[pizzapower]

Hello I am fairly new to Linux and have recently installed the latest XBMC Live and have managed to pretty much get everything working superbly from all the wonderful HOW TO's and advice from this forum and wiki's

However the only issue I am having with LIVE is that every 20-30 seconds I hear a small 1 second Crackle or Popping noise coming from the speakers. I have tried looking around at various Wiki's and posts but most of the advice is for people that have a Ubuntu Desktop Gui and are refer to some sleep mode by the soundcard or speakers.

I have tried different speakers, pulled all the wires out to try and eliminate static interference tried the popping speakers on other systems, but to no avail. Which has lead me to beleive perhaps the other posts were right, but all the info is click here and click there. Which obviously I cannot do because I only have the text based terminal to work with. And I prefer it this way as the system solely serves as a Media Player and doesnt have unnecessary GUI's or Apps.

I look forward to any advice or pointing in the right direction and hope I too can be of some help someday. If you would like to critic and ridicule me etc.. please do not bother, as this is the whole reason I left linux 8 years ago was due to a minority of arrogant linux power users who would just make fun of my questions. Well that was 8 years ago, I hope the minority has matured by now.

Ohh yes I am running these popping speakers from my onboard soundcard as I couldn't for the life of me get HDMI Audio on my Nvidia EN GT220 to work at all, for the same reason 99% of the guides were for GUI based installs.

Well thanks in advance

[Minnoit]

Hi, the same system have not this problem if you start an Ubuntu Live cd?
If you do not found a solution, you can try to install a minimal Ubuntu https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Instal.../MinimalCD then see if all is ok, install xbmc and remove gnome (or leave it there but avoid to load it at boot so that you can load it only if/when you need it).

[pizzapower]

Still currently testing at the moment, and all has been okay for the past 3 hours consisting of a mixture of watching videos and sitting idle on the XBMC main screen.

But what I have tried is;

sudo alsamixer to adjust the levels and put MIC and MIC BOOST down to 0

then I hit ESC and then entered sudo alsactl store 0 with the hope of saving the volumes.

It seems to work as I said for the past 3 hours, but then if I reboot the system or shutdown and then turn back on ALL the volume levels are set back to MAX, which you guessed it introduces the popping sound.

I thought sudo alsactl store 0 would save the new config.

[User 34959]

isn't there an option in grub which sets the volume levels to predefined values.. check /etc/grub/menu.lst or /etc/default/grub, depending which live version you're running

[Minnoit]

sudo alsamixer to adjust the levels and put MIC and MIC BOOST down to 0

then I hit ESC and then entered sudo alsactl store 0 with the hope of saving the volumes.

It seems to work as I said for the past 3 hours, but then if I reboot the system or shutdown and then turn back on ALL the volume levels are set back to MAX, which you guessed it introduces the popping sound.

I thought sudo alsactl store 0 would save the new config.

If you run sudo alsactl restore the volume come back to normal?
If so, it means that you saved the config but it is not read during the boot.

[lcapriotti]

but then if I reboot the system or shutdown and then turn back on ALL the volume levels are set back to MAX, which you guessed it introduces the popping sound.

I thought sudo alsactl store 0 would save the new config.

it does, but unless you remove "setvolume" from the xbmc kernel params (see grub config file) the volumes are set at every reboot.

[pizzapower]

Well hardly noticed any pop noise during play back or idle in xbmc while using it for 6 hours straight. So I got a feeling that the Mic volume may be causing the interferance or issue, further testing will tell.

But I will definately try to implement your suggestions and report back.

Thank you all, it is good to see how much the linux community has grown. Might be time to switch back; I hate the Windows OS, MacOS is decent but hate the hardware. So linux it is.

[pizzapower]

Alright further messing around with alsamixer, I discovered the following;

- It seems that the FRONT MIC setting is the issue when set to 100 with dB gain= 12.00, 12.00 it will make a pop every 15-30 seconds followed by a zoom kind of noise in the speakers.

- At first I tried to turn it off completely and moved it down to 0 watched a few shows and all sounds working including menu bubble bursts. Then I pushed it back to 100 and noticed it reintroduced the popping.

- I continued to play with the setting of the Front Mic in alsamixer and then found if I set it to 97 with dB gain=10.50, 10.50 then the pop and zoom sound would dissapear much the same way as if I had it on 0.

Hopefully this will help someone having the same kind of issue troubleshoot. At the moment it is a bit annoying at times as I have to go in and manually change it each time I boot up.

Well now I am on to try and make those settings stick thanks to all your help

Thanks guys..

[pizzapower]

If you run sudo alsactl restore the volume come back to normal?
If so, it means that you saved the config but it is not read during the boot.

Hey Minnoit,

I tried that restore command you suggested and it does indeed restore my saved settings that I saved using the sudo alsactl store 0 command.

Now I just need to figure out how to make it read my config during boot. Any suggestions? or should I start looking at the Grub config as suggested by the others?

[pizzapower]

Hi All,

First of all would like to thank you all for your help as without your advice I would have never solved this issue.

I managed to edit the grub config file temporarily just to test if my saved alsamixer settings were sticking.

I edited it temporarly by the following method from
http://grumpymole.blogspot.com/2007/05/u...eters.html

Since I was satisfied that there were no issues with the temp edit of the config I moved along to find a post to edit it permanently. I found another post with a user having pretty much the same issue;
http://forum.xbmc.org/archive/index.php/t-51089.html

I pretty much just followed the 5th post down but used the command
sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst
basically taken out the /.bootmedia/ bit of the command.

I then reloaded my saved also config and rebooted a number of times and it all works fine.

I cannot thank you guys enough, having minimal experience with linux I definately would have not been able to resolve my issue without the support of the XBMC community. Thanks again.

Now will enjoy this setup for a while, till I am confident to start working on getting HDMI audio out on my Nvidia GT220.

Good day.

[alex84]

Hi there... Sound like u really have been digging... Anyway just wanted to say, that i also have been going throw the same problem. I did find the solution for the damn "POP" sound here, check it out:
http://www.xbmcfreak.nl/en/alsa-asoundrc-examples/

Cheers

[pizzapower]

Thanks Alex, yeah been reading a lot and a bit of trial and error. Awesome link thank you. I am going to give it a try as I would love to have the sound go through HDMI and then can plug my speakers back to my TV.

I have a really simple setup basically a pair of Logitech THX Z-2300 2.1 speakers which were in my TV and I had to take em out of my tv and put em into my XBMC box because I couldn't get the HDMI working and stuff that I did read for my GT220 was woww.. way over my head since I am just a beginner.

THanks again..