Audio disconnect at random intervals

Hardware Support
1

Hi, i just resently took the plunge and installed zorin 18, but i keep loosing sound. This can take hours with everything running just fine, or it can take 30 seconds and then keep disconnecting every few minutes. It also doens't seem to happen when i'm playing any games. I have tested out alot of different things from other posts here without any success.

I run on a desktop with a nvidia card and i have a soundblaster ae7 soundcard installed and connected to my denon amplifier for 5.1 surround with a fiberoptic cable.
And for a monitor i'm connected to a 120 hertz tv via a 120 hertz hdmi cable.

I have blacklisted the nvidia audio and turned the integrated audio off in the bios (usb audio was the only one i could find)

I have also tested out turning off power save for my usb ports by editing the brug bootloader and through installing powertop and disabling there aswell.

I use pipewire audio control (have tried pulseaudio aswell) and i can reset the sound with systemctl --user restart wireplumber pipewire pipewire-pulse.

I also have a hyperx quadcast microphone connected, and i have tried to remove it completely without any luck.

i use a keyboard that is connected wireless, and have also tried to remove it to see if the wireless made any interference but no such luck.

Strange thing is that i can get audio back by removing a usb plug and reconnecting it again.

alsamixer is showing pipewire for both card and chip, and it keeps resetting back every time i close down terminal after selecting my soundcard.

I hope someone can help me because i'm at my wits end and don't know what else to try to get it to work.

small update: i've noticed that if i run youtube in fullscreen audio disconnects within minutes, and in windowed i've been watching for an hour now without any issues so far

2

Welcome to the Forum!

So, is this only in Browser or in common with the whole System? I mean when You for Example listen to Music in VLC Player or something similar.

3

Thanks :slight_smile: I haven't tried listening to music in vlc. It only happens while i'm in browser,never when i'm in a game. And it also seems to mostly (only?) happen during fullscreen so far. I think it might be an issue with audio power saving. I turned it off for my soundcard after my post with

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/audio_disable_powersave.conf

options snd_hda_intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

and i haven had any issues yet so far. I'm currently just watching videos and doing things that used to get the audio disconnects, but to early to say if it is a fix yet.

edit: this didn't solve my problem, i still lost sound after a while
edit 2: now i keep losing sound no matter if i'm in full screen or not and within minutes of each other

4

How is the browser installed. Is it a Flatpak or Snap version? A browser packaged that way would be effectively sandboxed from the system resources.

5

not sure, i'm using brave that came preinstalled. I will try and uninstall and reinstall the snap version and see if that helps

6

No, please keep it. The preinstalled Brave browser version is good to use. Only other packages as snaps and flatpaks often make problems.

If you want to test other browsers it would be the best to install them as .deb packages.

1 Like
7

damn, i just installed the version from their homepage

just checked in software and that just reinstalled the same version i had

8

Did you test to disable hardware acceleration in your browser?

Do you have the audio stuttering when you play a downloaded video in fullscreen mode?

9

will try and turn off hardware acceleration and test it out. And so far i've had no issues while watching a downloaded file or while playing a game.
I also noticed that i lose sound quite quick if i go to another tab while watching a video in youtube, or while changing workplace.
I can watch videos in youtube in fullscreen just fine for hours without any issue IF i'm talking to someone over discord. After i close down discord the issue comes back again

10

You could also check the download speed while playing audio/video if there are inconsistencies.

Which profile is set at energy options? If it is set to power-save, try it with balanced mode - or if available - performance mode for testing.

11

i have it at performance, one of the first things i changed. Also just lost sound again with hardware acceleration off

tested internet speed while playing a video and it was stable

12

i just saw that i get warning triangles next to my settings in pipewire, i get these no matter what setting i use

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I use a soundblaster ae7 soundcard connected via optic cable to an amplifier that run 5.1 surround

I still get sound and also surround sound while playing a movie tho

13

What Browser do You use? It is installed as .deb/APT Package or Flatpak or Snap? Did You tried it with disabled Hardware Acceleration?

Did You tried here different Profiles?

14

I use the preinstalled brave browser that came with zorin, and I have tried other profiles. There are no warnings in the dropdown menues on the profiles i have chosen, only the ones you can see in the pictures

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https://www.reddit.com/r/SoundBlasterOfficial/comments/1iubcpp/guide_get_most_of_your_sound_blaster_ae57_under/

3 Likes
16

ok so i did a clean install after all this, and just installed pipewire and qasmixer,
and now everything just works without any of the scripts above. I'm gonna say it was all a new user-error from my part and that i broke something while tinkering

2 Likes
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