[pulseaudio-discuss] Early steps for an investigation (stuttering)

[eblanca at libero.it]

My laptop suffers from audio stuttering (it's been a while, now) but
I'm not very sure about the root reason and so I'm here. OS is LMDE 3
x64 (Debian Stretch based) with latest updates, it ships with
pulseaudio 10.0.
Hardware is based on an intel i5 with integrated audio
device (I can provide further details if needed) but also an external
USB card, suffering the same audio issue.
Now, the issue itself is not
easy to reproduce, as it is randomly appearing but it is an audio
stuttering, it lasts some 200 ms of repeated sound, happening (about)
every ten minutes, it is very annoying. In the last few days I played
youtube videos using firefox (stuttering appears) and played a Windows
game using wine (stuttering appears). Further, I can tweak a bit mpv
and deadbeef: well, when using pulseaudio output both stutter, but if I
forward output directly to alsa driver then I have no stuttering
anymore.
So, can I say pulseaudio is causing my issue? And if I can,
should I fix this by tweaking pulseaudio settings? Or should I first
update pulseaudio perhaps?

Elio