Skype -- no audio

[doctordruidphd]

This is skype 4.2.0.11-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 from saucy/partner, 64-bit system.

It starts and appears to run, but there is no audio. It claims to be using pulseaudio (there are no other options), but pavucontrol shows no stream for it.

Maybe this has to do with the elimination of lib32asound?

In any event, is it working for anybody?

[doctordruidphd]

It still does not work, pavucontrol shows no entries for Skype in any of its tabs, so there is nothing I can adjust. For some reason it is just not communicating with pulseaudio. I did notice that it did work once, when I had another sound application running, but I have tried this approach several times and it is not repeatable.

[dibl]

I think skype development has once again fallen painfully far behind the Linux kernel. The newest skype package for Debian multiarch has not worked on my siduction system for months -- since kernel 3.10 if memory serves. For sure never on 3.11. No mic, no output, no nuthin'. And I have spent some time trying to make it work, including stripping out pulseaudio and working only with alsa. nada.

But it works great on a Ubuntu 12.10 VM -- just FYI.

[doctordruidphd]

It looks like the version in the repositories was built for 12.04, so I guess it should be no real shock that it doesn't work. It does work for me on 13.04, however.
Hmmm, well if it does work on a VM, them maybe a workaround is to set up a small 12.04 VM just for that. Good thing disk space is cheap.

[dibl]

My Ubuntu 12.10 VM, which I have made zero effort to minimize, is 5.8GB in size. I use a USB webcam as a mic (and video if I want it), and my speakers via Intel HDA as the output, all via VMware Player. Works slick -- no problem. For some reason, skype on my Win 7 VM is noisy and choppy -- it is barely able to hear and be heard, so that's a poor solution on my hardware.

[GreyGeek]

I decided not to re-install Skype after I re-installed 12.04.3. I use Google Hangouts instead.

[doctordruidphd]

I have a 12.04 vm (that I haven't booted in a long while -- 584 updates waiting for me) but it does seem to run skype fine, video is slow, but that's as likely on the other end. Thanks for the tip.

Until we have a direct peer-to-peer cross-platform video chat option, Skype is probably no more nor less vulnerable to surveillance than any other, so no point in re-tooling. FreeTalk, where art thou??

Edit: er, make that, "GNU FreeCall".

[NoWorries]

I have not had any problems with Skype on 13.10. I use it regularly for communicating with family and I am not sure what I would do if it didn't work. I have the same version and got it from the repositories and did not resort to any back door approach.

I installed pavucontrol and I have attached the screens for input and output with Skype running on my system. I also make sure that Systems Settings > Multimedia > Audio and Video Settings have the Audio Recording with the Web Cam at the top of the list.

[doctordruidphd]

Interesting. I really don't understand why it isn't working; the pulse server just doesn't see skype at all.

[doctordruidphd]

Interesting discovery:

While looking for skype audio issues, I found one that suggests the following:

Edit /etc/pulse/default.pa
find the line that says:
load-module module-udev-detect
and to the end of it add "tsched=0" so the line now looks like:
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

When I do this and restart the pulseaudio server, PRESTO!! Skyoe Works!!
--but, NOTHING else does. Any attempt to play music, system sounds, etc., produces only static.

Wonderful. Changing the file back to its original state and restarting pulse gets us back to where we started -- system sounds and music OK, but no skype.

At least this should be food for debugging.

Oh yes, I did do an apt remove --purge and reinstall on skype and skype-bin:i386, no change in behavior.

[NoWorries]

Glad to hear that you reinstalled Skype. I guess that the most extreme approach would be to download the latest build and reinstall the complete system. I must confess that I have done this in attempt to fix other problems.

To help speed up a new installation, I have a file of applications that I install and any other extras that need to be done. For Skype, I had the modification to default.pa that you used. The comment in my file was that it removed a crackling sound in Skype. I had not made that modification as I found that Skype on my system did not make that sound any more.

I did make the change to default.pa that you tried and Skye still worked well on the Echo / Sound Test Service. Also, all my other sound files and movie files still work as before. For what it is worth, I have attached an image of muon with all the pulseaudio packages that are on my system.

Hope you can resolve your problems soon as I have not found any other package that matches Skype for high quality video calls.

[doctordruidphd]

I did make the change to default.pa that you tried and Skye still worked well on the Echo / Sound Test Service. Also, all my other sound files and movie files still work as before.

Well that's interesting. Makes it look more and more like a configuration problem of some sort. Further experiments will follow.

[dibl]

When I do this and restart the pulseaudio server, PRESTO!! Skype Works!!

Wow -- yes it does! Thanks for that, dr. d.

On my siduction KDE system, all other sound sources (youtube, bangarang, radiotray, etc.) are not affected -- everything else still works.

[GreyGeek]

This talk about /etc/pulse/default.pa changes made me curious. I had recently re-installed 12.04.3 but didn't install Skype, prefering Hangouts instead.
Out of curiosity I installed skype. It worked fine, including the audio, without any change to the default.pa file.

[doctordruidphd]

Out of curiosity I installed skype. It worked fine, including the audio, without any change to the default.pa file.

Yes, it works fine here on 12.04, and 13.04 (no 12.10 on the disk to test) without any configuration changes. It's on 13.10 that there is a problem, or at least that I am having a problem. So far I cannot find any differences in sound configuration between the 13.10 system and the 13.04 system from which it was upgraded. Nor do I understand why the "tsched" option would fix skype and zap the rest of the sound system.