Hi,

I have a Lenovo ThinkCentre with Linux Mint that I use to play music. Sometimes, when there’s supposed to be silence (because YouTube paused the video or something), this weird popping noise appears. It disappears whenever there’s music playing and even when I open the sound settings, but re-appears whenever there’s silence. The device is connected via aux cable to an amplifier. This happens on two separate devices.

I don’t know if it’s a Lenovo issue or a linux issue, but it’s quite annoying.

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
    3·
    25 days ago

    Sound card might go to sleep after some time of inactivity.

    Check using cat /proc/asound/modules that you are using standard kernel Intel audio drivers: snd_hda_intel. In that case, try cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save. The number printed is the number of seconds the sound card goes to sleep after the last sound played. Sleeping a sound card can cause pops or buzz and saves very little power, so it’s better to set it to 0 for no sleep.

    • Yucky_Dimension@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      25 days ago

      It said

      0 snd_hda_intel

      1 snd_hda_intel

      It was set to 1. I’ll try setting it to 0. It felt like it was trying to go to sleep, just to immediately wake up again, being stuck in that loop.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        25 days ago

        Which command said that? The first one? Those are just the numbers of sound devices, don’t change those! As in:

        Sound device #0 (headphone jack, perhaps): uses snd_hda_intel driver
        Sound device #0 (built-in speaker, perhaps): uses snd_hda_intel driver

        • Yucky_Dimension@lemmy.worldOP
          3·
          25 days ago

          Yes, it has a crappy built in speaker. It was the first command. The second said, that the timer was set to 1.

          I can’t immediately tell if that fixed the issue, unfortunately, because I don’t know how to replicate it. But this seems more plausible than a hardware issue, as it would probably be more consistent.