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?)

[raystevens73]

I use POP so not sure how Mint is set up but if it has it___ you don't have OVER AMPLIFICATION on do you?

[Bjørn]

引用自 Xenophobe：

I know they went with pipewire as the sound server in mint 22 instead of pulseaudio ... may have something to do with it and it's where I'd start troubleshooting. I am using pipewire and wireplumber on mint 21.3, but I'm also using the upstream PPA, current versions:
pipewire 1.0.7-3
wireplumber 0.5.2-8.

When the problem happens again I will try to restart Pipewire and see if that fixes it. Do you know if restarting Steam (which fixes the issue) also automatically also automatically restarts Pipwire?

[Bjørn]

引用自 raystevens73：

I use POP so not sure how Mint is set up but if it has it___ you don't have OVER AMPLIFICATION on do you?

The volume levels were al little over the green values in alsamixer[i.imgur.com]. I have now set them to 40 instead of 50 and hope that that was it. But wouldn't over amplification always cause issues and not only after a bit of playing? And also on all sound frequencies, not just the squeaky ones?

[raystevens73]

引用自 Bjørn：

引用自 raystevens73：

I use POP so not sure how Mint is set up but if it has it___ you don't have OVER AMPLIFICATION on do you?

The volume levels were al little over the green values in alsamixer[i.imgur.com]. I have now set them to 40 instead of 50 and hope that that was it. But wouldn't over amplification always cause issues and not only after a bit of playing? And also on all sound frequencies, not just the squeaky ones?

Truly depends on frequencies, volume, and what the speakers can handle. Those sounds that cause the issue may be amplified already in game but not enough to be noticed normally.

[Bjørn]

引用自 raystevens73：

引用自 Bjørn：

The volume levels were al little over the green values in alsamixer[i.imgur.com]. I have now set them to 40 instead of 50 and hope that that was it. But wouldn't over amplification always cause issues and not only after a bit of playing? And also on all sound frequencies, not just the squeaky ones?

Truly depends on frequencies, volume, and what the speakers can handle. Those sounds that cause the issue may be amplified already in game but not enough to be noticed normally.

I forgot to mention (I'll edit my post to include that info): Once the issue is "activated" (as in the current session in Steam is affected; it goes away when restarting Steam), changing the audio output device doesn't fix. I plugged completely different headphones into the front case headphone port and the problem was also audible on those.

[raystevens73]

Well if it's not over amplified, then next would be software issue like drivers or Pipewire as mentioned before. Could be a background process causing the issue also, or a bug that still needs to be addressed with Mint.

Someone posted that they removed their audio issue this way:
Solved: Removing speech-dispatcher solve the audio problem.

This one posted it turned out to be an issue between the hardware and Mint:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=382342

[Bjørn]

I guess, trying to get rid of Speech Dispatcher could be worth a shot. I read that you can simply disable the auto run. I'll start with that
I just wish the issue was reproducable but it only ever happens after a while and. Ot after a recognisable pattern. That makes troubleshooting nearly impossible... :(

[raystevens73]

I know the feeling, about 5 years back after dropping 800.00 US on a new GPU my games started crashing about 2 months after the purchase. I didn't want to RMA the card if nothing was wrong with it though. At the time I still used Windows and every time it would give a random error code as to why it crashed.
In the end 6 to 8 months of trying to find the true issue it started throwing a core code for the CPU. Like you said it was random, didn't always happen, and just didn't leave true traceable evidence, it only happened in games, and it would crash say 30 times in one week then not crash for over a month.
Funny thing though: I gifted that MB+CPU to a family member for use for as long as it would last (none game user) and it's still working great for all other uses. Never crashes and I still use the same PSU so it was not power related.

[Thiesen]

I have the same problem and it all started ẃhen I installed LM22...

Under LM21.3 the sound worked just fine...

And guess what they did with LM22... they moved over to PipeWire...

So Pipewire seems to get bogged down by heavy things...

My sound isn't overMODULATED... it's like it is running out of buffers...

If I start a game and alt-tab into a Youtube video the sound from the video also gets distorted... is it is something to do with PipeWire itself...

My specs:

System:
Kernel: 6.8.0-45-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.2.0 clocksource: tsc
Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.2.9 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.2.0 vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0
Distro: Linux Mint 22 Wilma base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: TUF X470-PLUS GAMING v: Rev X.0x serial: <superuser required>
part-nu: SKU uuid: <superuser required> BIOS: American Megatrends v: 5806 date: 11/23/2020
CPU:
Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 bits: 64 type: MT MCP smt: enabled arch: Zen+ rev: 2 cache:
L1: 768 KiB L2: 4 MiB L3: 16 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 1528 high: 1550 min/max: 1550/3200 boost: enabled cores: 1: 1550 2: 1550
3: 1398 4: 1550 5: 1547 6: 1547 7: 1547 8: 1547 9: 1550 10: 1376 11: 1550 12: 1550 13: 1547
14: 1547 15: 1547 16: 1550 bogomips: 102209
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Navi 33 [Radeon RX 7700S/7600/7600S/7600M XT/PRO W7600] vendor: ASUSTeK
driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: RDNA-3 pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 8 ports: active: HDMI-A-1
empty: DP-1, DP-2, DP-3, Writeback-1 bus-ID: 0b:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7480 class-ID: 0300
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,radeon,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.00x11.22") s-diag: 582mm (22.93")
Monitor-1: HDMI-A-1 mapped: HDMI-A-0 model: Asus VC279 serial: <filter> res: 1920x1080 hz: 60
dpi: 82 size: 598x336mm (23.54x13.23") diag: 686mm (27") modes: max: 1920x1080 min: 720x400
API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: amd radeonsi platforms: device: 0 drv: radeonsi device: 1 drv: swrast
surfaceless: drv: radeonsi x11: drv: radeonsi inactive: gbm,wayland
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: amd mesa v: 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.1 glx-v: 1.4
direct-render: yes renderer: AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi navi33 LLVM 17.0.6 DRM 3.57
6.8.0-45-generic) device-ID: 1002:7480
API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 layers: 9 surfaces: xcb,xlib device: 0 type: discrete-gpu driver: N/A
device-ID: 1002:7480 device: 1 type: cpu driver: N/A device-ID: 10005:0000
Audio:
Device-1: AMD Navi 31 HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 8
bus-ID: 0b:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:ab30 class-ID: 0403
Device-2: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie:
speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 0d:00.3 chip-ID: 1022:1457 class-ID: 0403
API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-45-generic status: kernel-api
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active
2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
Network:
Device-1: Intel 82574L Gigabit Network driver: e1000e v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1
port: f000 bus-ID: 06:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:10d3 class-ID: 0200
IF: enp6s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
IF-ID-1: virbr0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 4.3 TiB used: 2.34 TiB (54.5%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 970 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s
lanes: 4 tech: SSD serial: <filter> fw-rev: 2B2QEXE7 temp: 33.9 C scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD40EFAX-68JH4N0 size: 3.64 TiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s
tech: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> fw-rev: 0A82 scheme: GPT
ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: Kingston model: SA400S37480G size: 447.13 GiB type: USB rev: 3.0
spd: 5 Gb/s lanes: 1 tech: SSD serial: <filter> scheme: MBR
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 227.23 GiB used: 85.13 GiB (37.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 974.1 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (0.6%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
ID-3: /home size: 3.58 TiB used: 2.21 TiB (61.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
Alert: No swap data was found.
USB:
Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 14 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
Device-1: 1-11:3 info: Razer USA Naga Trinity type: mouse,keyboard driver: razermouse,usbhid
interfaces: 3 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 500mA chip-ID: 1532:0067 class-ID: 0300
serial: <filter>
Device-2: 1-14:4 info: Ducky One 3 RGB type: HID,keyboard,mouse driver: hid-generic,usbhid
interfaces: 5 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 3233:1311 class-ID: 0300
serial: <filter>
Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: super-speed hub ports: 8 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s lanes: 1 chip-ID: 1d6b:0003
class-ID: 0900
Hub-3: 3-0:1 info: hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 4 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
Hub-4: 4-0:1 info: super-speed hub ports: 4 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s lanes: 1 chip-ID: 1d6b:0003
class-ID: 0900
Device-1: 4-2:2 info: Fujitsu iodd_ST300 type: mass storage driver: usb-storage interfaces: 1
rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s lanes: 1 power: 8mA chip-ID: 04c5:2028 class-ID: 0806 serial: <filter>
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 40.4 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 38.0 C mem: 58.0 C
Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 0
Repos:
Packages: 3405 pm: dpkg pkgs: 3374 pm: flatpak pkgs: 31
No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deadsnakes-ppa-noble.list
1: deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/deadsnakes-ppa-noble.gpg] https:// /ppa.launchpadcontent.net/deadsnakes/ppa/ubuntu noble main
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-dbgsym-repositories.list
1: deb http:// /ddebs.ubuntu.com noble main restricted universe multiverse
2: deb http:// /ddebs.ubuntu.com noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
1: deb https:// /mirror.zetup.net/linuxmint/packages wilma main upstream import backport romeo
2: deb http:// /mirror.zetup.net/ubuntu noble main restricted universe multiverse
3: deb http:// /mirror.zetup.net/ubuntu noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
4: deb http:// /mirror.zetup.net/ubuntu noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
5: deb http:// /security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-source-repositories.list
1: deb-src https:// /mirror.zetup.net/linuxmint/packages wilma main upstream import backport romeo
2: deb-src http:// /mirror.zetup.net/ubuntu noble main restricted universe multiverse
3: deb-src http:// /mirror.zetup.net/ubuntu noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
4: deb-src http:// /mirror.zetup.net/ubuntu noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
5: deb-src http:// /security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
Info:
Memory: total: 48 GiB available: 46.95 GiB used: 4.78 GiB (10.2%)
Processes: 430 Power: uptime: 7h 8m states: freeze,mem,disk suspend: deep wakeups: 0
hibernate: platform Init: systemd v: 255 target: graphical (5) default: graphical
Compilers: gcc: 13.2.0 Client: Cinnamon v: 6.2.9 inxi: 3.3.34

[Bjørn]

I'm gonna use one message where I address all commenters instead of quoting every single one.

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@raystevens73:
Yeah, I feel that. I always have the most random and obscure issues that usually like to give me a false sense of security and then pop up again much later to annoy the ♥♥♥♥ out of me :D

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@Xenophobe:
Yup, WirePlumber 0.4.17-1ubuntu4 comes pre-installed on Mint 22:

My pactl info:

$ pactl info
Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 187
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: ***
Host Name: ***
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.0.5)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._USB_Audio_Device-00.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_input.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._USB_Audio_Device-00.mono-fallback

What are upstream PPAs? I'm relatively new to all things "audio" on Linux.

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@Thiesen:
Your audio also has issues outside Steam games? For me they were entirely contained "within Steam". Restarting Steam also got rid of the issue...
Also does the issue happen to you all the time?

[Thiesen]

It only happen when playing games... for example Sniper Elite 5 and Planet Crafter... but if I alt-tab out and start another program that generates sound the sound from that program also gets all messed up... once I exit the game the sound retturns to normal again...

And it only Happens when playing a game...

[raystevens73]

Nvidia over HDMI in POP OS. No sound issues games or otherwise.

[raystevens73]

引用自 Xenophobe：

I just tried starting Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning using proton experimental and was immediately hit with massive distortion on the THQ logo and again in the opening cutscene. I tried with GE-Proton9-13 with same distortion, Proton 9.0-3 with same distortion, Proton 8.0-5 no distortion. Try Proton 8.0-5 and see if it works properly.

I was just playing that recently and had no sound issue, I was using Proton exp.

[Bjørn]

I got a couple of suggestions that I will try out. I now have to "hope" the problem happens again, so I can actually start looking into it. Man, do I love computers...

I'll try to document my findings as detailed as possible.

[Bjørn]

引用自 Xenophobe：

is it weird that I enjoy a good troubleshoot? ;)

Not weird at all. I love it, too. A lot! But only when the problem is reproducable. I don't like chance in my troubleshooting. :D