Audio Crackling Issues (Steam Deck OLED) Possible Fix?
This issue where the audio crackles, it comes from playing games. Game Mode menu audio has those issues. Desktop Mode, tested that and there was crackling when turning up or down the volume rocker. I'm thinking it could be an audio software issue. Anyone know exactly what is causing this to happen?
102 Replies
Rebooted my Steam Deck OLED and now the sound issue is fixed, closing post.
then iy happens again for me
If you get any updates that fix the issue that can work
I still have the issue so far
Speaker and or headphones are affected?
I have same issue
I have tested several conditions as follows:
1. This problem only occurs play game with Proton,GE,Experimental
2. Native Linux game no problem
3. Emulator no problem
4. Main screen and Desktop app (Play youtube by browser) no problem
5. Works with HDMI Screen
It's affected both Speaker and headphones
and reboot not work
Headphones yes and I think speaker as well
reboot only temporarlly fixes it
I clicked on this post because I was curious why someone would put bazzite on a steam deck when steamos exists and is a far more polished experience for the deck. But then I read this issue and thought I'd try to help. This is a common issue with the deck and I believe valve have already fixed it in steamos. But a simple solution that worked for most people was to sigstop the game process on suspend. There is a decky plugin called "pause games". In this plugin is an option to automatically pause games on suspend. This fixed the audio crackling issue on resume for many steam decks.
I use the pause games plugin on bazzite, it doesn't completely fix the issue, but it helps a lot
i've also found that after resume, if you temporarily set max TDP after resume for a bit, it can often clear out audio crackling
well bazzite has printing, vm, and waydroid support
I would like a branch that updates less often than the stable branch so it would be tested more throughly than getting random suprise problems
will give that a try
to clarify, the bazzite stable branch?
or decky stable?
yes
there's lots of stable branches, lol
like what?
i mean, you can just lock your bazzite install to a specific image
bazzite-rollback-helper rebase bazzite-image-here will lock you to that image
and then just rebase every once in a while to a newer version
bazzite-rollback-helper rebase stable to go back to the regular update cycle
i basically update something like once a month, bazzite's release cadence is too high imo
but it's not my decision to decide the release cadencebut the image moght be buggy
? i mean, any image can potentially be buggy?
yeah I want a varient that updates less often
there is none
but you can diy it
e.g. i stayed on the 04/27 image for months on one of my handhelds because of bugs on newer bazzite versions, it was fine
what image is it, I am gonna try basing to it
what, for audio? dunno if there's a known "good image"
but you can try out different ones via
bazzite-rollback-helper list to see available imagesit wasn't a problem before
then do
bazzite-rollback-helper list, see the available images
and try some out
it's safe to rebase between different bazzite images
i do it all the time when i'm trying to track down a bug
e.g. there's been some recent weird graphical artifacting issues in game mode, i tracked it down to image 07/22 as the last version that didn't have the bugthat would take several weeks
so now i'm just chilling on 07/22 on my affected devices
i mean, i don't know what else to say. i don't magically know which image introduced your potential issue
I am gonna rebase to that one and see if there's a difference
and i don't have a deck OLED, so i can't really replicate
I don't either
I am on the bazzite-deck 512 gigs LCD
i'm on a gpd win 4 and minisforum v3
very different device lol
oh, so there's an issue where you can only rebase to images from within the past 30 or so days
06/18 is too old
wait what? why would thry even be listed?
basically all images from before 07/02 are inaccessible right now
normally it works
tldr: bazzite dev made a mistake that broke older images, but as newer images get created, the old ones will automatically get phased out
so sometime around October, all images listed will work
but still, good point. someone should probably investigate not showing the images that broke
here is thr thing, stable isn't really stable because it updates way too often, I want to see a lts branch that gets an update like once a month.
i've already said the same to the bazzite devs
it's not my decision to make
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
that's why i diy my own stable
and rebase maybe something like 1x a month
what did they even say?
nothing really? though I didn't try particularly hard to convince them
since i can just diy it
but i've said a few times that bazzite "stable" feels like a bleeding edge sometimes
who owns bazzite again?
kyle is the primary maintainer
@Kyle Gospo can we consider a branch that updates like once a month. stable updates too often for me
No, that would be a massive security issue
If anything we'll do it more often once we have diffed updates fully worked out
I just know steamos does that
tbh I think the high update cadence is counterproductive
since 3x OS updates a week is tiring, at some point people might start ignoring it altogether
And it uses a kernel that's out of date by default, there's no expectation of security there
We've got them down to around 300 MB each
Previously they were two gigabytes each
And the progress bar is going to become accurate fairly soon
i don't think it's the size that matters, so much as the frequency
like, if i get 3x updates a week and get very few to no visible features or improvements
and often times even regressions
i'm disincentivized to update
a lot of times, just more bugs
yeah
that's why i basically "diy my own stable"
e.g. for months, 04/27 was genuinely more stable on my LGO
but anyways, that's just my own personal opinion. and being able to control rebasing eliminates the issue for me for the most part
most of thr bugs involve gamemode and gamescope
Which doesn't change often, and when it does it's doing so because Valve pushed an update
The most recent problems were due to a forced update to get HDR functional in newer kernels
And it's finally stabilized again
on the upside, the higher release cadence means that bugs usually get reported faster
I have noticed that stability of bazzite has improven over time
it's also much easier to track down bugs since it's easier to narrow down the problem to a specific OS image
e.g. if users start reporting a bug, usually it's due to an image from within the past week
so i've accepted that it's probably generally better for to diy a slower cadence for users that want it
i've been thinking that a LTS stable only makes sense once you have a large dev team and a lot of dev bandwidth
since maintaining an LTS seems like a big headache
I rebased to 07-12, mouse cursor is missing in gamemode, the blinking _ error occours every other time, gonna try 07-14
hunting down a good image is a tedious chore, unfortunately
you should also consider reporting any bugs you see
but previous "golden images" that were basically my diy bazzite stable were 02/20, 03/15, 04/06, 04/27, 07/22
07-14 is working out good so far
so no audio crackling/popping on 07/14?
ideally you could track down the latest version that didn't have the bug, but it does take a lot of time to do that
nope
I can confirm 7/14 had the exact same audio drivers for the deck
and the exact same steamdeck-dsp package
and the exact same pipewire config, since it's stored in steamdeck-dsp
same kernel?
same driver
IDK
what is the kernel of the latest bazzite version
6.9.12
I also heard it was a kernel issue as well
I am on 6.9.8
I am on 6.9.12 and not able to reproduce this issue
I don't think it's married to a specific kernel version
I think it's random
what device are you using?
did you try it on games that use proton?
Yes
Deck LCD, Deck OLED
ok why do some issues only happen for certain people even though they are on the same device and image?
If I knew I'd fix it
I had this problem a couple times in the past and both times it was fixed by restarting
temporarly
Obviously we are shipping what Valve does as far as audio is concerned
Are images being corrupted when downloaded and deployed?
No
who does know a lot about oci images and ostree?
Just about everybody here
Could it be differences in configuration?
No, since we're all using the same config out of the box
It's almost certainly a bug in either valve's DSP or in the kernel
And it is random, given how rare I'm able to reproduce it
We'll figure it out eventually
I don't ever really touch /etc other than some scripts that I run that installs homebrew (profile.d directory)
on 07-14 the issue isn't there
I promise you it is
You just haven't gotten it yet
really because it didn't happen for playing gmod or no mans sky
how do you know it's there since you don't experince the issue?
As I said it's happened to me twice, it's random
And in versions far older than the one you're testing
oh I thought you don't experince the issue
I cannot reproduce it on the latest kernel
This is the core issue, if I had a reliable way to reproduce this problem it could be tested and fixed
But I do not
I wish we knew why some issues only happen for certain people on the same image and device
have you tried proton ge?
Yes
In about a week I prpbably would give the latest stable a try
So on 7/14 the audio drivers'll be fixed?
Are you using a steam deck?
Steam Deck OLED Limited Edition.
You're welcome to try it, I have little reason to believe your issue won't come back
If it's not still there after you rebase
Trying it now
And if it is still there, which I doubt, it may need an audio driver update or patch.
So that totally fixed the audio issue, rebasing to 20240714 fixed the issue for me completely.
now I get it after a few hours on proton used games
OLED LE here with what appears to be a similar issue. Seems that virtual channel is the problem in my case…
Ok so 0714+disabling vc it is
Will probably get to a game or two in several hours to check
which is done by how?
what is a virtual channel
ujust setup-virtual-channels. Directly related to sound so probably worth looking into
bazzite-rollback-helper rebase 20240714
Ok even weirder now… Looks like whatever goes wrong takes place on return to game mode
And persists after that…?this exists to set them up, we do not create channels OOTB
this tracks, like I was saying earlier it has nothing to do with bazzite version and all of them can have it. It's a random bug that needs to be tracked down
Noted.
i think audio crackling bugs have been a problem on all Linux PC handhelds for a long time, the Steam Deck + SteamOS has had the same issue for a very long time
i've found that after resume if you hear crackling audio, sometimes increasing TDP to the max TDP for several seconds will clear out the audio bugs
never knew that
I was experiencing this issue on my Ally X, though I have seen many people claim the same issue on the SD. From what I can tell, I have resolved the issue. I saw a Reddit post stating that installing the DeckyLoader plugin "Pause Games" can fix this issue after enabling the option "Pause Before Suspend." My understanding is that this plugin allows the system to divert resources to other things prior to suspending the system, thus resulting in a "cleaner" system wake. Idk all the technical mumbo-jumbo, all I know is that it fixed the issue for me.
Yeah, the pause games plugin helps a lot too
I've been using it for a long time