Rotten Audio under load in some games

[FatRakoon]

My Linux boxes are both using Creatie cards. one is the ZXR and the other, the Recon3D - Both seem to be pretty much the same really, for linux.
I have noticed that when they play heavily loaded audio in games, they can both cause the machine to jitter and slow down a tad.
I have sort of cured this, by knocking down the Audio quality to MED or lowered the number of sounds it can playbak, and sure ,thats fine I suppose, but its sometimes not playing as well as it could be.

I was wondering what is the bets option for Audio in Linux?

I do want quality but also the ability for it to play back lots of sounds that games can often do these days?

 

[FatRakoon]

Do you know if you are running Pulse or pipewire ?

Personally not had issues with audio in linux for a long time, last time was motherboard sound chips that caused me headaches

Pulse or Pipewire?

Erm, Banana!?

Lol, ok seriously though, I dont have a clue?

I am running MINT 22 - Cinnamon install, but using MATE mostly cos I just am.
The SoundCard thats on this is the SoundBlaster Recon3D. I have tried my Asus Xonar DG card, but also the boards has SoundBlaster onboard. I tried that and it was so bad, that it was not funny.

And yes, I also have no real issues with audio, but I am more and more using my Linux PCs and I have just setup my old Gigabyte Z270 and I7-7700K as a Linux PC and its near flawless except for the Audio.

Again, only when under load.

I have set the audio to MEDIUM Quality and less sounds, and its helped massively, but so much audio is simply missing... Its very noticeable.

When you are hovering over any particular army, or squad or whatever, you normally hear them go about their business, and you hear them clattering or the tools banging, or cocking the guns and so on, but with less effects, these are switched off and sure, the load os much better etc and it does not jitter anywhere near as much, but still, its horrible to play like this.

The Recon3D is about the best card that I have for the Linux PCs, my main Windows PC is using an Essence STX II and so thats staying there as its in my main PC, and I have a ZXR but it sseems that for linux, thats not any difference thats at all noticeable. I got a handful of USB and FIREWIRE options, but I know that these are not going to handle things very well if the audio is filling up as much as it is on a card, its going to be worse through USB surely!
I got a Creative OMNI too thats USB, and I guess that would possibly be the most game friendly, but again...? Who knows, I will try them.

But the simple thing is, that Under load, the Audio is what is ruining Gaming for me, and not the Graphics weirdly enough!

 

[FatRakoon]

Yes, I am rather irritated and I have had a bad time recently with things.

Ok, well, my head is spinning like hell, but I had had a few moments of clarity and of muddiness.

I am listening to some nice soothing All About Eve on Rhythmbox and at the same time, I am re-copying a load of Steam stuff over.

Now, with steam, it does allow you to copyu files from other computers on my network ( one of the most amazing things that Steram does ) and anwyay. what I do, is copy the entire folder for each game. I dont copy them all, just the ones that I am likely to play, and I then go to install them and then steam, validates the files and then gets what it needs- This is becaused I am copying them from Windows to Linux and so there will be a few things that it might need, rather than simply also copying the ACF file for each game too... Anyway, this is a by-the-way.

But I noticed that the music was grinding away really nastily... As it is a kind of electric robotic sound.. like interference sort of thing?

Now, I soon realised that he music does this when it is trying to access the disk.

Ok, so, I took the card out and tried the Xonar DX and that ,while present and the setup knew it was there, was simply not playing anything?

I put the Recon3D back in and that too didnt play and so after re-seating it, it did.

I do have one slot that I can use, however ithere would be ZERO gap for the Fans on the Graphics card to get any cooling from.
I may put the GFX card on a lower slot and put the Audio above it.

The OnBoard Audio, although being Creative SoundBlaster, is utter tripe... Even under Windows, I dont find it to be worth bothering with,

--

USB Audio

Well, I can see whjat you mean. I use an old Atari Falcon to write music, and I use a laptop to record the music

I tried to use the onboard audio of the laptop but it was drivel, and I also tried that OMNI and that was no better, but I then bought a proper audio USB I/O card and it is absolutely perfect.
The Laptop and the OMNI has a horrible lag of only half a second, but it made a difference you know?

So, ok, I dont want to , but I will try the OMNI Card.

I do have a few other external options, USB and FIREWIRE, but I think the OMNI is the one that will most likely handle all teh sounds... This is not even handling Music and Disk access??? Why, I dont know?

This is a fresh install and I have NOT tried Linux on this setup before, but its been a right darling under windows... it might also be a naff install??? I dont know?

 

[FatRakoon]

Oh, ruddy typical.

Yeah, ok, the OMNI has definitely been working great so far.

I will admit, that I bought it purely as an "I WONDER?" thing. I used to love Creative cards, still do I suppose, but I got into ASUS Audio with the DX2 and the Essence STX and also I got a Strix too and I am happy with them, but the OMNI was more of a novelty more than anything.

I guess I just assumed that since it was no good for the recording audio, and that its USB, so it cant be that good with lots of sounds, but hey ho, I am wrong, it seems to be better than the actual cards for some reason? - Well, for my needs on this PC anyway!

Many thanks my friend.

Im still going to be sodding about with the cards, thats me all over, but at least I know that the OMNI will do it.

 

[FatRakoon]

Yes, I can get that for sure.
I also have my other main PC and a couple of Laptops that are running Linux and I dont have anywhere near the same issues as this Particular one has given me.

I have not had 100% great sailing, Im not saying that, but this one certainly seems to have a dislike for this particular issue.

My other main Linux PC is my AMD 9590 and Asus Sabretooth 990FX along with a Radeon RX580 and the SoundBlaster ZXR and that plays these games near to perfect.
This one is the Gigabyte Z270 and I7-7700K and a GTX970 and currently the OMNI, and thats sounding great at the moment. so it should be able to handle the audio much better than it is doing.

I have had weird moments when the sound sort of sounds like its suddenly underwater for a second or two, but thats not that often.

The Drivers are only whatever Linux has in its arsenal, I have not downloaded anything extra.

I am still going to have a play, and see about the AMD setup and seeing if I can make that audio issues go away... (The bubbles thing).

again, thanks for everything. These are irritating issues that I should be able to sort out, but I am slowly losing my marbles with my head issues.

 

[FatRakoon]

Yes, I have found a few others having trouble too!

The console commands returned :-

uname -r
6.8.0-51-generic

pipewire --version
pipewire
Compiled with libpipewire 1.0.5
Linked with libpipewire 1.0.5

This setup is relatively up to date and with the latest updates etc.

The OMNI solution has indeed cured the issues and thats great, but I absolutely would prefer to use a card instead, purely for the ease of not having the card external.

I also need to swap oput the ZXR and the Recon3D as the ZXR is a better card all round, and I dont seem to have anywhere near as much trouble with that PC even though they are both running the same versions of MINT as each other. The other one is in the Mozart TX and never gets moved and so that may get the OMNI but this one gets moved in and out of use all the time... Hence the card over the OMNI.

 

[FatRakoon]

Oh well weird.
Ok, well, I have had some more playing about... Its clear that I am a complete *******, so dont judge me too harshly, but there you go!

Now, I have been toying about with this PC and I tried out the latest deepin - I loved its look, especially the vintage theme, but I just wasnt 100% with it.
I also tried Fedora again, but the MATE edition didnt seem to want to play nicely with the menus and the window system, and so sod that I went back to Mint and I have gone back top the Cinnamon desktop.

Anyway, like a smeg, I have the Recon3D card back in, purely cos Im a git. But now it had no sound?
Everything said the card was there, however there was no Speaker or anything to show it? I shutdown, and reseated the card etc and still nothing, so I put the OMNI in and that was the same. The PC knew it was there, but no playing of any sounds? It went through the motions, I just never heard a thing... I checked all the connections etc but nothing.

Now, here is a weird one that I have yet to delve any deeper into, but mentioned was Pulse and pipewire and this got me looking.

I found about the PULSE AUDIO and while I knew this had the pipewire thingy ( like I said, I dont understand but I am going to look deeper) and I read that someone else had an issue and that the cure seemed to be that he needed to refresh the pulseaudio's config files.

So, I had a look in the /home/damion/.config/pulse folder and there was a bunch of files, do I just wiped them.

I did a restart and nothing happened and then I managed to reinstall pulseaudio with sudo apt install pulseaudio and then after reading the options, it was simply pulseaudio --start

I then got sound back and it was fine.

I restarted and it was still fine.

Now, I then realised that the PC was still seeing both the Recon and the OMNI and that the audi owas connected to the Recon.
So, I unplugged the OMNI and played a few maps on Dawn Of War and the audio was perfectly fine!!!

Has this then cured the Audio?

The previous MINT install was Cinnamon sure, but I had also been using the MATE desktop instead ( I like the themes better ) although I prefer the Icon placement in Cinnamon ( a side note, shut up ).

Is Mate taking up more resources?

I alse noticed, that my /home is never cleared up and is on a different HD to the root and swap ( Thats on the SSD ) nand the same with /home/data and thats used just for the Steam games, and other misc junk.

So maybe the configs were just getting mixed up between installs?

In the past, ( Why am I still going on? ) but in the past, when I reinstalled any Distro or whatever, I would sometimes use root and rename my home fodler to ORG and then I would copy the files I needed over. I have not done that for a short while so maybe that caused some issues?

Ah well.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[FatRakoon]

TimeShift?
I have never used anything like such software, however, I did once write a program on my Atari TT that saved a backup of certain files, plus any you wanted extra, and they could be restored at any time.

It really was a sort of system restore if you will.

Was a great app if you had multiple setups and configuring the stuff was mostly done by hand and you made mistakes-a-plenty in doing that, and so you always needed to restore specific files.

But yeah, after this new fresh install, the whole system is very very responsive now, and even large steam games load up every bit as quick as it does in Windows, and weirdly enough, a few Windows apps are actually faster through Wine than they were when it had Windows! - Thats nuts!!

So much so, that I am mostly using this PC again in Linux and the only few programs that I do need windows for, are running just fine with WINE!

The ONLY issues I get now, are accessing files on my various setups with various computers. I still have issues when getting Linux and Windows to access each others files.

But yeah, hey ho.