I sometimes hear randomly appearing clicking sounds through my headphones (Sony WH-1000XM3).
These consist of a click with a falling pitch (always sounds exactly the same, always has the same length), a pause (varies widely in duration, usually a couple seconds), and a click with a rising pitch (always sounds exactly the same, always the same length.
The sounds appear quite unpredictably, sometimes none can be heard for a long time, sometimes there’s just one or two in a row, sometimes they annoy me every few seconds, sometimes they even overlap.
The sound responds to changes that I make to the output volume. It just appears as any other sound generated by the system or an application (I usually run just Discord and Firefox, but I don’t think they make the sound).
I know that it did not happen on Kubuntu or KDE Neon, nor does it happen on Windows, but it did happen on Fedora Workstation 35 too.
I can not be entirely sure that it is independent from my headphones, as I use them as my sole audio output, but I know for sure that switching between codecs does not change anything.
I don’t think it can possibly be caused by Bluetooth / device (dis)connection, as all my devices are continuously connected, and my Bluetooth headphones clearly work too. Also, I don’t know how the occasional overlaps could be explained if it were because of something like that.
Are there any more commands I could run, or other things I could do, to help troubleshoot this issue?
It’s not a bluetooth problem. I just heard it make the noise again without any bluetooth devices being connected, through my screen’s speakers.
What other systems might be responsible for this, if not Bluetooth, applications or drivers?
I heard this sound in my speakers now. I got the message popped up that a USB device connected.
Can you pleas check if this is also your case? Connecting an USB stick to see if it is so.
It’s definitely a notification sound (opening and closing judging by your sample). If you open settings in Gnome and turn off notifications it should stop. I think you may have to do each individual application that is listed.
I can trigger the clicking sounds by plugging/unplugging a USB stick. The sounds still behave weirdly and somewhat unpredictably (it sounds “buggy”), but are definitely caused by the connection notifications.
However, I would like to keep the other notifications on, only disabling those that cause this sound. Can I do that?
The solution is to disable the event sounds in dconf at /org/gnome/desktop/sound/event-sounds. Disabling Files notifications in the settings does not help, but this does.