[jitsi-users] Bad sound with pulse, terrible with portaudio

#1

Hi folks.

Jitsi is really awesome function-wise, it has almost everything I need, but
this f*cking audio issues driving me mad!

With portaudio I get major clicking and gaps (discarded packets up to 40%)
in playback stream - completely unusable. With pulse (don't actualy use it,
but installed for testing) things become much better, almost no gaps, just
minor to moderate clicking sounds - usable, but really annoying. And I
don't want pulse in my system. Capture stream not yet tested much.

Tested on google talk and several SIP, tried enabling/disabling codecs,
OpenJDK and SunJava - all with more or less same results. STDERR shows
nothing serious related to portaudio/alsa.
What the heck is wrong here?

I already loose the whole working day googling and trying to get it working
properly to no avail, while any other communication/audio related software
just works flawlessly. I've also got linphone installed, not sure whether
or not it uses portaudio in debian's binary, but audio quality is perfect
as it can be in particular case.

Here is some sys info, if that would be of any help.
*attached jitsi_stderr is taken from run before pulse was installed, thats
why it complains about it.

Jitsi installed from deb pkg.
Audio device is integrated IntelHD (Realtek ALC892,
snd_hda_intel->snd_hda_codec_realtek)
Debian testing, custom 3.14.15 x86_64 kernel built from debian sources with
BFS patch, RCU preemt, hz1k, dynticks. Stock debian 3.14 and 3.2 kernels -
same issues.

Test recordings has no clicking sounds, but gaps should be clearly
noticable.

Any thoughts?

jitsi_stderr (7.92 KB)

proc_asound_cards (204 Bytes)

proc_asound_devices (523 Bytes)

proc_asound_card0_codec0 (16 KB)

proc_asound_hwdep (95 Bytes)

proc_asound_pcm (315 Bytes)

2014-09-24@03.37.44-call-music.mp3 (287 KB)

2014-09-24@03.39.24-call-000.mp3 (431 KB)

#2

Hey there,

We generally recommend pulse audio but if this isn't doing it for you
then I am afraid I can't personally suggest anything else. Your
hardware/software combination probably puts us in a case that we don't
handle well, but I don't know if any of us would be able to look at it
in the near future.

Emil

···

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 3:35 AM, KeRNel_x86 <kernins@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks.

Jitsi is really awesome function-wise, it has almost everything I need, but
this f*cking audio issues driving me mad!

With portaudio I get major clicking and gaps (discarded packets up to 40%)
in playback stream - completely unusable. With pulse (don't actualy use it,
but installed for testing) things become much better, almost no gaps, just
minor to moderate clicking sounds - usable, but really annoying. And I don't
want pulse in my system. Capture stream not yet tested much.

Tested on google talk and several SIP, tried enabling/disabling codecs,
OpenJDK and SunJava - all with more or less same results. STDERR shows
nothing serious related to portaudio/alsa.
What the heck is wrong here?

I already loose the whole working day googling and trying to get it working
properly to no avail, while any other communication/audio related software
just works flawlessly. I've also got linphone installed, not sure whether or
not it uses portaudio in debian's binary, but audio quality is perfect as it
can be in particular case.

Here is some sys info, if that would be of any help.
*attached jitsi_stderr is taken from run before pulse was installed, thats
why it complains about it.

Jitsi installed from deb pkg.
Audio device is integrated IntelHD (Realtek ALC892,
snd_hda_intel->snd_hda_codec_realtek)
Debian testing, custom 3.14.15 x86_64 kernel built from debian sources with
BFS patch, RCU preemt, hz1k, dynticks. Stock debian 3.14 and 3.2 kernels -
same issues.

Test recordings has no clicking sounds, but gaps should be clearly
noticable.

Any thoughts?

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#3

Hey there.
I've had similar issues a couple of months (may be a year) back but
eventually gave up on it. For me the audio, at least in one direction,
would cut out completely after a few minutes. Something is definitely
broken in the portaudio backend or the portaudio fork used in jitsi. I
ended up using Pulseaudio. It's configured here in such a way that I
have to manually start it on demand, no autostart, not started by
programs, I just start it manually before jitsi and don't need to worry
about it otherwise.

I didn't need to use jitsi in months now, but as far as I can see the
development focus is somewhere else (Videobridge, HTML GUI), so I expect
these problems to persist.

Regards,
Philipp

···

On Wed, 24 Sep 2014 05:35:09 +0400 KeRNel_x86 <kernins@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks.

Jitsi is really awesome function-wise, it has almost everything I
need, but this f*cking audio issues driving me mad!

With portaudio I get major clicking and gaps (discarded packets up to
40%) in playback stream - completely unusable. With pulse (don't
actualy use it, but installed for testing) things become much better,
almost no gaps, just minor to moderate clicking sounds - usable, but
really annoying. And I don't want pulse in my system. Capture stream
not yet tested much.

Tested on google talk and several SIP, tried enabling/disabling
codecs, OpenJDK and SunJava - all with more or less same results.
STDERR shows nothing serious related to portaudio/alsa.
What the heck is wrong here?

I already loose the whole working day googling and trying to get it
working properly to no avail, while any other communication/audio
related software just works flawlessly. I've also got linphone
installed, not sure whether or not it uses portaudio in debian's
binary, but audio quality is perfect as it can be in particular case.

Here is some sys info, if that would be of any help.
*attached jitsi_stderr is taken from run before pulse was installed,
thats why it complains about it.

Jitsi installed from deb pkg.
Audio device is integrated IntelHD (Realtek ALC892,
snd_hda_intel->snd_hda_codec_realtek)
Debian testing, custom 3.14.15 x86_64 kernel built from debian
sources with BFS patch, RCU preemt, hz1k, dynticks. Stock debian 3.14
and 3.2 kernels - same issues.

Test recordings has no clicking sounds, but gaps should be clearly
noticable.

Any thoughts?

#4

While a focus on Jitsi Videobridge is true for the BlueJimp team, there is absolutely no such restriction on the community so, Philipp, do feel free to look into the matter if that's something you find important.

Emil

···

On 24.09.14, 13:03, Philipp �berbacher wrote:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2014 05:35:09 +0400 > KeRNel_x86 <kernins@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks.

Jitsi is really awesome function-wise, it has almost everything I
need, but this f*cking audio issues driving me mad!

With portaudio I get major clicking and gaps (discarded packets up to
40%) in playback stream - completely unusable. With pulse (don't
actualy use it, but installed for testing) things become much better,
almost no gaps, just minor to moderate clicking sounds - usable, but
really annoying. And I don't want pulse in my system. Capture stream
not yet tested much.

Tested on google talk and several SIP, tried enabling/disabling
codecs, OpenJDK and SunJava - all with more or less same results.
STDERR shows nothing serious related to portaudio/alsa.
What the heck is wrong here?

I already loose the whole working day googling and trying to get it
working properly to no avail, while any other communication/audio
related software just works flawlessly. I've also got linphone
installed, not sure whether or not it uses portaudio in debian's
binary, but audio quality is perfect as it can be in particular case.

Here is some sys info, if that would be of any help.
*attached jitsi_stderr is taken from run before pulse was installed,
thats why it complains about it.

Jitsi installed from deb pkg.
Audio device is integrated IntelHD (Realtek ALC892,
snd_hda_intel->snd_hda_codec_realtek)
Debian testing, custom 3.14.15 x86_64 kernel built from debian
sources with BFS patch, RCU preemt, hz1k, dynticks. Stock debian 3.14
and 3.2 kernels - same issues.

Test recordings has no clicking sounds, but gaps should be clearly
noticable.

Any thoughts?

Hey there.
I've had similar issues a couple of months (may be a year) back but
eventually gave up on it. For me the audio, at least in one direction,
would cut out completely after a few minutes. Something is definitely
broken in the portaudio backend or the portaudio fork used in jitsi. I
ended up using Pulseaudio. It's configured here in such a way that I
have to manually start it on demand, no autostart, not started by
programs, I just start it manually before jitsi and don't need to worry
about it otherwise.

I didn't need to use jitsi in months now, but as far as I can see the
development focus is somewhere else (Videobridge, HTML GUI), so I expect
these problems to persist.

--
https://jitsi.org