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I am running out-of-the-box Ubuntu 20.04 on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon laptop. The audio output include a soft clicking/popping/tapping sound that appears at certain times when audio is played, that appears only on the right audio channel, that arises in the aux audio output but not the laptop speakers, and that depends on the specific audio output. For instance, in this YouTube video, I hear it at the end of every sentence in the video narration, and at other moments where the narrator pauses. Or, in the Spotify desktop app, I hear it when I pause the song player, but not (or not usually?) at other times. Again, the problem is only in the right audio channel, and only in specific circumstances. However, when those circumstances are met, there can be a lot of these little tapping sounds. They are always the same volume, regardless of the volume control in the audio system (PulseAudio I guess). I can hear the taps both on my 9-inch room speakers and through my noise-cancelling headphones --- in the right channel only, in both cases --- and not on the laptop's speakers.

I tried a solution posted in this forum, but I couldn't get it to work for me. Moreover, I haven't seen an explanation of the weird characteristic features of this audio problem.

2023 Update: It seems to be a lot better now, at least for me. I suppose that there was a patch in some system update.

Greg Kuperberg
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1 Answers1

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I have a 5th generation Carbon X1 that had a similar issue. What ended up fixing it for me was to change the power-saving timer to 15 seconds. You can do the same like this:

  1. Open Terminal (if it's not already open)
  2. Create a configuration file in /etc/modprobe.d. For example: 
    sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/intel-hda.conf
    Note: Feel free to use any text editor of your choosing. It does not need to be vi.
  3. Copy this into the file: 
    options snd_hda_intel power_save=15
  4. Save the file and reboot

Since doing this, Spotify and Netflix have been a lot less annoying

matigo
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  • I tried exactly what you wrote here --- to the best of my knowledge --- but it did not work. :-( (My X1 Carbon is 7th generation, BTW.) – Greg Kuperberg Sep 14 '21 at 14:31