Skype -- no audio

[doctordruidphd]

Out of curiosity I installed skype. It worked fine, including the audio, without any change to the default.pa file.

Yes, it works fine here on 12.04, and 13.04 (no 12.10 on the disk to test) without any configuration changes. It's on 13.10 that there is a problem, or at least that I am having a problem. So far I cannot find any differences in sound configuration between the 13.10 system and the 13.04 system from which it was upgraded. Nor do I understand why the "tsched" option would fix skype and zap the rest of the sound system.

[dibl]

It's on 13.10 that there is a problem, or at least that I am having a problem.

... and *buntu 13.10 is of course much closer to the current Debian sid distro than earlier *buntus, thus the reason for my interest.

Nor do I understand why the "tsched" option would fix skype and zap the rest of the sound system.

You are right -- it makes no sense that a skype config file would affect other sound packages. Hmmmm, I wonder what that "module-udev-detect" command is doing, exactly ... I wonder if it is affecting the loaded kernel modules that support the sound system.

[doctordruidphd]

You are right -- it makes no sense that a skype config file would affect other sound packages.

The file in question -- /etc/pulse/default.pa -- is really a puleaudio config file, not skype. So far I haven't been able to find any skype config files to mess with, outside of what the GUI controls, which pretty much only allows pulseaudio to be selected.

I have been searching and messing with default.pa and daemon.conf in the same directory, stopping and restarting pulse, all with either no results, or clobbering pulseaudio altogether. Still experimenting, but the tsched thing seems to be most reliable for others, just doesn't work here.

[doctordruidphd]

I just discovered today that Youtube through Firefox also has no audio.
This lends some credibility to the idea that it's a 32-bit problem somewhere.
However, WINE seems to have audio.
This is a 64-bit system.

[NoWorries]

Sorry to hear that you are still having problems. I have 3 systems which are all 64B and Skype works on all of them. I found that by installing Adobe Reader 9.5.5 on my system that it installed a heap of 32B packages. I don't know if this would help you or not. I could list all my i386 packages for you, but that would take about 5 pages of listing. If you want that I am willing to provide it for you.

[doctordruidphd]

I do have the multiarch package installed, and the flash player is working, just no audio, so I suspect that the packages are installed. There do seem to be a bunch of i386 libs installed, so I think (but cannot be sure) that part of the system is working. I have reinstalled everything pulseaudio and flashplugin-installer, so I would think that would have brought in any required packages in. I still think it may be a configuration problem.

[Snowhog]

Found at: http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/...0/td-p/1839659

I found that this problem is related to pulse audio master update in 13.10.


Its possible to get skype working well. Just run it with special command:


Exec=/usr/bin/env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 /usr/bin/skype

Of course its workarount and it should be solved by skype developers team.

[doctordruidphd]

Thanks for that; skype works. Unfortunately flashplayer is run from libflashplayer.so, so I haven't figured out how to set the env to test it. Setting it while running firefox or chromium sadly doesn't fix it.
I did file a bug report, so we'll see.

[dibl]

Based on troubleshooting today, I can report that on a Debian sid KDE system, the fix posted in #11 above will fix the skype audio problem, and leave other players that depend on pulseaudio such as vlc, bangarang, and kaffeine working, but will kill players and applications that depend on ALSA. I discovered this when I needed to use audacity and found it hosed. Same with alsaplayer. Reversing the modification to /etc/pulse/pa will fix the ALSA problem, and hose skype. I never experienced any problem with flash or other browser players.

[GreyGeek]

[QUOTE=dibl;336612].... I discovered this when I needed to use audacity and found it hosed. Same with alsaplayer. .../QUOTE]

That's not good. Thankfully, in 12.04.3 I can run both Skype and Audacity, and I use Audacity the most. At least once a week or more.

[doctordruidphd]

In response to dibl's post, I ran some tests, and discovered that, as of right now, youtube (both flash and html5 versions) are running with normal audio, vlc and alsaplayer are working (without the tsched=0 option). Skype works with the "env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30" invocation. So, basically everything but skype is working as expected, and there exists a workaround for skype.

There have been no updates/upgrades to either pulseaudio or alsa in the last few days. Only thing I have done is install some gstreamer packages in an unsuccessful attempt to install and run the latest pitivi. So there is no logical explanation as to why it is working, which means there is no logical plan to follow when it breaks. Business as usual...

[Fintan]

I read this thread with interest. Pulse never really worked for me on my laptop so I have alsa installed but my voice is very cracked up.

I wanted to play with the "solution" here and decided to uninstall alsa and reinstall pulseaudio.

Removing alsa tells me it will also remove kubuntu-desktop and my linux- kernel generic 3.11.3 (yes I installed that last week.)

Installing pulse will remove linux- kernel generic 3.11.3, but I wanted to keep that.

On my main 13.04 skype works just fine. I have set up skype the same for both 13.04 and 13.10. Same version 4.2.0.11, same settings.

I will try and boot into another kernel and see what that does.

Edit: It doesn't matter which kernel I use. 3.11.3, 3.10.x, 3.09.x I get the same clackes up voice.

Is there a work around for alsa, I wonder?

[NoWorries]

Only thing I have done is install some gstreamer packages in an unsuccessful attempt to install and run the latest pitivi. So there is no logical explanation as to why it is working, which means there is no logical plan to follow when it breaks. Business as usual...

I am so pleased to hear that you have it all working.

The gstreamer packages that I install are done by installing gst123. This installs many gstreamer packages. I routinely use this package for a new installation so that I can play multimedia files with LibreOffice. I find that a LibreOffice installation never installs packages for multimedia, eg videos.

[doctordruidphd]

Is there a work around for alsa, I wonder?

I would think that removing ALSA would whack your system pretty hard, as it is the basic driver structure for audio. It replaced OSS, which I believe is no longer maintained, so there really isn't an alternative that I know of. You might try google for the alsa project web site, I know they have a troubleshooting section that I have found helpful in the past.

Pulseaudio is a server that sits on top of ALSA, and does the connecting between applications and the ALSA drivers. I confess I have never understood any real advantage to it, unless you are interested in streaming audio to and from devices on a network. Problem is it has been so deeply integrated into the *buntu architecture that removing it can be troublesome. You can of course disable it without removing it, either by going through its configuration files and commenting out the lines that load and demonize it, or, more simply for just testing, by renaming /usr/bin/pulseaudio to pulseaudioNOT and rebooting. Then you can determine, using something like ALSAPLAYER, if the problem is in ALSA itself (which I would suspect) or pulseaudio.

[Fintan]

I would think that removing ALSA would whack your system pretty hard,

I understand that now.

I don't want to remove asla (really) but I was wondering if there was a solution for alsa as the one offered here is for pulseaudio.

As I mentioned above I wanted to try this solution but:

Installing pulse will remove linux- kernel generic 3.11.3, but I wanted to keep that.

Installing alsaplayer will also remove kernel generic 3.11.3

Edit:
Ok I went ahead and installed pulseaudio again.

I can hear my voice clearer although still very echoed and with my machine noise in the background (don't have that on my 13.04 version).

Tried the solution here but no real difference but id did notice this in the konsole:

fintan3@fintanws4:~$ /usr/bin/env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 /usr/bin/skype
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL hdmi
ALSA lib conf.c:4694snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:CARD=PCH
ALSA lib conf.c:4694snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL plughw:CARD=PCH
ALSA lib conf.c:4694snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:CARD=PCH


fintan3@fintanws4:~$ skype
ALSA lib conf.c:4694snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL dmix:CARD=PCH
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:961snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:961snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:961snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:961snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:961snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:961snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib conf.c:4694snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:CARD=PCH

Just windering what that means?