Hello,
I use openSUSE Tumbleweed, kernel 5.15.6-1-default, KDE Plasma 5.23.4.

Whenever I'm listening to an audio and open the Audio Volume widget in KDE Plasma, the sound stops for a second and then continues. The seek slider in my player stops during the stutter. If the audio is from a video, the video stops too. The stutter does not depend on the kind of player, e.g., SMPlayer or YouTube in Firefox. If I reopen the volume widget within a few seconds after a stutter, the sound plays normally. However, if I wait for about 15 seconds, the problem returns.

The problem started more than a year ago after a system update, but I've been just tolerating it until now.

I've checked what happens during the stutter with journalctl and that's what it says.

...kernel: usb 2-1.1: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd

This is the output of lsusb.

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 015: ID 0cf3:3004 Qualcomm Atheros Communications AR3012 Bluetooth 4.0
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0e8f:00a8 GreenAsia Inc. 2.4G RX
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5986:0295 Acer, Inc Lenovo Integrated Webcam
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 05e3:0616 Genesys Logic, Inc. hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 058f:6366 Alcor Micro Corp. Multi Flash Reader
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 1a2c:2124 China Resource Semico Co., Ltd Keyboard
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 046d:0825 Logitech, Inc. Webcam C270
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 05e3:0610 Genesys Logic, Inc. Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

"Logitech, Inc. Webcam C270" is my web camera, which is connected via a USB 3.0 hub. I disconnected the camera, and the stutter disappeared. I reconnected it, and the stutter happened once even though I didn't open the volume widget. I also tried to connect the camera directly to a USB 2.0 port of my laptop, but it also caused the problem.

It is worth to note that when the camera is in use (e.g., in QV4l2), the stutter doesn't happen.

My guess is that the stutter happens because the volume widget has jumping blue bars in the volume sliders, which monitor the sound in real time. The widget tries to monitor the sound from the microphone of the camera when it's uninitialized, while the camera loses its initialized state too easily.

The volume widget doesn't seem to have a setting to disable the sound monitoring.

What can I do?