As crazy as it may seem, reducing the buffer may help. Also I noticed reduced CPU usage when I manually set the sample rate to my soundcard's native rate, 48000Hz.
Try changing your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to reflect the following changes:
This has eliminated stuttering for me with both ICH4 and ICH5 (AC'97) cards, but it may vary for other soundcards. Perhaps some AC'97 based cards have a small buffer, hence if the fragment number or fragment size is too high, it cannot fit in the buffer...
As crazy as it may seem, reducing the buffer may help. Also I noticed reduced CPU usage when I manually set the sample rate to my soundcard's native rate, 48000Hz.
Try changing your /etc/pulse/ daemon. conf to reflect the following changes:
; default- sample- format = s16le sample- channels = 2
default-sample-rate = 48000
; default-
default-fragments = 8 fragment- size-msec = 10
default-
This has eliminated stuttering for me with both ICH4 and ICH5 (AC'97) cards, but it may vary for other soundcards. Perhaps some AC'97 based cards have a small buffer, hence if the fragment number or fragment size is too high, it cannot fit in the buffer...