[pulseaudio-discuss] How to debug intermittent audio skips?

[Charles Lindsay]

I've ticketed this as bug 49608:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49608.  Thanks for the help!


Charles


On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 3:15 AM, Charles Lindsay <accounts at chazomatic.us>wrote:

> This is what showed up in the debug log as it skipped:
>
> ( 684.030|   5.000) I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Underrun!
> ( 684.030|   0.000) I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Increasing minimal latency
> to 26.00 ms
> ( 684.030|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Latency set to 26.00ms
> ( 684.030|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: hwbuf_unused=60952
> ( 684.030|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: setting avail_min=15944
> ( 684.030|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Latency set to 26.00ms
> ( 684.030|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: hwbuf_unused=60952
> ( 684.030|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: setting avail_min=15944
> ( 684.031|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Underrun on 'ALSA
> Playback', 0 bytes in queue.
> ( 684.036|   0.004) D: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Requesting rewind
> due to end of underrun.
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Requested to rewind 10940
> bytes.
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Limited to 3320 bytes.
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: before: 830
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: after: 830
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Rewound 3320 bytes.
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] sink.c: Processing rewind...
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] sink.c: latency = 1337
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] sink-input.c: Have to rewind 3320 bytes
> on render memblockq.
> ( 684.036|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] source.c: Processing rewind...
> ( 696.234|  12.197) I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Underrun!
> ( 696.234|   0.000) I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Increasing wakeup
> watermark to 15.99 ms
> ( 702.033|   5.799) I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Underrun!
> ( 702.033|   0.000) I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Increasing minimal latency
> to 36.00 ms
> ( 702.033|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Latency set to 36.00ms
> ( 702.033|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: hwbuf_unused=59188
> ( 702.033|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: setting avail_min=15680
> ( 702.033|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Latency set to 36.00ms
> ( 702.034|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: hwbuf_unused=59188
> ( 702.034|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: setting avail_min=15680
> ( 702.034|   0.000) D: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Underrun on 'ALSA
> Playback', 0 bytes in queue.
>
> ...and it goes on.
>
> The "Underrun!" messages happened a few times before, but it didn't skip.
> The "rewind" messages sound like the ominous part to me.
>
> Any idea what's wrong with my setup?  What can I do from here?  Thanks!
>
>
> Charles
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 10:44 PM, Tanu Kaskinen <tanu.kaskinen at digia.com>wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 2012-05-03 at 22:32 -0700, Charles Lindsay wrote:
>> > Hey guys, I was hoping I could get some help debugging a problem I'm
>> > having with PulseAudio.
>> >
>> > If I'm playing music via any source (Exaile, Totem, Flash in Firefox
>> > or Chromium, VLC, etc.) every few minutes the audio will skip once or
>> > twice.  top doesn't show any process eating CPU any more when it
>> > happens.  dmesg doesn't show anything.  Nothing else seems to be
>> > affected.  It doesn't seem to happen regularly.
>> >
>> > I just installed Ubuntu 12.04 from scratch (with pulseaudio
>> > 1:1.1-0ubuntu15), but the same thing happened in 10.04 on the same
>> > hardware.  Uninstalling the PulseAudio packages and going back to ALSA
>> > gives me no issues whatsoever, which is how I know the issue is with
>> > PulseAudio.  I'm using my onboard audio device:
>> >
>> > $ lspci | grep Audio
>> > 00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00
>> > Azalia (Intel HDA)
>> >
>> > Any clues what's going on?  Is there any PulseAudio log I can look at?
>> > Is there any way to debug the issue at all?  Should I just file a bug?
>> > I'd like to use PulseAudio since it's so integrated into Ubuntu these
>> > days, but it's annoying enough that if the issue continues I can't.
>> > Thanks!
>>
>> I'd start from checking if there's anything printed to Pulseaudio log
>> when the skips happen. Open a terminal, then enter these commands:
>>
>> echo autospawn = no >> ~/.pulse/client.conf
>> killall pulseaudio
>> LANG=C pulseaudio -vvvv --log-time
>>
>> Then start playing something. Then press enter in the pulseaudio
>> terminal window a couple of times to get some emtpy lines in the log.
>> Then wait for the problem to happen. When it happens, check the terminal
>> window - what has been printed to the log after the empty lines? If you
>> can reproduce this by doing absolutely nothing, then you can stare at
>> the terminal window all the time to make sure that whatever is printed
>> to the log, it is actually printed at the same time when the skips
>> happen.
>>
>> --
>> Tanu
>>
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>> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-discuss
>>
>
>
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