Popping sound whenever a client connects / disconnects

[Johannes H. Jensen]

I'm getting an annoying popping sound whenever pulseaudio gets a new connection or a connection dies. This is especially annoying since google chrome seems to open new connections rather often for no apparent reason, interrupting music playback with glitches.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Start playback of some audio with totem or similar
2. Play a silent audio file with paplay silence.wav, I got mine from audacity
3. Observe pops in the playback from totem

Interestingly there are no pops if I use paplay instead of totem for step 1. Attaching debug output from pulseaudio -vvvv during the reproducer above.

My sound card is a USB DAC:

card 3: DAC [UAC1 DAC], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: pulseaudio 1:8.0-0ubuntu3.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-79.100-generic 4.4.67
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-79-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.6
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC3: joh 19113 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC2: joh 19113 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC1: joh 19113 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: joh 19113 F.... pulseaudio
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Sat Jun 10 04:06:46 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2011-10-01 (2078 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110426)
SourcePackage: pulseaudio
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-09-18 (264 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 09/18/2014
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: V1.7
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: Z97 GAMING 5 (MS-7917)
dmi.board.vendor: MSI
dmi.board.version: 1.0
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: MSI
dmi.chassis.version: 1.0
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvrV1.7:bd09/18/2014:svnMSI:pnMS-7917:pvr1.0:rvnMSI:rnZ97GAMING5(MS-7917):rvr1.0:cvnMSI:ct3:cvr1.0:
dmi.product.name: MS-7917
dmi.product.version: 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: MSI