static/crackling in Kubuntu Hardy
 

I have been trying to get this figured out for the longest time... The is this constant "ticking" like static coming from my speakers, not just when I'm playing music or video, but 100% of the time. I have tried playing with the mixer, muting audio, turning the volume down, etc. Also the static goes crazy whenever I'm using the internet... whenever I reload a page, download a file, etc. The static goes from an annoying ticking, to full out crackling/static. Anyway, my windows partition crashed and burned, so Kubuntu is now my primary OS, and I really need it to be fully functional. My sound card reads VIA VT1720/24 from lspci, and I'm using ALSA. any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Taylor

How close are your speakers to your wireless router? or cellphones even. My speaker setup goes crazy when a Nextel phone is making a call. try moving your router/modem/phone/any wireless device away from your speakers.

Valid point. I have the same problem with my samsung phone when I'm getting a call, but my speakers have always been in the exact same spot on my desk. I never had trouble with them on windows, and I never even had sound working on linux untill one night, when I finally spent about 5.5hours reading/researching and got them to play music/audio, but since then I've had this irritating static/popping... And audio worked fine in windows untill tonight when vista decided to start throwing a temper tantrum and I reformatted the disk, not having remembered
I can't reinstall it. So now, I'm forced to work with linux as primary untill I scoure enough money to feed windows again. :s

Another option to test would be if you have another sound card. Either from an older computer, of purchase a cheap one online. If you install that card, and it works fine, then it would indicate that it is your sound card. The only other thing that i can think of would be some sort of microphone, or line in that is picking something up, i would try muting all audio inputs to see if that helps.

Well, instead of buying another card, I just installed a different disro. Opensuse 11 uses this card flawlessly, no static, no hiss, no pop, just music when I want it, and silence when I don't. Also, I have muted everything I can mute, including muting the main volume in kubuntu, and still get the crackling noise. The only way it will turn off is if I unplug the speakers, or turn them off. But, from opensuse, I know its not the sound card... Why do these things have to be so confusing <.<

Update: after booting into opensuse I logged back in to kubuntu and noticed something very odd... No more static popping, but any kind of video file the audio is terribly distorted and almost like its in slow motion. Now I've got no idea what to do, I wish I could just use opensuse but I can't get my wireless card or video card working over there <.< thanks again

For the slow audio, i would say update/reinstall your Gstreamer files. As for why the pops stopped after installing SuSE, is beyond me. What kind of video card/wireless card do you have? If you have a linksys card, you have to use ndiswrapper to emulate the windows drivers. that at least was the only way i could get my linksys wireless working.

Hope that helps!

Heh, I think my 'puter has a demon. Today after booting up in Kubuntu like usual, the popping/cracking was back! AND the slow/distorted video is there... Now I'm completely stumped. I'm going to try reinstalling everything I can think of, including any drivers/software that has to do with audio or video.

As for wireless in SuSe, I have a broadcom BCM4318 wireless card. I had to use ndiswrapper to get it working in Kubuntu, but for some odd reason when I install ndiswrapper from the SuSe DVD it doesn't show up in my installed programs in openSuSe... So I tried running it through konsole, but I really don't know my way around there too well yet. The network manager does recognise the card though, it displays 802.11g Broadcom BCM4318 Wireless PCI card when I go to the network setup, but I just can't get it to find any networks.

Anyway, thats all a seperate issue. Don't get me wrong, if you know what the problem is with SuSe wireless access then awesome, I just don't want to hijack my own thread and get too far off the original topic. I would love to figure out this posessed sound from Kubuntu o.O (BTW, my video card is a GeForce 8800 GT)

Thank you for your help thus far!