TOSLINK connected audio pauses or drops to analog connector

Submitted by Henrik Johansson

Assigned to pul..@..op.org

Link to original bug (#102927)

Description

This issue was originally discussed in a thread on the Gentoo forums: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8120616.html

What happens is that the audio now and then pauses before it comes back. Usually it's gone for a few seconds but some times more than that. I have two speakers connected using a TOSLINK connector on the motherboard. If an analog source is connected at the same time audio will switch over to that one instead. When this occurs the pavucontrol interface shows the message "Establishing connection to Pulseaudio. Please wait...". The problem seems specific to Pulseaudio, this does not happen when the Audacious alsa plugin is used for instance.

I have created two logs running pulseaudio -k && pulseaudio --log-level=4 --log-target=file:pulse.log --start.

Here's a log of the startup of Pulseaudio: https://pastebin.com/Mu4mT0z8 Here's a log of the error occurring: https://pastebin.com/kHykvjyp

The problem occurs on Pulseaudio v10.0, v10.99.1 and v11.0, all installed using Gentoo's package manager portage.

As others suggested in the thread I have tried setting tsched=0' in /etc/pulse/default.pa and disabled module-suspend-on-idle without any improvement.

We are at least a handful of Gentoo users who have experienced this so it seems as if it's not specific to a hardware error on my computer.