pulseaudio multicast audio becomes inaudible

[Pavel Perestoronin]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

Both pulseaudio server and client running:

Ubuntu version: 9.10 Karmic Koala
pulseaudio: 1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1

I've been trying to get pulseaudio multicast loopback to work. When sending the audio to the multicast sink and telling it to loopback, the sound will be fine for about 5 seconds, then pitch and speed of sound starts changing, then the frequency gets so high that it starts stuttering because it plays the section of sound too fast.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Use the version from ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev for Karmic.

[Pavel Perestoronin (eigenein)]

Ok, installing the version from ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev on the receiver side have fixed the problem.

[Pavel Perestoronin (eigenein)]

This fix was very particular, the problem still exists, but it now takes more time to appear (about 1 minute).

[Greg Frank (greglarious)]

I have the same problem on both on Karmic and Lucid with 32bit and 64bit platforms.

[ericlesoll (ericlesoll)]

Hello,

I have the same problem since 9.10 release. The sound warps after 55 seconds. We have a Open source program built on Pulseaudio and iTALC. It uses Pulseaudio for audio chat in classroom. The developer said us that the cause was : module-rtp-recv
to check that, on machine A we start : pactl load-module module-rtp-send and
                      on machine B : pactl load-module module-rtp-recv
after 55s we get the trouble.
I attach a record in wav format. I record only the 35 last seconds
If I restart recv module I get the same bug after 55 seconds.

It's very important to resolve this bug, because is impacting a lot of machines. Our Project was downloaded more 2000 time, and we stay on Ubuntu 8.10 hoping that the bug would be fix on 10.04 LTS, because we can't install Ubuntu 8.10 on new machines.

We have another bug but I don't know if is the same module that is involved.
if on machine A we start : pactl load-module module-rtp-send and
                      on machine B : pactl load-module module-rtp-recv
We can hear streaming sound on machine B after 5 seconds.
If we launch recv module before send module we can hear the stream immediately.

kind regards

Eric

[Pavel Perestoronin (eigenein)]

The bug is not fixed in 10.04 LTS.

[Matthew Meyer (osarusan)]

I also have had this bug since 8.04, and it still exists in Ubuntu 10.10.

When using RTP Multicast to send music from Banshee in addition to Microphone output over Skype, the other user receives the sound with no problems at all. However, on the sending computer's end, using the loopback module, the sound speeds up, slows down, skips, and/or changes pitch dramatically. This happens no matter what audio thread is sent through the loopback. Basically, the loopback module is useless while this problem exists.

[Maarten Bosmans (mkbosmans)]

This bug is fixed upstream in pulseaudio git master
See http://git.0pointer.de/?p=pulseaudio.git;a=commitdiff;h=d053a25b67c5e70c83ed4dcfba1032b293d2cce9 and subsequent commits.

If there is any interest in it, the patches could be cherry-picked into stable-queue.

[ericlesoll (ericlesoll)]

I confirm it. The is fixed. I have tested during 30mn without sound problem. But the delay of 5s still persist il you launch module-rtp-send first before module-rtp-recv.

Thanks a lot for the job. Our project can continue.

Is it planed to include the modification in Ubuntu repository ?

[Maarten Bosmans (mkbosmans)]

The patches have just landed in stable-queue in pulse git. I'm not an Ubuntu packager, but I think Ubuntu follows s-q, so they should be included sometime.

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

Since they are all bug fixes, they will be included along with another patch from usptream in another pulse upload early next week.

[Maarten Bosmans (mkbosmans)]

That's only for Natty, right?

maverick (or -updates or -backports) would be nice too.

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

The rtp stuff can very likely be SRUed, I will take a closer look once I have the bugfixes into natty, as they have to be in natty first anyway befor teh SRU can go through.

Luke

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package pulseaudio - 1:0.9.22+stable-queue-24-g67d18-0ubuntu2

---------------
pulseaudio (1:0.9.22+stable-queue-24-g67d18-0ubuntu2) natty; urgency=low

  * Update to latest stable queue patches:
    - 09770e5 (module-loopback: Add adjust_time to valid args
    - 90c5520 (Limit rate adjustments to small, inaudible jumps
    - 4620039 (module-rtp-recv: Use new algorithm for adjusting sample rate
    - 2bfc032 (module-rtp-recv: Average the estimated real sample rate
    - 2ee4ec5 (module-rtp-recv: Remove smoother from write index (LP: #569378)
    - a8cd9d2 (conf: Make system.pa use udev-detect and not hal-detect.
    - b872254 (volume: Add a PA_VOLUME_UI_MAX define for the recommended max
               volume to show in UIs)
  * 0210-PulseAudio-added-IT-block-to-fix-thumb-conditional-i.patch:
    - added IT block to fix thumb conditional instruction build error messages
  * debian/rules: Remove CFLAGS that are specific to arm, the above patch
    makes those redundant (LP: #721498)
  * debian/control: Add a dependency on pulseaudio-module-raop
 -- Luke Yelavich <email address hidden> Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:15:02 +1100