This is the second time I've had 17.3 on my Dell Precision M4800 laptop in two weeks. 2 problems are reoccurring: (1) frozen browser tabs crashing the system (though it seems less frequent now), and (2) after having the sound work just fine for 2 or 3 days, suddenly I start getting uncontrollable static anytime I try to listen with plug-in headphones...as if the soundcard driver is suddenly becoming corrupt (though I am not hearing static over the laptop's built-in speakers). I don't expect ANY problems when I load a Zorin version, which I have been using and loving since version 10 or before. Maybe it can't load a driver for some old peripheral, but beyond that ZERO problems. I load it and it works. I update it and it still works. I try out a program, uninstall if I don't like it, and it still works, and on, and on.... I've never had browsers crashing the system before! I've never had something flaky happen that interferes with sound before. Is this a bad distro, or a distro that installs in some flaky way? Do things get corrupted when a program unstalls that never got corrupted before. [There are programs that won't even install on the list, and I tried one that did nothing at all once installed! Does anybody check all the software being offered?] But my principal question is IS THERE A WAY TO GET 17.3 TO RELOAD THE AUDIO CARD DRIVER ??? and how about a simple and direct way, like something I can just click on in some page of the SETTINGS menus?
Sorry to hear of your troubles friend. Can you give us some details about your audio chipset please with:
sudo lshw -C multimedia
I don't have a clue.
Please open a terminal (just type terminal in the search bar), press enter to launch and enter that command I gave in previous post and then post back the output here please. Thanks.
I seem to have gotten the problem to go away, though I don't know how doing this could have been a remedy: I booted a five year old version live-disk version of Linux Mint on the machine, and used a player program on it to play some music files off of USB drive I then inserted. I did this to make certain that the static was not a hardware problem. This music played fine and there was no static on my headphones, which seemed to prove it wasn't a hardware program.
But after that, when I rebooted my installed Zorin 7.3, the static problem was gone and by now has stayed away for about 16 hours!
Could an internet radio player program I installed, and then uninstalled since it was non-functional, have left some digital switch related to sound in the wrong position, which running the live-disc Mint version corrected? If you are thinking that it was the reboot of Zorin that solved the problem, it was not. I rebooted Zorin several times before that, and doing that did not correct the static problem.
In any case, reinstalling the sound card driver seems not to be necessary, though the problem, even if remedied, seems to be quite a mystery.
Did you check your logs? I wouldn't like to guess what caused it. I have had issues with Windows in the past and that was down to a soundcard connection/wrong port for the source. Can't remember.
The problem still hasn't come back, so I don't know if it could be logged somehow.
Linux Logs and Audio Glitches
Linux logs can store events related to audio glitches such as crackling, particularly if these issues are system-level problems or involve hardware interactions. Logs like /var/log/syslog or /var/log/kern.log may contain relevant information about audio device operations and potential errors that could cause audio glitches. For instance, kernel messages related to hardware devices and their drivers are logged in /var/log/kern.log .
Additionally, troubleshooting audio issues often involves checking for clues in these logs to understand the root cause of the problem. If the crackling is due to a specific application or a system-wide configuration issue, logs might not directly mention the glitch but can provide insights into the system's behavior that led to the audio problem.
To specifically address audio crackling, users have found modifying PulseAudio configurations, such as setting default-sample-rate = 48000 in ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf , to be effective. However, these changes and their outcomes might not be explicitly logged unless manually logged by the user.
For deeper analysis, examining logs for any error messages or warnings related to audio drivers or PulseAudio can provide clues about the cause of the crackling sound.
AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.