New PC, fresh install, weird VLC sound issue

[megosdog]

Okay, this is an issue I've never run into and I'm not totally sure how to fix this. Anyhow, when I play an audio file with VLC, I get this really weird, brief stutter where the sound goes in and out, and then eventually stabilizes, and plays fine after that until I pause, or fast forward, then it does it again. If I switch it to Alsa it doesn't do that. The downside is, the volume control doesn't respond immediately. I can raise it from 20-40%, and then I have to wait a count of two before it adjusts. Looking at top, I'm not seeing any real load, as the system goes no higher than 0.50 at any time. If I play the same video in, say Dragon Player, I don't get the audio pausing, but I do in VLC. If I play an MP3, I get no audio pausing. But if I play a video, I get the pausing if it's on Pulse, but not ALSA. So I'm really confused as to why it's acting like it is.

VLC never did this on the old machine, so I have no experience with this. The old machine and the new both had Kubuntu 18.04. The big difference is the old is a Lenovo with an i7 2600 4core/8thread and the new is a Ryzen 3 3600 4core from System76 using a Gigabyte gigabyte b450m wifi board. Now, I can't think that this is a board issue, or cpu or anything like that, but I'm open to idea on how to fix this without having to use Alsa (mostly due to the slow volume control). Of course, if going with alsa is the best bet, then I'll just deal with the slow volume response and live with it.

[megosdog]

Something just dawned on me. Even though this is a Gigabyte board, it comes from System76, so I'm wondering if it's more a problem with drivers over just VLC. Either that or the sheer newness of the board. It might also be something odd that System76 has in this Gigabyte board that I'm unaware of, as I did notice on their site how they were discussing the need for the special System76 drivers to make the board and hardware perform at peak ability. Any thoughts on that?

[claydoh]

They do have thoer own set of drivers etc, might be worth looking at. I think they use a PPA for things.

[megosdog]

Yeah, I saw that on their support page, hence my thoughts on that. Unfortunately I can't futz with that until Tuesday as I need this WS as is for the weekend so I can do my job, and having driver/os issues because something went sideways is the last thing I want to mess with. But come Tuesday I'll give that a spin as they look simple enough to install.

[megosdog]

Okay, work week is over, installed the drivers, still seeing the same error. I'm also starting to notice it in Dragon Player, although not as pronounced. So I'm REEEAAALLY scratching my head on this one. I disabled Baloo, so I know it's not that, and Pulse rarely ever goes over 5% CPU usage, so I'm really not sure why it's having the stutter/pause problems. It's not like I don't have enough CPU and memory to go around.

[megosdog]

Okay, more interesting discoveries. I still get some stutter issues in Dragon Player, but nowhere near the same as VLC using Pulse. So I fiddled around with the sound server and settings to no avail. Now, here's where things get interesting. I installed Mplayer and SMplayer, and both of them play, fast forward, skip, etc with literally zero issues. So, somewhere here there's a glitch in the matrix when it comes to VLC, and even Dragon to some small degree. But, hey, until I can get this figured out with VLC, I'm okay using SMplayer. It's a bit clunky, but,if it plays 100% with no issues, I'm golden.

PS, adding the System76 drivers did no good. I'm actually thinking about removing them as they're just taking up space unnecessarily.

[megosdog]

FYI, I ended up having to remove their drivers because they were causing all kinda audio and stability issues. Still having the issues with hangups in VLC. I get them rarely in Dragon Player too, but not very often. SMplayer and Mplayer never do it. I could just go with those two, but they're clunky to work with. If they had a better interface I'd call it over and done with.