First ~500ms of audio gets dropped

[Sam Varshavchik]

One of my laptops has a minor, but an annoying, glitch with audio playback.  
I've observed this behavior with both Firefox and other audio playback  
applications. When audio playback starts /for the first time/, maybe the  
first 400-500ms of audio gets dropped, and then the rest of the audio plays  
fine.

What's interesting is that pausing the audio for a few seconds and resuming  
it does not result in dropped audio. But if the audio playback gets paused  
for a longer period of time, resuming it once again drops the initial 400-500  
milliseconds of audio.

This happens only on one of my laptops. All of them are based on the XFCE  
spin, and generally have the same set of packages. This must be hardware  
related. This is my hardware (lspci -v):

00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core  
Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
        Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer Device 6504
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 35
        Memory at f7e14000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
        Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel


I'd be curious to compare notes with anyone else that has the same audio  
hardware.

The most annoying part of this is that this manages to perfectly drop the  
"new mail" notification from one of my Firefox extensions. By the time the  
audio hardware decides to do its job, the horse already left the barn.

[Tim]

On Sun, 2020-01-12 at 22:25 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>  One of my laptops has a minor, but an annoying, glitch with audio
>  playback.  I've observed this behavior with both Firefox and other
>  audio playback applications. When audio playback starts /for the
>  first time/, maybe the first 400-500ms of audio gets dropped, and
>  then the rest of the audio plays fine. 
Is there some kind of power saving mode with your hardware?  Putting
supposedly inactive hardware to sleep.

On various bits of digital audio hardware/software, I commonly
encounter another annoyance:  Something will start to play, and
there'll be a little hiccup moments after the beginning.  It's akin to
playing a vinyl record which has track damage.

In both our cases, it could also be a caching/buffering issue.

-- 
 
uname -rsvp
Linux 3.10.0-1062.9.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Dec 6 15:49:49 UTC 2019 x86_64
 
Boilerplate:  All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted.
I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list.

[Sam Varshavchik]

Tim via users writes:

>  On Sun, 2020-01-12 at 22:25 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>  > One of my laptops has a minor, but an annoying, glitch with audio
>  > playback.  I've observed this behavior with both Firefox and other
>  > audio playback applications. When audio playback starts /for the
>  > first time/, maybe the first 400-500ms of audio gets dropped, and
>  > then the rest of the audio plays fine.
>
>  Is there some kind of power saving mode with your hardware?  Putting
>  supposedly inactive hardware to sleep. 
I have no knowledge of any such thing, or even know where to look. I went  
through the BIOS setting, found nothing along those lines.

[Matti Pulkkinen]

Sam Varshavchik kirjoitti 13.1.2020 klo 5.25:
>  One of my laptops has a minor, but an annoying, glitch with audio 
>  playback. I've observed this behavior with both Firefox and other audio 
>  playback applications. When audio playback starts /for the first time/, 
>  maybe the first 400-500ms of audio gets dropped, and then the rest of 
>  the audio plays fine. 
Just guessing here, but you might've run into this: 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1525104

[Tom Horsley]

When I run "test speakers" from gnome-control-center "sound",
I often get "eft channel" instead of "left channel" the first
time I click the "left" button. It is always better after
that first time.

[Sam Varshavchik]

Matti Pulkkinen writes:

>  Sam Varshavchik kirjoitti 13.1.2020 klo 5.25:
> > One of my laptops has a minor, but an annoying, glitch with audio playback.  
> > I've observed this behavior with both Firefox and other audio playback  
> > applications. When audio playback starts /for the first time/, maybe the  
> > first 400-500ms of audio gets dropped, and then the rest of the audio plays  
> > fine.
>
>  Just guessing here, but you might've run into this:  
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1525104 
That was a F27 bug with kernel 4.14.

I am running F31 with kernel 5.4

[Tony Nelson]

On 20-01-13 19:19:24, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>  Matti Pulkkinen writes:
>  
> > Sam Varshavchik kirjoitti 13.1.2020 klo 5.25:
> >> One of my laptops has a minor, but an annoying, glitch with audio  
> >> playback. I've observed this behavior with both Firefox and other  
> >> audio playback applications. When audio playback starts /for the  
> >> first time/, maybe the first 400-500ms of audio gets dropped, and  
> >> then the rest of the audio plays fine.
> > 
> > Just guessing here, but you might've run into this:  
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1525104
>  
>  That was a F27 bug with kernel 4.14.
>  
>  I am running F31 with kernel 5.4 
Scroll down.

-- 
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:[e-mail]>
       '                              <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>

[Sam Varshavchik]

Tony Nelson writes:

>  On 20-01-13 19:19:24, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > Matti Pulkkinen writes:
> >
> >> Sam Varshavchik kirjoitti 13.1.2020 klo 5.25:
> >>> One of my laptops has a minor, but an annoying, glitch with audio playback. 
>
> >>> I've observed this behavior with both Firefox and other audio playback  
> >>> applications. When audio playback starts /for the first time/, maybe the  
> >>> first 400-500ms of audio gets dropped, and then the rest of the audio plays 
>
> >>> fine.
> >>
> >> Just guessing here, but you might've run into this:  
> >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1525104
> >
> > That was a F27 bug with kernel 4.14.
> >
> > I am running F31 with kernel 5.4
>
>  Scroll down. 
Thanks for pointing this out. This hardware also seems to misbehave with  
power-saving enabled; but in a slightly different manner than what's  
described in that bug.