Created attachment 69776 [details] pulseaudio log Quite often, sound suddenly starts to become totally distorted on my system. This happens quite often (but not always) when I'm watching DVB-T television with Kaffeine and pidgin IM client plays a notification sound for an incoming message. The attached log contains a complete pulseaudio session where this bug is occuring. In the beginning kaffeine is playing fine, but near then suddenly the sound becomes distorted, and then I shut down pulseaudio. I also attach a recording of the distorted sound coming through the speakers, made with my phone.
Created attachment 69777 [details] Recording of distorted sound
Unfortunately, I don't think I can help much with fixing this issue. There are no errors in the log, and I think this sort of distortion tends to be a bug in the alsa driver. You can try sending a mail to the alsa-devel mailing list describing the problem. Referring to the recording is a good idea, and the alsa guys will want the output from this script: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh As a band-aid, when the problem occurs, you can run "pavucontrol -- true". That will make pulseaudio close and reopen all alsa devices, which often sufficiently resets things so that the distortion disappears. Question to David (added to cc): do you see this sort of bugs a lot in your alsa work? Do these bugs generally get fixed?
With distorted sound, rewind related it seems like, I usually start by recommending this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/PositionReporting
pavucontrol -- true does not help. I now had this problem with the native Spotify Linux client. Pausing Spotify and then resuming play in the Spotify client, brings back normal sound. When I move the distorted Spotify audio stream to another audio card (ATI HDMI output), and then switch it back to the Built-in Audio Analog Surround 5.1 sound card, the distortion continues. However, when changing the default audio output device with GNOME 3 sound settings, and switching it back, the sound also starts working fine. alsa-info.sh output: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=8654c005882a529296837a408ae98eb1741d0baf
Did you try the position_fix thing that was mentioned on the page that David linked to?
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