Ok, more experimentation with play-file in pacmd, and there is no stuttering. Doesn't seem to be affected if I am running e-mail, web browser, etc simultaneously.
I've jumped back to Exaile to play the same music. Sure enough, some ath5k messages and a stutter.
I see a message cluster in syslog I haven't noticed before during this test; here it is:
[ 8842.443712] ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2422MHz)
Jun 22 21:12:56 temuko pulseaudio[1267]: alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
Jun 22 21:12:56 temuko pulseaudio[1267]: alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_usb_audio'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
Jun 22 21:12:56 temuko pulseaudio[1267]: alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.
Ok, more experimentation with play-file in pacmd, and there is no stuttering. Doesn't seem to be affected if I am running e-mail, web browser, etc simultaneously.
I've jumped back to Exaile to play the same music. Sure enough, some ath5k messages and a stutter.
I see a message cluster in syslog I haven't noticed before during this test; here it is:
[ 8842.443712] ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2422MHz)
Jun 22 21:12:56 temuko pulseaudio[1267]: alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
Jun 22 21:12:56 temuko pulseaudio[1267]: alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_usb_audio'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
Jun 22 21:12:56 temuko pulseaudio[1267]: alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.
Any clues from this?