GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 676752
Audio cutout with pulseaudio jack sink.
Last modified: 2013-09-05 11:42:02 UTC
Firstly a couple of notes: I've rated this as major as it affects all audio on my system and makes music and movies unlisten/watchable. I cannot be 100% sure this is gstreamer, but as the problem first appeared when I added the ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa repository to my sources, it seems possible. If you point me to pulseaudio, I'll go and bother them instead, but really I just want to track down the source of the problem. The Ubuntu multimedia forums are no use. If we uncover and/or fix a bug on the way, then even better! So here we go... I was debugging a problem with Amarok (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=653124), and in the process, I upgraded a number of packages. This was a while (at least several months) ago, and unfortunately I can't remember which packages, or even what date I updated. Ever since, I am unable to play pulseaudio output (i.e. Amarok, Dragon player) through jack (using the jack sink module) without audio cuting out. Previously it was fine. I have tried removing the gstreamer ppa from my software sources and reinstalling all the related packages I can think of. I have tried switching between jack1 and jack2. Still no use. A couple of things worth mentioning: Jack is not reporting any xruns, and is capable of running smooth output from elsewhere at the same time as the choppy pulseaudio sink, so I'm fairly sure this isn't jack. Going into the pulseaudio volume control and setting the audio stream (e.g. amarok or dragon) to play directly through the soundcard interrupts the playback (as jack is accessing the soundcard). However, if I switch back to jack sink again, the remainder of the audio stream plays without audio dropouts. The choppiness starts again with the beginning of a new track. It's always possible to fix the problem temporarily by switching the audio stream away from and back to the jack sink. I have since added a gstreamer ppa again, though it's only supplying me with gstreamer 0.10.12-1ubuntu1. Can anyone suggest a method of troubleshooting to track down what might be the cause and restore the previous smooth playback? Any advice or comments however vague are much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Rob
What's the output of gst-inspect-0.10 pulsesink | grep Version and dpkg -l '*gstreamer*' | grep ii ? Which PPAs are you using exactly?
In order: $ gst-inspect-0.10 pulsesink | grep Version Version: 0.10.31 and $ dpkg -l '*gstreamer*' | grep ii ii bluez-gstreamer 4.96-0ubuntu4 Bluetooth GStreamer support ii gstreamer0.10-alsa 0.10.36-1~natty2 GStreamer plugin for ALSA ii gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg 0.10.12-1ubuntu1 FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer ii gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 0.10.15.debian-1 Fluendo mp3 decoder GStreamer plugin ii gstreamer0.10-gconf 0.10.31-1~natty2 GStreamer plugin for getting the sink/source information from GConf ii gstreamer0.10-nice 0.1.0-2ubuntu1 ICE library (GStreamer plugin) ii gstreamer0.10-packagekit 0.6.18-1 GStreamer plugin to install codecs using PackageKit ii gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad 0.10.23-1~natty3 GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set ii gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse 0.10.21-1 GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set (Multiverse Variant) ii gstreamer0.10-plugins-base 0.10.36-1~natty2 GStreamer plugins from the "base" set ii gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-apps 0.10.36-1~natty2 GStreamer helper programs from the "base" set ii gstreamer0.10-plugins-good 0.10.31-1~natty2 GStreamer plugins from the "good" set ii gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly 0.10.19-1~natty2 GStreamer plugins from the "ugly" set ii gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio 0.10.31-1~natty2 GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio ii gstreamer0.10-qapt 1.2.1-0ubuntu2 GStreamer plugin to install codecs using QApt ii gstreamer0.10-tools 0.10.36-1~natty1 Tools for use with GStreamer ii gstreamer0.10-x 0.10.36-1~natty2 GStreamer plugins for X11 and Pango ii libgstreamer-plugins-bad0.10-0 0.10.23-1~natty3 GStreamer development files for libraries from the "bad" set ii libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 0.10.36-1~natty2 GStreamer libraries from the "base" set ii libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.36-1~natty1 Core GStreamer libraries and elements ii libqtgstreamer-0.10-0 0.10.1-2ubuntu3 C++ bindings library for GStreamer with a Qt-style API ii phonon-backend-gstreamer 4:4.7.0really4.5.1-1ubuntu3 Phonon GStreamer 0.10.x backend (I foolishly seem to have given the version of gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg, sorry about that!) and finally: http://ppa.launchpad.net/gstreamer-developers/ppa/ubuntu/
Does anyone have any suggestions on locating the source of this problem?
Is this still a problem with GStreamer >= 1.0?
I'm not sure. I gave up trying to use pulseaudio and jack together as it was unlistenable. I'll try it out again, though I have no idea when I'll get around to it.
Let's close this then for now. Please reopen if you can reproduce it :)