[Pi 3B+] HDMI audio pausing

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

I am finding it difficult to troubleshoot the audio issues i am experiencing in all parts of in home streaming. The problem seems limited to the living room TV but unfortunately since i do not have the possibility of a wired connection upstairs i am unable to create identical testing scenarios.

When i am using the Steam Link over a wireless or wired connection while having it connected to the TV i am getting frequent audio interruptions of varying length and quantity. Its possible that it happens 5 times in half a minute or that the audio drops for many seconds in a row. Its also possible the experience is uninterrupted for minutes in a row. Showing the performance overlay i can not see anything out of the ordinary when using the wired connection, everything is smooth and no loss or delay increases occur. My physical Steam Link does not have this issue on either wireless or wired mode when connected to the same TV, neither does my phone have any issues with the audio in wireless mode.

I do not think this occurs on my desktop monitor, however because of the Wifi i do get the usual wifi stuttering but this is always accompanied with screen freezes and doesn't follow the same pattern.


My test setup is as follows:
(Living Room, Wireless-N Router) Sony KDL-32EX710 running firmware PKG4.118EUL-0108
Wired Built-In : Signal Fair to Good, Only occational audio issues
Wired USB: Signal Good, Only occational audio issues
Wireless 2,4GHz : Signal Poor (Rarely) but usually fair to good, Occational audio issues and sometimes screen pausing
Wireless 5GHz : Signal Poor to Fair, Frequent screen freezes and audio issues

(Bedroom, Wireless-AC Access Point) LG 29WK600
Wired Built-In : Can not be tested due to the lack of cable outlets.
Wired USB : Can not be tested due to the lack of cable outlets.
Wireless 2,4GHz : Untested
Wireless 5GHz : Signal Good, Rare screen corresponding to the pattern this access point sometimes has where the latency increases severely for 4 seconds. Audio issue isn't present.

The relevant error message shown in the console is :
ALSA: lib pcm.c:8306:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured.

I am using the following kernel: 4.14.78-4-osmc

My current theory is that it is related to the HDMI sound output in combination with this TV, but i am struggling to verify this. If anyone has any tips ill be able to test further. I have a full backup of my kodi config so it is relatively easy to restore the OS in case we break anything.

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

Just tested with the latest version of Raspbian including all the updates and the problem persists. Its not OSMC specific.

[recursivedelete]

I'm having the same issue, so I'll follow this thread. The problem exists for me even by wired connection. When I have the connection info overlay on the screen it tells me that I have no frame loss, and I don't see anything visually that interrupts gameplay, but I have frequent, seemingly random audio dropouts. I've also noticed that it appears to be system wide, because a Discord audio chat I have running in the background will drop out as well.

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

Nice to see its not as obscure as i was affraid off. It seems a clientside issue so yes any audio should be effected.

I did test using the HDMI safe option and when using that it effected the visuals as well. So there is also a small chance complete screen blackouts on some monitors are related as well.

[cedarrapidsboy]

You are describing the same issue I am having. I've been troubleshooting this problem for months and have just now posted in detail here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=230935

Basically, whether connected to my AV receiver or directly to the TV, I get these audio drop outs over HDMI. Interestingly, I cannot reproduce the problem via the 3.5mm stereo output. Also interesting, I can reproduce the HDMI audio issue when using Moonlight (nVidia Gamestream client).

In my case I have eliminated power, cabling, networking, and SOC throttling as the cause.

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

Great news,

I have also opened a support ticket for this issue (Including the forum link) and steam support just got back to me they are capable of reproducing this in there internal testing.

This means the issue will likely be resolved trough an automatic steam link update, they do encourage us to use the steam beta in case changes happen on the steam pc client.

[cedarrapidsboy]

Same response from my support request. At least it's consistent!

I did follow-up to confirm where they release announcements about SteamLink software betas. The Steam Client beta group seems to only have Steam Client announcements (the full steam application). I did not see any past posts regarding SteamLink or the SteamLink software.

Good point that changes to the Steam Client may affect this issue... I hadn't considered that. Since I observed this problem with both Steam in-home streaming and nVidia Gamestream (moonlight), I was only focused on the client (raspberrypi) side of the equation. The beta group will be useful to watch.

[The Micks Ketches]

+1 here I've done this through several HDMI cable configurations

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

Valve is taking there time with the update it seems, they confirmed the bug and informed me there will be a patch in a new version of the program. But so far i haven't seen any new updates since i first posted this.

[cedarrapidsboy]

Some recent Steam Client Beta announcements have included In-Home Streaming notes. Has anyone tested this again with a recent Beta release?

Mar 7th, 8th, and 12th

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta#announcements/detail/1798531141148611810

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

Gave this another go, the issue is still present for me on the latest PC beta release (CPU encoding). There is no frame loss reported when the issue happens.

[ParityClaws]

Also having this problem, has there been any updates regarding it?

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

No updates whatsoever, the Steam Link app for the Pi had only one update which fixed no known issues.

[ParityClaws]

That's unfortunate. With mine the dropouts are intermittent sometimes 1 minute, sometimes 5 minutes and sometimes half an hour or so. However there are times where it gets especially bad where it will just keep dropping out every few seconds or so, over and over and in order to fix this I unplug the hdmi from the pi and plug it back in and that (usually) fixes it until it happens again. All while this is happening the picture is completely fine, no stutter or dropped frames etc, very frustrating. I don't recall having this issue when I was using Moonlight.

Edit: Just on the off chance a dev reads this, my setup is as follows:

RPi 3B+
Retropie version 4.4
Using wired connection back to Gb switch
HDMI plugged into Onkyo receiver

Tried multiple cables, ports on receiver.
Fresh install of Pi OS
Multiple (official) power adapters
Tried tweaking different settings in config.txt

[siavol]

I have the same problem on my RPi 3B+. Happy that I'm not alone at least :)

[[Bouncy]-|Henky‼|-[TTC]]

Unfortunately as far as i can tell valve has not fixed a single bug with the RPi, which is annoying since they replaced the properly functioning steam link with the concept that you can just stick it on a raspberry. I really hope Slouken fixes his creation anytime soon because support also has no clue when and if this will be eventually fixed.