Audio clipping/breaking

[natman]

Hi,
Installed Kubuntu 20, all fine except when I play audio, either an mp3 or watching something on youtube, the audio seems to clip or break every so often, any ideas? If I have the volume turned down low, music plays and then every so often it spikes to a high volume, so I guess thats the clipping.

I have my 2.1 speakers via a 3.5 cable into the PC,
Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0
Qt Version: 5.12.8
Kernel Version: 5.4.0-39-generic
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Radeon Vega Graphics
Memory: 14.7 GiB of RAM

[Red Squirrel]

No idea but I have the same issue too... glad it's not just me. Only seems to do it with Youtube (or probably browser based audio in general did not try any other sites). It seems it can't handle playing music and browsing the internet at same time as the clips or violent spurts seem to coincide with a web site loading, or finishing loading. Is it the same for you too where it's while you are doing something else?

[natman]

Hey Red,
So sat down to do some hunting online about the problem, and as a test played an mp3 file fine, next played a video youtube while office, editor, dolphin and 113 tabs all opened - zero issues, so my issue has resolved itself? All I did was play with the default audio output device a few times, ( monitor and usb mic both register as speakers ). So that's great, I put on my headphone at night to listen and work, all good, next day unplugged headphone to listen to a video on speakers - nothing! more hopping around with the default audio device, eventually came back but 30% volume is not basically mute. Unplug headphones am im back to nothing, click audio device properties and I see that Firefox is muted, move slider back to normal.

It's so annoying, never had these issues before (using kubuntu since 2009 )

[Red Squirrel]

For me the problem seems to come and go as well, it's weird. I find a good test is to open Facebook, and keep clicking the F icon in top left corner to reload the page. FB is super bloated and will push the browser quite a lot so it's more likely to happen. Just scrolling it seems to do it too.