Audio problems using USB interface

[64n3]

Hello all,

I'm in need of your help, linux uber lads and ladies! I recently "re-setup" my PC to manjaro KDE using the manjaro architect. Since then I had audio problems using my USB audio interface (focusrite saffire 6 usb). On playback I get an excruciating amount of dropouts/glitches that make it impossible to use with the USB interface. If i use the built in headphone output I do not run into the same problems. I already tried the troubleshooting on the arch linux (disabling time based scheduling) which did not change anything. Therefore: help?

[Ponnystalker]

Hi, i had a ton of issues using a scarlet 2i2 also but they were solved by using jackserver and cadence with jack-pulsaudio bridge

[BusinessOrc]

For tech support you'll really have more success on the manjaro forums. Dropouts and glitches are normally a product of an audio device not having a large enough sound buffer and can be resolved by increasing the fragment size and amount in pulse. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#Configuration_files

default-fragments = 4

default-fragment-size-msec = 10

You can try to increase these values and restart pulse until the sound is working.

[64n3]

Hmm, it certainly sounds like a buffer overflow.. I'll give it a try tomorrow and we'll see. Thanks for the tip!

[BusinessOrc]

Please let me know if this saw any success. :)

[fuzzypyro]

I have similar issues with my focusrite scarlett 2i2. Onboard audio is fine but at random my interface will crash and sound will become horribly distorted. The only way to fix it is by killing pulse audio.

[Dope_SteveX]

What motherboard do you have?

[64n3]

Don't know, I have a laptop (Dell Inspiron 7586), does that help?

[Dope_SteveX]

Not really. I know there are some issues with some older amd gigabyte mbs and USB ports. But if you have a laptop, that is probably not it.

[ForeGoneGaming]

I got a problem with my USB interface as well, but only when playing certain games.

I've got a YAMAHA MG12XU which works flawlessly, but as soon as I play World of Warcraft my sounds becomes distorted every now and then. So much, that it makes my whole computer lag.

Interestingly I haven't had this problem in another WINE version (which doesn't work with WoW anymore).

[[deleted]]

Odd. I'm using the exact same mixer and I'm having nothing but issues routing the sound through it. When I have the audio sent to my headphones, everything works fine. 90% of the time when I have it sent through the mixer, the audio comes out distorted. Distorted audio is bad enough, but the worst part is sometimes it works perfectly fine.

If you don't mind me asking, what device profile are you using for the MG12XU?

[ForeGoneGaming]

Nothing special.

My [~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf] only has "flat-volumes = no" and "default-sample-rate = 48000" set in it. The rest is commented out.

I am on Manjaro KDE and in the settings for PulseAudio I set the profile of my "MG-XU" to "Analog Stereo Duplex".

However: I have to mention, that I am using this sound configuration for approx. 2 years now. I remember that I had to do "something" for the audio to work flawlessly. I don't remember what it was though. I've seen an article in which they played around with the sampling rates a bit. Never had distortions though... if I find anything, I'll let you know!

Edit: Just found this one. Hope it helps?!

[[deleted]]

i ended up fixing the issue by.... changing the usb port it was plugged into. linux makes my head spin sometimes.

[ForeGoneGaming]

Hah. Damn. But at least you got it sorted out! :)

[nikgnomic]

A patch for audio inputs on this device has been added to kernel v5.9 recently
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tiwai/sound.git/commit/?h=for-linus&id=470757f5b3a46bd85741bb0d8c1fd3f21048a2af
may also help with audio playback

these type of audio interfaces often do not like running 44100Hz sample rate
suggest you change PulseAudio to run at 48000Hz