Audio "goes to sleep" when there's no sound for a second.

Solarmass

it sounds like some effect is applied. Have you tried sound effects recently?

Mr-Spongecake

What do you mean by sound effects? I'm not familiar with that if it's a function.

Solarmass

I mean tools like Easy Effects.

Mr-Spongecake

No. I don't think I have that installed at all.

Mr-Spongecake

Here's a good example I just discovered: If I go to the sound test in the Budgie system settings under sound settings, it has the buttons you can click to test different channels. If no sound has been playing at all for around a second, then I only hear it say "ront left" because it was silent at the "f" part. But if I click it immediately after, I hear the full "Front left." Waiting another second to do it again has me hearing "ront left" again.

Clintre

Mr-Spongecake

Sounds like it may be going into suspend and having some lag on wake up. You can do the following to see if it helps. It is easy to back out, should it cause issues.

mkdir -p ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/

nano ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/disable-suspend.conf

Paste the following...

monitor.alsa.rules = [
  {
    matches = [
      {
        node.name = "~alsa_output.*"
      }
    ]
    actions = {
      update-props = {
        session.suspend-on-idle = false
      }
    }
  }
]

Apply changes...
systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

To revert just delete that file and apply changes again.

Solarmass

I don't ~~see~~ hear it on Budgie

Mr-Spongecake

When you say "suspend" do you mean system suspend, or suspend specifically with the audio? I'll give your suggestion a try, though. One second.

Mr-Spongecake

Just gave it a try. The pipewire stuff did restart as there was no sound for a few seconds but then it came back on. There's still that issue where after a second of silence, I still hear "ront left" and not "front left" due to the previous issue.

Clintre

It was worth a try. It is one of the older tricks to help lag.

Mr-Spongecake

I do appreciate the help. Just outta curiosity I checked with my consoles because I don't remember my computer when it had Windows doing the same thing. The audio warm-up doesn't happen on those. Although would another thing that could cause this be SPDIF? That's how I have my computer hooked up to my headset.

Clintre

Mr-Spongecake It is possible. I do use spdif myself for my DAC, but I am repairing my DAC right now, so I cannot test.

There are some advanced configs for pipewire that can improve all of this, but I have not dug into that in a while.

Mr-Spongecake

OK, so after a little bit of trouble shooting I think I found the problem. It's something to do with my headset or the way Budgie handles SPDIF, because when I plugged my headset's base box in by USB and selected that, the windup was gone and I could hear the full audio. Is there something with how Budgie uses SPDIF, by chance? I think it might be that, or how my headset base is handling it and I'm trying to eliminate possibilities now.

Weird thing, though is that when it isn't plugged in via USB, then the option for Digital Output - SPDIF is gone and I only have SPDIF Output - USB Audio. With the second one selected, the warm up is there but with the first one it isn't.

Clintre

Ah just looked it up. There is an issue where the first second of audio is missing. Because it is a digital "unidirectional" stream, it is particularly prone to certain types of lag and "handshake" issues. It is usually more noticeable if you are using more than stereo.

I am seeing if there is any configs to help with that from my brother, if he is awake as he has a big setup for his work.

Mr-Spongecake

It's not really a full second of missing audio. Try to imagine that after a second of silence, someone turns the volume on your output all the way down, then when you press play then they turn it back up quickly to it's original volume. This happens in like the first 5th of a second after sound starts playing. So with a trance beat I was working on, the first base kick initial hit is missing, but if I restart it without pause then I can hear it fine.

Clintre

Mr-Spongecake It is just what they call it. It is really anywhere from 30-100ms depending on a lot of things.

Solarmass

So you have headset's base box with usb and optical (SPDIF) input? What headset is that?
You have this problem only via optical (SPDIF) input, right?

Mr-Spongecake

Ah, I gotcha. Well, like I said, I found a solution but it isn't ideal. I just need to have the USB of the base plugged into the PC and then it works fine, I get two options in the sound outputs section, one is Digital Output (S/PDIF) - Arctis Pro Wireless (that's my headset) and the other is Analog Output - Arctis Pro Wireless. Those two options don't have the missing audio. When it's not plugged in, I lose those two and only have S/PDIF Output - USB Audio. That option does have the missing audio. I kinda wanna have my USB free for my consoles, lol.

I also have my monitor outputs but I'm not using those 😛 .

Solarmass

I am using optical (SPDIF) and haven't noticed this problem.
You can try to disable audio driver power management:

just add this options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 in /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf and reboot
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=342091

I wonder if it will solve your issue.

Mr-Spongecake

Solarmass Is that specifically for Intel audio chipsets? I don't think my mobo runs that chipset. I also don't have that file or directory. Should it be created?

Solarmass

Mr-Spongecake I guess it should work for any mobos that have optical. Yes, create this directory and file with text as root and reboot.

With this option the red light will always shine 🙂