sound from all programs becomes metallic/robotic / highly corrupted

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh]

This is a tough one to describe.
On the latest updated 11.04, something goes wrong with the sound system so that all applications (e.g. Banshee, Rhythmbox, Google voice, etc) no longer produce sensible sound until the next reboot. Voices sound like crazy robots; music sounds highly metallic.
I believe this happens after a one-time stress on the RAM, ie when my memory usage goes beyond the RAM (to use swap) just once, this occurs and cannot be fixed by restarting applications or fiddling with sound settings.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: banshee 2.0.1-1ubuntu1~natty2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.50-generic 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 8 15:55:17 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
SourcePackage: banshee
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Erik S (ofenfisch)]

I just have a small work-around:
If it is possible (RAM > 2GB), you can set the swappiness lower. The steps are shown here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#What_is_swappiness_and_how_do_I_change_it.3F

[e633 (e633)]

Why is this reported as a banshee bug when it's clearly not?

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

Reassigning to pulseaudio and confirming -- I recall seeing this issue sometime back. Restarting pulseaudio makes it all work again.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) reached end-of-life on October 28, 2012.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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