hissing noise over headphones only in Ubuntu

Question

So I've looked at many of the other forums but nothing I've seen so far has eliminated my issue. As soon as I boot up my laptop, Lenovo T440s, I start hearing a pop then a loud continious hiss that seems to cut out anytime the sound adjusted. This only happens when I boot into Ubuntu, when I boot into windows I do not have this issue.

I tried muting my mic, I tried alsamixer, neither worked. The pop and hissing does not happen over speakers, only headphones, and it happens with the same intensity no matter what my volume setting is, even when it's on mute.

When I open 'sound settings' it stops, but nothing I've done there has prevented it coming back. The only thing so far that stops it is if I have other sounds playing. It almost seems like it is a result of the soundcard not being used. Any ideas out there? or forums that already dealt with this that I did not see? Thanks

Just get rid of the snakes inside your computer! They don't like being disturbed by spinning fans and hard disk drives. ;-] — David Foerster, Oct 06 '16 at 21:42
Possible duplicate of The bad old Noise issue in the headphones on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS — thewebjackal, Feb 05 '17 at 04:38

score 11 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 30 '15 at 05:57

11

This might be the Intel sound card entering power save mode. Check whether power save in currently enabled via:

    cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

If this returns 1, power save is enabled; it returns 0 otherwise. Check to see if changing this solves your problem by runnning

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

Then play some music, pause it and see if the noise returns. If the problem persists, it's something else.

If this does get rid of the noise, you'll find it's only temporary, since the value can be reset on reboot or on switching between battery to AC power. A few different services could be changing this value, so try configuring each of them:

ALSA

To /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, add the line:

    options snd-hda-intel power_save=0

Power.d

To /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave, add or uncomment the line: INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=false

TLP

If installed, in /etc/default/tlp, set the following:

    SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=0

answered Jul 30 '15 at 05:57

user126350

363

1

This worked for me (Ubuntu 16.04 on Dell XPS 13 9360) – Arialdo Martini Mar 13 '17 at 05:25
worked for me too on arch linux. – BladeMight May 01 '18 at 17:08
Worked for me too (Desktop with Ubuntu 18.04) – ferhoyo Jan 25 '20 at 11:00
Worked for me on Pop!OS 19.10 on my Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro! Realtek ALC298 / Xiaomi Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio – Kev Apr 03 '20 at 19:22
Worked for me on Fedora 34. – thesdev Jul 22 '21 at 06:21

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 05 '17 at 19:14

I was searching for solutions to this issue online and I found a topic that dealt with it. Based on the original answer I found, the most persistent method was to edit my

/etc/init.d/alsa-<distro_dependent_filename>

I added to the end of the start and reset sections the following:

if [ -f /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save ]
then
    log_action_begin_msg "Trying workaround for Intel HDA..."
    echo 0 >/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
else
    log_action_begin_msg "Not using Intel HDA workaround"
fi

and change the top of the script from #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/bash

All it does is check if the Intel HDA power_save file exists and puts 0 into it. If not (like my 6-hour-power field-service portable) then gracefully announces it'll not use the work around.

It must have to do with awkward and bespoke hardware designs as the latest distros (late 2016) out there still do this to my "portable desktop". However, this fix so far works on most Ubuntu/Debian derivatives and some other distros (with my hardware AFAIK).

P.S. This may be good Wiki material as I've commonly seen this happen on several "portable Desktop" type laptop machines with complex (2.1, 5.1 etc) sound-systems.

Name suggestion: Hissing Speaker Fixes

hissing noise over headphones only in Ubuntu

2 Answers2

ALSA

Power.d

TLP

Linked