Re: [pygame] sound crackling and fmod

[John Popplewell <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 30, 2007 at 02:55:27AM -0700, Andrew Pape wrote:
> <snip!>
> Could it be an OS problem? I'm using Ubuntu Linux (Feisty Fawn)
> but others on the mailing list have said there's a bug in the Windows
> Pygame that causes sound crackle too. Any other ideas?
> 
It could be a problem with the OS sound configuration. I've traditionally
always had problems with ALSA and the snd_intel8x0 and snd_ac97_* drivers.

Try running this in a shell (I'm running Gentoo at the moment):

$ lsmod | grep snd
...
snd_intel8x0           30524  1
snd_ac97_codec         99908  2 snd_ice1712,snd_intel8x0
snd_ac97_bus            1824  1 snd_ac97_codec
...

Try running this in a shell (part of the 'pciutils' package):

$ /usr/sbin/lspci
...
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801AA AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
...

If you've got hardware something like this, you might consider using the
"/etc/asound.conf" file from here:

http://johnnypops.demon.co.uk/debian/index.html#alsa

which I always end up using whatever Linux distribution I install. You'd only
need the first part that starts with:

# Configuration for on-board AC97 'turkey'

... down to the bit that starts:
# Configuration for the Terratec EWS-88

As I understand it, the hardware only works at 48Khz and the default ASLA
'dmix' settings (which does the conversion) don't quite work with my particular
hardware combination.

Many other apps work ok without it, but apps using SDL often seems to have problems.
(this is on old hardware: a PIII with a re-capped motherboard),

cheers,
John.