Trine 2 Linux - Losing desktop audio until reboot

[niniendowarrior]

I have Trine 2 on Steam Linux and am running Ubuntu 13.04. When the game runs everything is fine. The audio plays just fine, but after a while, the sound will just stop. Then I lose audio in my desktop even after I exit the game. I have to reboot the computer to get my sound back.

Any ideas why?

[niniendowarrior]

So far, there has been no trace of errors at all. I'll keep poking around and see if I can get something on syslogs.

[niniendowarrior]

I just tried your suggestion thomas and I still have no sound. Seems like I am unable to unload the kernel modules.

Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-hda-codec-realtek snd-hda-intel snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer (failed: modules still loaded: snd-hda-codec-realtek snd-hda-intel snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer).
Loading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-hda-codec-realtek snd-hda-intel snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer.

Something is grabbing the .ko modules, I think.

[niniendowarrior]

I've managed to get the restart going.


First, edited the /etc/pulse/client.conf to stop the auto respawning of pulse.
autospawn = no
daemon-binary = /bin/true

Then I did:
$ pulseaudio --kill
*Wait for a second or so*
$ sudo alsa force-reload
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-hda-intel snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-hda-codec-realtek snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer.
Loading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-hda-intel snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-hda-codec-realtek snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer.

Remove the lines in /etc/pulse/client.conf to have the autospawning back.

$ pulseaudio --start

And I still don't have sound.

[RiikkaFB]

Sorry again for the extremely long wait; we were really busy before, so unfortunately some things were "left behind". The stupid thing on our part is that we never actually ignored this - we have had people looking into this issue for quite a while, but for some reason we just neglected to inform you about this (probably because we did not actually have success). This is something we'll try to improve in the future!

Thanks for trying again and keeping us updated! I don't have anything I can suggest right now, but I will transfer all this new information to our Linux guys and ask them to look into this a bit more. We'll let you know if and when we have something you can try, though unfortunately it might be there is not much we can do about this. Did you ever try contacting your driver's provider or any other support (Steam's, the other game's)? If you did, did you get any answers?

If you have any new information, please keep us updated. Cheers! :)

[niniendowarrior]

I've reached out to Ubuntu forums and have had very little in the way of response. I think the key to reproduce this is to get the same spec of sound card that I'm using.

Here is hardware information on my audio drivers for your Linux folks.

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=82d6f9bf0250afb8bc3ff7b8c2dc383d6677607b

I appreciate you responding. I will continue to figure out what is the cause.

[RiikkaFB]

We're still looking into this, but in the meanwhile, I found a similar case to yours from our archives. In that case, the user had reported that the issue disappeared when he changed the input source using Ubuntu's volume control applet just before starting Trine 2. Does that do anything? It might be worth a try as a temporary solution at least.

Unfortunately we don't have the same spec of sound card you are using, and we can't buy one just for this singular case, even though we do want to get at the bottom of this. So reproducing the issue at our end might not be an option.

Please let me know how it goes and we'll keep you updated if our Linux guys can think of something.

[niniendowarrior]

I can certainly try it next time though I am skeptical about it working. Right now, I'm wondering if it's a BIOS/firmware issue.

[niniendowarrior]

I noticed something strange today. I was running Steam via Wine and played a Youtube clip. I had sound for a minute and then it would get cut off. It is looking like some sort of contention issue happening but I'm certain that Steam wasn't playing any audio at all.

[niniendowarrior]

I found this on the web that I think is worth a try. I'll report back my findings.

From WineHQ's sound article:
http://wiki.winehq.org/Sound

"PulseAudio's ALSA compatibility is not perfect. There is a bug in the latest release of the ALSA compatibility plugin that can cause audio to stop working after a short period of running a program in Wine. A workaround is also present in Wine 1.3.26 and later. See Ubuntu bug 805940."

From Ubuntu Bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-plugins/+bug/805940

"After many tests, the problem was solved by editing /etc/pulse/default.pa and replacing string:
load-module module-udev-detect
by
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0"

And the actual link of the workaround:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#Glitches.2C_skips_or_crackling

"The newer implementation of the PulseAudio sound server uses timer-based audio scheduling instead of the traditional, interrupt-driven approach.
Timer-based scheduling may expose issues in some ALSA drivers. On the other hand, other drivers might be glitchy without it on, so check to see what works on your system."

[niniendowarrior]

It did not fix the issue, but I found these in the syslog.


Apr 24 12:03:39 pulseaudio[2135]: [alsa-sink-ALC888 Digital] alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
Apr 24 12:03:39 pulseaudio[2135]: [alsa-sink-ALC888 Digital] alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
Apr 24 12:03:39 pulseaudio[2135]: [alsa-sink-ALC888 Digital] alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.
Apr 24 12:06:12 kernel: [ 504.000596] hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj.

[niniendowarrior]

After much testing, I see that it's this log entry that shows up before my audio cuts out totally.

kernel: [ 734.908003] hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj.

This looks like an issue with my hardware/ALSA/PulseAudio configuration and not from the game. Sorry for bothering you.

[RiikkaFB]

引用自 niniendowarrior：

[...]
This looks like an issue with my hardware/ALSA/PulseAudio configuration and not from the game. Sorry for bothering you.

That seems to be the case, but no need to apologize! We've gained some useful information here too, and we will still be keeping an eye on this in case other people are having this problem in the future. Hopefully we'll be able to offer some workarounds if that happens.

Sorry we haven't been able to help you more. We'll let you know if we still come up with any other suggestions. Cheers!

[niniendowarrior]

A slight update on what I did to improve the situation. The problem still remains, but I got a better setup from all this.

1. Do not use the S/PDIF output as it's buggy on snd-hda-intel.
2. Use analog output from the Sound Settings.
3. Run Trine 2 windowed mode. The framerate of the game is pretty awful on my end at full screen and running a smaller window seems to help keep the audio good.
4. Edit /etc/pulse/default.pa and put this: load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

The problem still happens and I'm looking into installing new alsa drivers from realtek's alsa fork. Also, possible BIOS firmware issues is causing this.

[RiikkaFB]

I don't think you mentioned earlier that you also had troubles with the full screen mode? Or have I completely missed that...
How low does your framerate go if you try to play the game on fullscreen? Could your system configuration affect this? If you give us your full system specifications, we can also try and take a look at them.

I recommend checking out this[trine2.com] in case you find help there for your framerate issues.

One thing is, if you get the game to work reasonably well in windowed mode, you could also try running the game in windowed full screen mode. You can do this by modifying the options.txt file, which you can find from /home/.frozenbyte/Trine2/options.txt.

The lines to be modified should be these:

setOption(renderingModule, "Windowed", true)

setOption(renderingModule, "MaximizeWindow", true)

setOption(renderingModule, "WindowTitleBar", false)

I hope that helps!

[niniendowarrior]

I will most certainly try your suggestions. The framerate on Windowed starts out okay, but it goes down the pits after a while of playing. I wasn't one to complain about that since my card is an obsolete GeForce 9500. Thanks for responding!