Since i can remember, certain albums crackle a lot in Amarok. I used to think it was just bad rips, until i tried different players. I tried playing in Juk and DragonPlayer and neither had the same problem with the same albums. Though it seems to have gotten worse with the latest GIT and 2.2.1. It seems to only be on low frequency too.

I'm not using equalizer, nor do i have the option to. I tried changing the PCM settings in alsamixer and it made no difference. I also tried changing the output device in multimedia settings, no difference. This problem is isolated to Amarok, as i'm only now discovering, gladly as i was about to purchase new speakers. And it doesn't only happen with speakers, but with 2 different pairs of headphones too.

I'm not sure what else i can try...Any ideas?

Could you maybe start with telling us more details about your sound software configuration? There are known bugs in sound quality with both gstreamer and pulseaudio, so if you use one of those I wouldn't be astonished...

Hmm i have quite a lot of gstreamer packages installed, not sure which are being used though...

Code: Select all

local/gstreamer0.10 0.10.25-1                     
local/gstreamer0.10-bad 0.10.16-1 (gstreamer0.10-plugins)
local/gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins 0.10.16-1 (gstreamer0.10-plugins)       
local/gstreamer0.10-base 0.10.25-1
local/gstreamer0.10-base-plugins 0.10.25-1 (gstreamer0.10-plugins)
local/gstreamer0.10-farsight 0.12.11-1
local/gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg 0.10.9-1 (gstreamer0.10-plugins)
local/gstreamer0.10-good 0.10.16-2
local/gstreamer0.10-good-plugins 0.10.16-2 (gstreamer0.10-plugins)
local/gstreamer0.10-python 0.10.17-1
local/gstreamer0.10-ugly 0.10.13-1
local/gstreamer0.10-ugly-plugins 0.10.13-1 (gstreamer0.10-plugins)


Nothing for pulseaudio, though i have phonon-xine installed. I was under the impression Amarok didn't use gstreamer plugins? I'm using a xine backend too. And i'm on 64-bit Arch if that matters.

Well, it all depends on what you have set in the phonon settings: Amarok Settings -> Configure Amarok -> Playback -> Sound System Configuration.
There you can see what soundcards are active (Phonon settings) and in the second tab which backend is in use. Amarok doesn't handle sound itself, it lets Phonon do that, and if your sound configuration there is set to the gstreamer backend...

Ok i changed the backend to Gstreamer as none of the other output devices i chose made a difference under Xine. Only one of them worked. Then when i changed to Gstreamer backend, i had new devices show up, one of which was hw:0,2 which seems to be working fine without crackles.

Though i'd prefer to use Xine, since it produces better sound afterall. And how come that only affects Amarok? Is that the bug you were referring to?

Are you sure you don't have the same behavior with Dragonplayer? Both Amarok and Dragonplayer us Phonon for sound output, neither of those applications really handle sound themselves, so a difference would really surprise me a lot.

Basically, I think it is a Phonon backend related bug.

Also make sure you have no connector problems on your hardware which can also be accounted for sound crackling.

Yeah neither Juk nor DragonPlayer have this 'feature'. Since my hardware works fine everywhere else, i'd rule that out. As soon as i play certain songs in Amarok, they crackle like mad. Then i play it in Juk or DragonPlayer, or any other player for that matter and it doesn't happen. Doesn't matter whether i'm using speakers or headphones either. It only happens at low frequency though, like if i'm listening to dark ambient or something...

So that's what's puzzling me. Why would it only crackle at low frequency and why only in Amarok? I did notice this months ago too. First i thought my speakers were blown, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Have you tried turning down the volume in Amarok?

Also, do you have either an /etc/asound.conf or an ~/.asoundrc? If so, do you mind pasting them?

sandsmark wrote:Have you tried turning down the volume in Amarok?

Also, do you have either an /etc/asound.conf or an ~/.asoundrc? If so, do you mind pasting them?

Yeah of course i've tried that

I don't have either of those files, anything else i should have?

Do you have replaygain turned on?

Yeah i did have it turned on, then turned it off and the crackling stopped. Any idea why that would be? Bad normalizing or something?

Either that, or the xine plugin that is used for adjusting the volume is b0rked.

I am having the same problem as mountainjew. All of my audio files work great in any program I play them in, except for Amarok. When I play songs through Amarok, they sound completely blown out and unlistenable until I turn the volume in the program all the way down. However, I can play songs at normal volume (and they sound fine) in mplayer, vlc, etc.

How/where did you turn off replaygain, mountainjew?

I'm not sure what else to try.

I am also now getting a frequent error message from Phonon stating that my default HDA Intel (AD198x Analog) card no longer works and that it is falling back to HDA Intel (AD198x Digital). When this happens, Amarok no longer produces any sound.

Again, these errors are only occuring in Amarok. What's up with that?

HardPart, what you describe is a problem with Pulseaudio hogging the sound. If you use KDE, you should reconsider the use of Pulseaudio as it is not needed at all on KDE.

Also, a bit more information on what exact version you are talking about, which distribution and KDE version you are running might be helpful.