Microphone capture distorted on some ALC892 and ALC1220 codecs
Summary
The microphone recorded sound with pulseaudio crackles on those two codecs, it's a well known problem especially for me with an ALC892 codec, and these are some bug reports coming from the alsa bugzilla, but it looks like an issue regarding pulseaudio too, you can see from the ALC1220 a person workarounded the issue recording with plain alsa.
Imo it's a very strange issue no one seemed to figure out as well, that's why I wanted to put it there.
ALC892 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201613
ALC1220 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195303
As you can see from the following environment, I'm currently using an USB sound card as a temporary workaround, but in those two ALSA bugzilla there is a lot of information, logs and tested workarounds which can be more useful than mine, even if for me no workaround was effective as switching to an USB sound card...
Additional info
There are some other minor playback issues with the output as well, as the crackling seem to be the same as the microphone when you first join a voice channel for one minute in Discord, the workaround for that is using tsched=0 on pulseaudio basically for 1 minute and not more than one minute, makes the whole system sound crackling with a distortion similar to what happens on the microphone (but on the microphone the issue always persists) hope I explained it decently
environment
`Linux luky-pc 5.0.0-8-generic #9-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 12 21:58:11 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux`
**** Lista di PLAYBACK dispositivi hardware ****
scheda 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], dispositivo 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], dispositivo 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], dispositivo 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], dispositivo 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 1: Device [USB Audio Device], dispositivo 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Sottoperiferiche: 0/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], dispositivo 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], dispositivo 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
**** Lista di CAPTURE dispositivi hardware ****
scheda 1: Device [USB Audio Device], dispositivo 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Sottoperiferiche: 0/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], dispositivo 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
scheda 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], dispositivo 2: ALC892 Alt Analog [ALC892 Alt Analog]
Sottoperiferiche: 1/1
Sottoperiferica #0: subdevice #0
Stringa server: unix:/run/user/1000/pulse/native
Versione protocollo libreria: 32
Versione protocollo server: 32
Locale: sì
Indice client: 277
Dimensione tile: 65472
Nome utente: luky
Nome host: luky-pc
Nome server: pulseaudio
Versione server: 12.2
Specifica di campionamento predefinita: s16le ch 2 44100 Hz
Mappa del canale predefinita: front-left,front-right
Sink predefinito: alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._USB_Audio_Device-00.analog-stereo
Sorgente predefinita: alsa_input.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._USB_Audio_Device-00.analog-mono
Cookie: e2d5:99c0
pactl list on the attachments
pulseaudio 12.2
Steps to reproduce
- Have an ALC892 or ALC1220 codec sound card
- Use pulseaudio
- Try to record some sound or use some audio conference program like Skype or Discord
What is the current bug behavior?
Microphone playback with pulseaudio crackles
What is the expected correct behavior?
Microphone playback when pulseaudio is enabled shouldn't be crackling
Recordings with plain alsa are not crackling, as some people find in this ALSA bug report