I need skype for my work and I have to switch to another computer when I have to use it which is really annoying.

Cheers

joe_2000 · 04-17-2015, 07:17 PM

I am by no means experienced with audio problems but since you haven't received any input in 10 days I might as well throw out a couple of thoughts.
I guess you'll first want to find out what sound system you are using ... probably alsa or pulseaudio.
You may want try the respective other.
If you are using pulseaudio there is an option to kill it (pulseaudio -k) and then restart it. Would be interesting to find out if that helps at all, rather than having to do a full reboot.
There will certainly also be a way to restart alsa, this is something you could search the web for.

See if you can find any info in your system logs. I have no experience with fedora, but typically you want to search the /var/log/ folder.

Check what hardware you are using by running

Code:

lspci

In my case it looks like this:

Code:

lspci | grep Audio
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller (rev 09)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series HD Audio Controller (rev 04)

This gives you something you can put into search engines. E.g. search "00:03.0 Audio problems linux" (obviously replacing the 00:03.0 part with what your lspci said...)

Another idea: Run top in a console when starting skype and see if there is any process coming up that hogs all your memory.

strick1226 · 04-28-2015, 11:00 AM

Hi, cardogar,

If you're using PulseAudio for sound then you could restart it by killing the existing service and starting it anew:

Code:

# pulseaudio -k
# pulseaudio --start

Could be worth a try; see if you have any audio after doing that.

Good luck!

strick