Line Out audio output rapidly disapears and reappears

[zzarko]

Today my audio became choppy. At first I thought it was a bad audio file, but it turned out that everything I play is choppy. Then I thought that some process is clogging the CPU or IO, but it wasn't that either. After some searching, I opened sound settings and found out that Line Out audio output is rapidly disappearing and reappearing from the list. I checked the alsamixer and same thing was happening in its window.

I tried to restart the computer, and the problem disappeared only to come back again after a short time. I still have my old 14.04 installation, I rebooted to that and everything worked as it should.

I have never seen anything like this, I have no clue what is happening and I have no idea what to check. dmesg output showed nothing related to sound. Since it is very unusual, I have attached a video of what is going on.

[zzarko (zzarko-gmail)]

The installation is 18.04 64 bit, installed two weeks ago, fully updated.

[zzarko (zzarko-gmail)]

In the video, I made Firefox window to be the active one, so no key presses were going to sound settings or alsamixer, they are rapidly changing all on their own.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1813075/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[zzarko (zzarko-gmail)]

I changed the bug report to alsa-driver, as it affects PulseAudio and ALSA, but I'm not sure if it is the right choice.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command only once, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

  apport-collect 1813075

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for alsa-driver (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]