Comment 16 for bug 359361

A note on the Apport submission:

I did a new install of Lucid on my laptop. I enabled auto-login and installed some other software.

I used system->preferences->sound to change to the digital out/analog in from the default analog duplex.

I had to then open alsamixer to unmute and raise the volume on the SPDIF so it actually played sound (this step probably shouldn't be required if you do the above step of sys->pref->sound==>digital out, but that should be a different bug report...)

Once I did this, there was no "buzzing", but this essentially replicated my earlier workaround of "mute/unmute to get rid of buzz". Now when I restart, any sounds I play will buzz until I do the mute/unmute trick. I only have to do that once, however, as the driver never enters a powersave state ("cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save" yields 0) again. If I enable power saving (a feature that should work) by changing power_save to be, say, 15, after 15 or so seconds, the buzzing will return.

If you want me to replicate this on a virgin RC or Beta CD, I can do that as well. The procedure should go something like:

1) Boot up
2) Sys->Prefs->Sound, change to be digital output instead of analog
3) Run alsamixer in a terminal, up the Master and SPDIF sliders to 100 (0dB), and unmute SPDIF.
4) Enable power saving mode by setting the power_save variable to something like 15.
5) Wait 15 or so seconds
6) Play a sound with easily heard distortion, such as the test sinusoid in gstreamer-properties

Let me know what else you'd like me to do. Afonic, if you could replicate this for them so we can get a "confirmed," that would be awesome.