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+--- Thread: PulseAudio dropouts after Manjaro Testing 2025.07.26 update (/showthread.php?tid=19938)
PulseAudio dropouts after Manjaro Testing 2025.07.26 update - Dendrocalamus64 - 08-04-2025
I see on the Manjaro forums they have a thread for every ARM Unstable Update.
https://forum.manjaro.org/c/arm/100
They say that only ARM Unstable is maintained anymore, but Testing seems to be getting updates too.
This Testing update arrived around 07.26 (Sat). Videos that used to play fine in mpv started getting debilitating amounts of audio dropouts with a buffer underrun message each time.
At first I thought it was due to video decompression getting less efficient and eating all the CPU, but playing the same files with --no-video and top running showed the system lightly loaded (~8% CPU), and yet the audio dropouts occured in the exact same places.
I tried updating to the Megi 6.15 kernel and rebooting. mpv no longer said "Audio device underrun detected" but the dropouts still occured, and pulseaudio was now hanging all the time and needing to be killed & restarted.
Start reading through this loooong page:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting
Try running with pulseaudio -v, notice that it seems to be suspending too much.
Section 4.8, unload-module module-suspend-on-idle
And that fixed the problem completely.
(I had tried various other things since 07.26 like turning timer-based scheduling on and off, and adjusting buffer sizes, and so far none of it had helped.)
So pulseaudio suspend-on-idle is currently completely broken, at least with the default config. It thinks it's "idle" while it's playing back a video and the laptop is actively being used.
Next problem was pulseaudio sometimes starts endlessly spamming to the console,
Code:
W: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Resume failed, couldn't restore original sample settings.
I: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Trying resume...
I: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-util.c: Cannot disable ALSA period wakeups
I: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-util.c: Device hw:rockchipes8316c doesn't support 48000 Hz, changed to 44100 Hz.Solution to that was to edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and set both default-sample-rate and alternate-sample-rate to 44100.
RE: Pulse Audio dropouts after Manjaro Testing 2025.07.26 update - Dendrocalamus64 - 08-05-2025
Nope!
It worked last night and it worked this morning, now it's back to dropping out in the same places again.
$ pulseaudio -vv --log-time=TRUE
Code:
( 54.449| 7.474) D: [pulseaudio] module-alsa-card.c: Jack 'Headphones Jack' is now plugged in <-- this is the first thing it says when it happens. I am not using the headphone jack.
( 54.449| 0.000) D: [pulseaudio] device-port.c: Setting port [Out] Speaker to status no
( 54.449| 0.000) I: [pulseaudio] core.c: default_sink: alsa_output.platform-es8316-sound.HiFi__Speaker__sink -> alsa_output.platform-snd_aloop.0.analog-stereo
( 54.449| 0.000) I: [pulseaudio] sink.c: The sink input 0 "mpv Media Player" is moving to alsa_output.platform-snd_aloop.0.analog-stereo due to change of the default sink.
( 54.449| 0.000) D: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Starting to move sink input 0 from 'alsa_output.platform-es8316-sound.HiFi__Speaker__sink'
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] sink.c: Requesting rewind due to started move
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: hwbuf_unused=0
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: setting avail_min=87319
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Requested volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB, front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Got hardware volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB, front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Calculated software volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB, front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB (accurate-enough=yes)
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] sink.c: Volume not changing
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Requested to rewind 10584 bytes.
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Limited to 10136 bytes.
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: before: 2534
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: after: 2534
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] alsa-sink.c: Rewound 10136 bytes.
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] sink.c: Processing rewind...
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] sink.c: latency = 1294
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ff890000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] source.c: Processing rewind...
( 54.450| 0.000) D: [pulseaudio] sink.c: alsa_output.platform-es8316-sound.HiFi__Speaker__sink: state: RUNNING -> IDLEAnd on for many lines.
The active sink seems to just die and the debug-level messages only show what happens after that.
You know it's a bad sign when the "PulseAudio/Troubleshooting" page is one of the longest ones on Arch wiki.
RE: PulseAudio dropouts after Manjaro Testing 2025.07.26 update - Dendrocalamus64 - 08-08-2025
- It thinks the Pinebook speaker is the headphone jack. Changing the Headphone volume in Alsamixer changes the playback volume.
- I was only seeing this with "blown out" audio files, for lack of a better term. The content creator turned the gain way up and looking at the file in Audacity there's obviously a lot of clipping.
- It depends on the total playback volume, which is affect by at least the following AlsaMixer items: Headphone, Headphone Mixer, DAC. If the product of those three is too high, the dropouts start occurring due to the sink dying.
There may be some other things affecting the total gain. At one point, I was consistently getting 18 dropouts playing a 1 minute file. Currently with all three sliders maxed I'm getting four.
So it's still a bug somewhere in PulseAudio, Alsa, or the driver where high-gain audio can kill the sink, resulting in a dropout while it respawns and "Audio device underrun detected" error message, but it can be avoided by turning down the aggregate gain.
What about module-suspend-on-idle? I still have to keep that unloaded or pulseaudio doesn't work.