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After installing Ubuntu 20.04 on my desktop computer (Realtek onboard sound card, codec ALC887), I am experiencing a very annoying click (popping sound) every time I open any content with audio.

Rodrigo Viana Rocha
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5 Answers5

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It was happening because Ubuntu turned on the sound card power-saving capabilities. Turning it off can be the only way to get rid of the annoying sound:

  1. Verify how is your sound card's power_save parameter:

    cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

  2. If it returns 1, do the following to change it temporally:

    echo "0" | sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

  3. If the previous step worked for you, persist that configuration (otherwise the problem will continue after reboot):

    echo "options snd_hda_intel power_save=0" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/audio_disable_powersave.conf

  4. (Optional) You can also do the same for power_save_controller parameter following the steps 1, 2 and 3 replacing power_save by power_save_controller also changing 0 to N.

    Note: using the first step will probably return Y for this parameter, instead of 1.

David Foerster
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Rodrigo Viana Rocha
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    Power saving is a Linux kernel feature and it is good to have. It is just some unknown reason why you get this annoying noise as soon as the audio card wakes up from powersaving. The above is a workaround. The proper solution is probably to get PulseAudio to deal with this gracefully. – user4124 Apr 25 '20 at 12:44
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    @user4124 Indeed this is unfortunately a workaround, but it may be better than this disruptance. I surely will also upvote any answer that comes with a fundamental solution to the issue. – vanadium Apr 25 '20 at 14:02
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    @user4124 it's cheap hardware. Speaker amplifiers put a transient on the output when you apply power to them, unless someone who actually knows what they're doing does the integration properly. – hobbs Apr 26 '20 at 02:13
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    @user4124 How do you propose PulseAudio should "deal with this gracefully"? – marcelm Apr 26 '20 at 09:24
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    @hobbs, indeed it's a cheap hardware. This is the reason that I thought it could be useful to mention it and I had to manage something to make it a little better. Proprietary driver seems to solve it somehow on Windows 10, but on Ubuntu, I believe it won't be enough to use PulseAudio to solve it... I would be glad if some one could show it working... – Rodrigo Viana Rocha Apr 26 '20 at 15:58
  • I had to persist the config and reboot for it to take effect. – surfos Jul 17 '20 at 21:29
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    Unfortunately this doesn't work for me. Even upon restarting it still crackles – patapouf_ai Oct 19 '20 at 15:27
  • I had to refresh the browser tab for it to work – RunOrVeith Nov 20 '20 at 20:50
  • I have a good audio card, but still face the same problem, not sure why Ubuntu20's audio driver is not as good as Ubuntu18 – Clock ZHONG Apr 03 '21 at 14:28
  • There is some more explanation here > https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management#Audio – Elijah Lynn Jun 23 '21 at 14:53
  • This issue still occurs on latest Fedora 37 and the solution above works. – jedi Nov 26 '22 at 18:45
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For those here in 2022 that have just upgraded to Kernel version 5.13.0-37. (Use uname -a to check your kernel version.)

There appears to be a bug in this version causing audio crackling sounds for external audio interfaces but there is a workaround.

Change Pulse Audio's default sample rate to 48000.

sudo nano /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

Find the lines starting with

; default-sample-rate
; alternate-sample-rate

Remove the ; and change the values to 48000 so it looks like this:

default-sample-rate = 48000
alternate-sample-rate = 48000

Save the file, then restart pulse audio with pulseaudio -k

Baa
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    On kernel 5.13. This solved my problem. I just want to point out that one of the symptoms mentioned in the bug report is that you get regular pulses / clicks every 7 ish seconds. Hopefully this comment helps somebody find this via Google. – Cedar Mar 28 '22 at 12:29
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    Awesome, this saved my ears – Ben Apr 01 '22 at 08:04
  • Thank you very much, it works perfectly. I'm on Ubuntu 21.10 with kernel 5.13.0-37 too. – thiagobraga Apr 02 '22 at 00:31
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    also affected on 5.13.0-39 with m-audio dual external usb interface, the click for me was like 2-3 times per second, silent at first but playing any kind of sound in browser or other apps and it became very loud. solution above worked brilliant. – DarkMukke Apr 02 '22 at 21:07
  • Ubuntu 21.10, kernel 5.13.0-39 same issue still! The solution helped after hours of googling. Thanks! – D. Skarn Apr 14 '22 at 17:24
  • Ubuntu 20.04 Kernel 5.13.0-39-generic. Just bought expensive new USB-BT headphones and was sad that they may not be linux compatible. Glad I found this -- completely fixed my issue! – kapaw Apr 15 '22 at 17:05
  • 5.13.0-40 same issue, also works – Vassilis May 08 '22 at 09:35
  • hey! somehow looks like it helped me! Ubuntu22 with Asus Xonar U3 USB external sound card – Green Joffer Jul 09 '22 at 21:30
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    This may be a good answer and it seems to help a lot of people, but it's doesn't actually answer the question, which was about a single (!) pop when starting to play audio. – rob74 Sep 06 '22 at 13:30
  • I have the same issue described by the OP on Ubuntu 22.04 / Linux 5.17.0 and this solution fixed it for me. – tsm Nov 09 '22 at 11:19
  • Fixed my DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS" with "Linux lucifer 5.15.0-58-generic #64-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 5 11:43:13 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux". I only noticed the issue when using a bluetooth headset, can't say I was there over HDMI. – jippie Jan 30 '23 at 19:31
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You can suspend power saving via PulseAudio instead of via the sound card and comment out the following line in /etc/pulse/default.pa to look like this:

### Automatically suspend sinks/sources that become idle for too long
#load-module module-suspend-on-idle

Then restart PulseAudio:

systemctl restart --user pulseaudio

If that doesn't work then just kill it and it will restart:

pulseaudio --kill
Elijah Lynn
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user1115995
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    The most upvoted answer did not work for me on Arch Linux. However, your answer did work for me and is also documented in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management#PulseAudio – Elijah Lynn Jun 23 '21 at 14:54
  • Also for me the most upvoted answer did not work, but this solution worked on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on a not-yet-fully-supported Thinkpad P14s 2nd Gen. – Michael Dec 23 '21 at 08:50
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For anyone using Pop!_OS with Ubuntu 22.04 or higher, the audio software is now pipewire, and no longer pulseaudio. So @user1115995's solution of disabling the suspend feature on pulseaudio, can be done for pipewire with these commands: (source)

sudo sed -i 's/--\["session.suspend-timeout-seconds"\] = 5/\["session.suspend-timeout-seconds"\] = 0/' /usr/share/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua
systemctl restart --user pipewire.service
hananamar
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0

I've tried solutions above however they did not seem to help me. Or at least did not seem to help me alone. The extra step that I did was to enable auto mute in alsamixer.

Steps to do that:

  1. Type alsamixer to the terminal.

  2. Scroll all the way to the right by pressing RIGHT arrow key until you hit Auto-Mute Mode.

  3. Enable it by pressing UP arrow key then hit ESC.

Note that I have to do it again after restart. However I am sure there is a way how to preserve these alsamixer settings such that they survive rebooting.

User5468622
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