Wrong pitch and crackling sound with 5.1 output on Extigy USB card

[Jean-Luc Boss]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

Since i upgraded to Karmic, my 5.1 sound output on my creative labs extigy USB card is broken.
The previous release did work with alsa, and was working fine.
Now with Pulseaudio, the sound is only working correctly with stereo output, with 5.1, the sound is crackling, and the pitch is too high.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 1: Extigy [Sound Blaster Extigy], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC1: jean-luc 2681 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'HDMI'/'HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfe9fc000 irq 29'
   Mixer name : 'ATI R6xx HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:1002aa01,00aa0100,00100100'
   Controls : 4
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card0.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'Extigy'/'Creative Technology Ltd. Sound Blaster Extigy at usb-0000:00:1a.0-2, full speed'
   Mixer name : 'USB Mixer'
   Components : 'USB041e:3000'
   Controls : 23
   Simple ctrls : 17
Date: Mon Feb 8 19:48:40 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: alsa-base 1.0.20+dfsg-1ubuntu5
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-19.56-generic
SourcePackage: alsa-driver
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-19-generic x86_64

[Jean-Luc Boss (jlb74)]

Architecture: amd64
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 1: Extigy [Sound Blaster Extigy], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC1: jean-luc 2681 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'HDMI'/'HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfe9fc000 irq 29'
   Mixer name : 'ATI R6xx HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:1002aa01,00aa0100,00100100'
   Controls : 4
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card0.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'Extigy'/'Creative Technology Ltd. Sound Blaster Extigy at usb-0000:00:1a.0-2, full speed'
   Mixer name : 'USB Mixer'
   Components : 'USB041e:3000'
   Controls : 23
   Simple ctrls : 17
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-19.56-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-19-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare
mtime.conffile..etc.pulse.daemon.conf: 2010-02-07T13:42:11.104684

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Please export PULSE_NO_SIMD=1 and restart pulseaudio forcibly to reproduce this symptom.

[Jean-Luc Boss (jlb74)]

I tried this:
root@desktop:/etc/init.d# export PULSE_NO_SIMD=1
root@desktop:/etc/init.d# ./pulseaudio restart
 * PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions
root@desktop:/etc/init.d#

But still the same bug, i've captured a vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYfYP2HVKH4

[Jean-Luc Boss (jlb74)]

Maybe it's linked to the extigy usb driver and not to pulseaudio?

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

You've exported the environment variable as root and tried (incorrectly) to restart the system-wide daemon, which does not work because you did not configure it correctly. Thus, your changes did not take effect at all. You actually want to pulseaudio -k as your user, not as root.

[Jean-Luc Boss (jlb74)]

Hi Daniel,

I got some strange messages after restarting pulseaudio the way you explained and playing some flac's:
__________________________________________________________

jean-luc@desktop:~$ pulseaudio -k
jean-luc@desktop:~$ export PULSE_NO_SIMD=1
jean-luc@desktop:~$ pulseaudio &
[1] 3851
jean-luc@desktop:~$ W: ratelimit.c: 7 events suppressed
W: ratelimit.c: 266 events suppressed

jean-luc@desktop:~$ E: alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
E: alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_usb_audio'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
E: alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.
jean-luc@desktop:~$
jean-luc@desktop:~$
jean-luc@desktop:~$
jean-luc@desktop:~$
jean-luc@desktop:~$ W: ratelimit.c: 268 events suppressed
W: ratelimit.c: 265 events suppressed
__________________________________________________________

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Those are bugs in your sound driver (alsa-driver/linux), not pulseaudio. You haven't stated whether setting PULSE_NO_SIMD had any effect, however.

[Jean-Luc Boss (jlb74)]

Hello Daniel,

Setting PULSE_NO_SIMD did not have any effect :(

Best regards

[Jean-Luc Boss (jlb74)]

I did a test with Lucid Lynx, and it's still the same (Booting the LiveDVD Beta 1)

[Jean-Luc Boss (jlb74)]

Not using the card anymore, to many problems, i'm using the internal ALC883 card instead with SPDIF output
B

[Roman Paholík (wizzardsk)]

The same problem on my machine. Kubuntu 12.10, KDE 4.10 RC3, SB Extigy. Scratchy sound then I switch output to 5.1 but the output stays stereo. Is there at least some workaround?

[David Heidelberg (okias)]

I can confirm 16.04. Problem seems to be somewhere in ALSA/driver.

[Stefan Sauer (ensonic)]

I can confirm that there seems to be a regression in the alsa audio driver. I was trying this soundcard directly with alsa and get distoreted audio and rumble in *some* apps.