Linux Ubuntu 64bit - Audio Glitch/Distortion

[Abyssus_j]

The audio on Linux is a bit borked.
First time I've experienced this with an EA (buy lots of EA games)

Sounds like its due to incompatability with opensource audio codecs or something.

Please fix! shouldn't be too hard.


Edit: reduced the distortion by 60% by reducing the audio frequency to 11025hz but issue still persists.

[Guus]

I stumbled on this post by accident (I don't have Prison Architect), but reply because I have experienced this with a lot of games (mainly with wine). This might not be a game specific problem, but a PulseAudio bugging out on you, as it does for many people.

Have you tried removing PulseAudio and use only the ALSA drivers? I followed the steps on this post and haven't had any problems after that (ubuntu 13.10):
http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/01/how-to-remove-pulseaudio-use-alsa-ubuntu-linux/

If you use the volume keys on your keyboard, you will then have to change some things in the keyboard shortcut settings in ubuntu. Read here how to do that:
http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/09/remapping-keyboard-multimedia-buttons-to-alsa-after-removing-pulseaudio/

You might need to change the command a little bit to match your setup. For example, they write "amixer set Master 10-" for volume down, but I had to use "amixer set Master 1-", as the steps in volume-change were much too large otherwise.

It takes some fiddling around, but it did solve all my problems and I'm a happy gamer again! Hopefully this will solve your problem as well. Good luck!

[Abyssus_j]

Publicado originalmente por Guus:

PulseAudio bugging out on you, as it does for many people.

Thanks for the reply and w ill give it a go.

I own >90 steam games and this is the first time this has happened, so you would think that it must be related to how the software interacts with the codecs/drivers, not just the drivers.

[feboss86]

Same problem here.
I don't want remove pulseaudo at all... I have this problem only with 2 game:
prison architect and hotline miami.
Arch linux 64 bit

[p2004a]

Hi, I have same problem. And it happens only with the 64bit version. When I run 32bit version the sound works fine.

EDIT: Or no. I tested one more time and the sound in the 32bit version is bad too. I'm sure that it was fine the first time I ran the 32bit version.

[Soma/Talos]

same problem!

Xubuntu 14.04 64-bit, Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium (snd_ctxfi)

[Malky]

Same here - on Mint 17.1 64 bit - sound stutters. It is not unplayable but kinda annoing. The bug part on the dev site is to complicated..

[Ru.sh]

I've noticed this too, the sound of Prison Architect is distorted on Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with PulseAudio). However it doesn't bother me much since I play PA mostly with the sound muted and some other music playing. I hope the devs will fix this though.

[heritage kings]

This bug should be on Mantis Bugtracker of Prison Architect.

[Athordan]

I found a workaround. Go to your directory where PA is saved, for me it's:
/home/alex/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Prison Architect
there you find a shell script called PrisonArchitect
- edit it, search for SDL_AUDIODRIVER= and change it from alsa to pulse
change the freq ingame to the lowest setting (11025) and...
Voila! Start the game! almost normal Sound it has some little hick ups but ok!
Hope it helps!

[Soma/Talos]

Publicado originalmente por Athordan:

I found a workaround. Go to your directory where PA is saved, for me it's:
/home/alex/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Prison Architect
there you find a shell script called PrisonArchitect
- edit it, search for SDL_AUDIODRIVER= and change it from alsa to pulse
change the freq ingame to the lowest setting (11025) and...
Voila! Start the game! almost normal Sound it has some little hick ups but ok!
Hope it helps!

Thanks, I had already tried these solutions.

I discovered that depends by the audio driver in the kernel, so the problem is due to certain sound cards.
Some cards work fine, others do not.

For example, my Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium (snd_ctxfi), had this problem, instead, the integrated one, a Realtek ALC887 (snd_hda_intel) works fine.

I read something about that (Unfortunately solutions that do not work for me):

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#Glitches.2C_skips_or_crackling

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Backends/ALSA/BrokenDrivers/

[Athordan]

Publicado originalmente por Soma/Talos:

Publicado originalmente por Athordan:

I found a workaround. Go to your directory where PA is saved, for me it's:
/home/alex/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Prison Architect
there you find a shell script called PrisonArchitect
- edit it, search for SDL_AUDIODRIVER= and change it from alsa to pulse
change the freq ingame to the lowest setting (11025) and...
Voila! Start the game! almost normal Sound it has some little hick ups but ok!
Hope it helps!

Thanks, I had already tried these solutions.

I discovered that depends by the audio driver in the kernel, so the problem is due to certain sound cards.
Some cards work fine, others do not.

For example, my Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium (snd_ctxfi), had this problem, instead, the integrated one, a Realtek ALC887 (snd_hda_intel) works fine.

I read something about that (Unfortunately solutions that do not work for me):

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#Glitches.2C_skips_or_crackling

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Backends/ALSA/BrokenDrivers/

Strange, I am using g930 USB headphones... sry that my solution doesn't work for you. I hope the programmers will fix it!

[Sn3ipen]

Publicado originalmente por Athordan:

I found a workaround. Go to your directory where PA is saved, for me it's:
/home/alex/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Prison Architect
there you find a shell script called PrisonArchitect
- edit it, search for SDL_AUDIODRIVER= and change it from alsa to pulse
change the freq ingame to the lowest setting (11025) and...
Voila! Start the game! almost normal Sound it has some little hick ups but ok!
Hope it helps!

Thanks. This worked for me.

[Soma/Talos]

SOLVED

Solving Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium crackling/distortion on Linux

Jun 4 2013

I own a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty soundcard, an awesome piece of hardware, though I’ve always experienced audio issues with it on Linux (damn drivers!).
My research showed that those bugs are a result of interactions between Pulseaudio and ALSA, and that the available fixes do not work for everyone. I’m glad they do work for me.

The trick is disabling PulseAudio’s timer-based scheduling. Fire up the terminal, then type:

sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

Look for the line that contains load-module module-udev-detect, and append tsched=0 to it. Now it should look like this:

load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

Save the buffer and exit the editor, then restart PulseAudio with the following commands:

pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio --start

Now your audio should be crystal clear. If it’s not, you will probably need to use another fix. Yeah, that sucks. :P

Source:
https://guh.me/solving-creative-sound-blaster-x-fi-titanium-crackling-slash-distortion-on-linux

[Sheap]

Wow, old. Still, glad you solved it after all this time.

But really, when you have a problem, pulseaudio is pretty much the first place you should look.