Music sounds very Scratchy

[Danny Staple]

Binary package hint: widelands

The in-game music sounds very scratchy and poor quality on my system. This is build9half-10 on Edgy.
I am able to get great audio from other applications, including playing music.

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

This package does not have a launchpad "product" assigned to it so I cannot properly attach an upstream bug report.

Here is the upstream report on sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1640178&group_id=40163&atid=427221

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

The report earlier placed on sourceforge has been marked as a duplicate of https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1597516&group_id=40163&atid=427221

However, that issue has been closed with a suggested workaround of "downgrade SDL to 1.2.7".
Since other applications in Ubuntu are likely to rely on SDL, this workaround may not be enough.

I suggest reporting an SDL issue if code that was previously okay with the SDL library now causes crackling sound.

[Philip Paquette (pcpaquette)]

Thank you for reporting this bug.

Last comment upstream says:
"Date: 2007-02-25 17:23
Sender: bedouin
Logged In: YES
user_id=20557
Originator: NO

OK, I just found a method that won't exhibit the bug. So consider it fixed."

Is this bug actually fixed or is he talking about the SDL downgrading workaround?

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

Since the upstream status is "Wontfix" that probably indicates that they are relying on downgrading libSDL. I will make a comment upstream to prod them towards this launchpad report.

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

A comment has now been left Upstream regarding this - pasted verbatim:

Date: 2007-06-02 12:25
Sender: bedouin
Logged In: YES
user_id=20557
Originator: NO

It's a workaround in the code introduced in rev2063, and therefore
included in build10. The launchpad bug is against build9-half, so I
consider it fixed and closable. I won't do that myself as I have no need of
yet another account somewhere.

Tech talk:
The crackling appears if and only if libSDL_mixer's internal volume
setting is not at 100% (AFAIK, the problem itself is in libSDL). So
starting in rev2063 we leave the volume alone. If you're attentive, you can
still hear the crackling while music is fading in or out.

Short of scrapping SDL audio, I see nothing we could do here.

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

This is still present in Hardy.
$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

$ apt-cache policy widelands
widelands:
  Installed: 1:11-1
  Candidate: 1:11-1
  Version table:
 *** 1:11-1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ apt-cache policy widelands
widelands:
  Installed: 1:11-1
  Candidate: 1:11-1
  Version table:
 *** 1:11-1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Expected:
No scratchy sounds

Actual:
All music - intro, main menu is scratchy.

Other notes:
I am now running it on quite different sound hardware - so I do not think this is specific to the hardware.

[Nasenbaer (nasenbaer)]

This is fixed with newer SDL_mixer versions. If this error still occurs in current Ubunut-versions, please update the SDL_mixer package to latest official release and recompile Widelands afterwards.

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

Nasenbaer - which Ubuntu version was the fix released in?
If this is not yet available via apt in an Ubuntu distribution, it is not appropriate to set it to fix released.

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

I should clarify that - it is not yet appropriate to set it to fix released for the "Widelands (Ubuntu)" package. For the "widelands" package outside of Ubuntu that would be correct.

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

St tracker #1597516 does not appear to be tracking.

[Danny Staple (danny-orionrobots)]

Setting to "In progress" as requiring users to manually update and recompile core libraries plus this package does not mean a Fix is released for Ubuntu.

[Nasenbaer (nasenbaer)]

okay sorry :) thank you for fixing the status

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

Hi

I've seen this bug report from time to time, but can't really remember having experienced any scracthy music. Additionally SDL mixer has been upgraded multiple times since this was filed, and is now up to 1.2.12-3 in the latest Ubuntu release (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sdl-mixer1.2).

Could someone please check whether this is still an issue or whether this bug could be closed? :)

[Alex Henry (tukkek)]

I'm not sure if I should open a new bug report for this but I've had this problem testing the v19-freeze nightly build today. Other sounds seem fine but music is crackling (constant artifacts). I have this issue too in other programs which route the audio through pulseaudio instead of communicating directly with the ALSA devices (from what I can see).

If this is the case it will probably affect a great number of players since pulseaudio is widespread nowadays (I think it's some sort of default at least on Debian Linux).

I am using pulseaudio 9.0.1-1 from Debian.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

Here all is fine with the music (arch-linux). Versions:

widelands: bzr8063
sdl_mixer: 1.2.12-4
pulseaudio: 9.0-1

If i open pavucontrol widelands is showing up as "widelands: Simple DirectMedia layer" and the volume is 100%.