Audio skipping regardless of distro, pulse/pipewire, audio devices

Ask Fedora
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Hi there. Regardless of whatever distro I use, I’ve been experiencing audio skipping if I open up a new program, create new tabs etc. My audio setup(s) where I’ve encountered these issues are as follows:
Manjaro + Pulse
Fedora + Pipewire
Both had GNOME.
I use nightly.diffuse.sh via Firefox as my audio source. I messed around with niceness in the manjaro install and ended up having to nuke it.

My computer has the following specs:
AMD Ryzen 2200G APU
Vega 8 iGPU
8GB DDR4 RAM (Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz)[with XMP/DOCP on]
Tuf B450 Gaming mobo

I’d reckon these specs are enough to listen to music with 4 firefox tabs open, along with a few PDFs, Atom, and a zsh instance. Even when I type it starts lagging.

My audio output setup is as follows:
Pipewire=>Tuf B450 line out to headphones
Pipewire=>TP-Link UB400 BT 4.0 adapter => SBC/SBC-XQ => Philips SPA8000B (BT equipped 5.1 system)

Both experience similar skipping and lagging, so I presume the issue isn’t driver level. Is it because GNOME is not well optimised? I would hate to switch DEs. Is it because Diffuse doesn’t have proper prioritisation implementation? Is it because Firefox doesn’t have proper prioritisation implementation? is it because Pulse/Pipewire don’t have proper prioritisation implementation? I keep getting stutters and lags on screen that coincide with the audio drop outs. I had a better, smoother experience on the Windows 11 Dev Channel to be honest. And that stuff ran real bad. Sounds like a DE problem to me :(. I’m on GNOME 41 right now, but the same issue was present on GNOME 40. Do I need to enable some magical setting to enable hardware acceleration? Please help me I’m lost. And I can’t afford bricking this install.

In case this is a kernel issue here’s my kernel information:
5.14.16-301.fc35.x86_64 GNU/Linux

And before you ask, I recently reapplied thermal paste, so that can’t be an issue. My CPU currently idles at 38 deg C and is at 50-55 during normal work. I don’t do intensive tasks on it, just regular computer usage stuff, along with some light C coding (<200 line code). Those temps are decent for me because I live in SE Asia where its generally hot.

2

Hello @netherquark ,
Welcome to the ask :fedora_classic: discussion area! First, yes your hardware should be fine for listening to audio. First, if your BT headset is not new, it may need a firmware update. I use wired so I don’t get this issue. But I understand that BT technology often can need firmware updates, if this is the case for yours then that may be something you would want to check into. The fact that it is happening on both the

interfaces would seem to indicate a separate issue. I use an Asus board and I can see the bluetooth controller with bluetoothctl

fedora~$bluetoothctl list                                                                                                                              11/15/21-07:23:34
Controller B0:A4:60:33:14:B2 BlueZ 5.62 [default]

Perhaps you may enjoy it more.

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I’m experiencing the same niggles with the wired onboard audio using my AKG K361s. So that means the problem isn’t with Bluetooth, or drivers, or firmware. Atleast I think so.

4

Are you streaming audio or listening to audio already on the PC? Stuttering or pauses while streaming may be a network issue as it buffers the data.

5

As I mentioned previously, I’m using nightly.diffuse.sh via firefox to stream music. I doubt this is a network issue as I’m connected via cat 6 ethernet to a 300mbps fibre connection. And, I’m using Google Drive to store my music. On my phone it works pretty well so that isn’t an issue either. I think its either down to kernel level scheduling not being optimised for my PC and/or RAM and/or swap, and/or the DE being wonky. I see zswap taking up 20% or so CPU regularly. I have the following setup, and that was just to be on the safe side:

ed13211f4bdd5f5feb4fd4e730a755c30f945a1a.png
ed13211f4bdd5f5feb4fd4e730a755c30f945a1a.png1897×345 21.3 KB

[I have dedicated 2 GB RAM to my iGPU]

FYI /swap is on an Intel 545s SATA 6 SSD, which also has all the other /, /home etc partitions. So it shouldn’t be that bad. Probably irrelevant, but the partitions are all ext4

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Only other thing I can posit is that with using google drive you are downloading the music, sending it back to the cloud, then streaming from the cloud (google drive) to play it.

I agree it does not seem likely that with a 300Mb pipe it should stutter, but considering google drive is used by millions you have to wonder if the hesitation comes from the google end and not your end.

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The same does not occur using an Android phone, or using Windows on the same comuputer. So I’d say the problem is not with google drive, or with my internet. Please help me diagnose whether its down to any of these:

Is it because Diffuse doesn’t have proper prioritisation implementation? Is it because Firefox doesn’t have proper prioritisation implementation? is it because Pulse/Pipewire don’t have proper prioritisation implementation?

Also I would like to reiterate this:

I keep getting stutters and lags on screen that coincide with the audio drop outs.