Audible click from speakers

[marek_online]

Hi,

I recently got a new set of surround speakers for a box running Mythtv on Kubuntu. I'm wondering if someone can point me towards a way to get them set up properly.

There is a very audible click from the speakers when the sound drops below a particular threshold - for example either when just starting a song or tv program, or during a song or program if it's quiet. This is particularly annoying during songs and shows, because the click ruins what is supposed to be precisely a quiet moment.

This is something to do with sound setup on the box, because the same speakers are plugged into my XBox and the click never happens with that.

I've messed around with alsamixer as much as can be. Does anyone know of some particular setting that I should be looking out for?

[dibl]

Re: Audible click from speakers

I'm suspicious that the cause of the click is not anything to do with the sound drivers or mixer settings, but I'm struggling to think of how to isolate the cause.

Questions:

- with no music or sounds playing, and the volume at a normal setting, do you hear any clicks?

- Is it possible that when the music is at normal volume, there are clicks that you can't hear over the music?

- Is the problem the same with different sound file formats (mp3, wav, ogg)?

- Is the problem the same regardless of the music player (Amarok, mplayer, xmms, etc)?

- With a Live CD booted (any OS, preferably not Kubuntu), is it the same or different?

That's all I can think of at the moment. Good luck with it.

[marek_online]

Re: Audible click from speakers

Hi,

Thanks for the pointers. I've run through all of them bar the Live CD, which I'll have a look into in the next day or two (this is a working MythTV box, so if I fiddle with it too much I got a lot of complaints...).

The clicks are basically the speakers switching off and on, as they occur regardless of the player or the format of the sound. Listening more carefully, they occur when I switch my XBox on and off, but at no other time (not, for example, between tracks playing music, or during quiet moments of music or DVD playback).

It seems that ALSA (or whatever part of the system might be responsible) has a different threshold for sending information to the speakers than the XBox, so that it effectively switches the speakers on and off a lot more (not the *power* obviously, I don't know what the accurate term here might be).

Doesn't feel like the kind of thing I'm going to manage to fix, alas, as at least some of it is down to the hardware. Still, frustrating that it's just on the linux box it's happening.