Seemingly random distorted/clipped audio in Steam games on Linux Mint

[Bjørn]

Hi folks,

ever since I installed Linux Mint on my brand new PC last week, I have been having this odd issue where my audio in games (so far it has happened in Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man's Sky) seems to get heavily distorted/clipped (almost deep-fried, as it's often known these days) after a while of playing. I cannot pinpoint a rough duration that it takes to lead up to the problem, sometimes it's hours, sometimes it's minutes but it hasn't happened too often yet.

Not all sounds are affected equally, but for example the double jump in Cyberpunk 2077 gets messed up badly.

I have recorded the issue here (also here is how it should sound without the distortion). Oddly enough, it seems to only affect the higher frequencies (the double jump and the screaming tires from accelerating/braking).
The problem only happens in the game, even after restarting it. All other apps/browser/videos are unaffected. Restarting Steam or the entire PC fixes the issue until it randomly happens again. So far it's been impossible for me to reproduce.

The issue, once active, persist through different audio output devices. Switching to different headphones doesn't solve it. Only restarting Steam seems to do the trick.

Has anyone ever encountered this or know what could be causing it?



My system details:

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
32 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER
Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon
Cinnamon version: 6.2.9
Linux Kernel: 6.8.0-45-generic
Proton Experimental (also tried GE-Proton9-13)

(...anything else important I am missing?)