Apr 25, 2011

How To Fix Skype Audio Distortion

Working Fix right here: How To Definitely Fix Skype Audio Distortion

Since I installed Ubuntu 11.04 the sound played by skype is very distorted. It's so intense that the individual sounds are almost unrecognizable. Something with skypes Pulseaudio integration just seems to be wrong. Other software on my system does work just fine. Only skype has this "problem". It's not only the sounds skype plays but also when I try to talk to someone over skype. They can understand me just fine, but I'm barely able to understand simple words. I remembered that I had this same problem a few years ago with skype. It just took mi some time to remember how I fixed it.

The fix is very simple for this. The problem seems to be that by default the ALSA PCM channel is at max (or almost there). Skype has problems with that. So to change this in Ubuntu 11.04 (and likely other versions/distributions as well) open a Terminal. Type "alsamixer" and press enter. Navigate to the bar (pressing left & right on the keyboard) where PCM is written at the bottom. This bar should go from green (bottom) to red (top). Press the down key a few times till the number just above PCM says something between 90 and 98. Then press the ESC key to exit alsamixer and close the terminal. Now try a skype call again. This should fix the problem, at least it did it for me here.

If you change the sound volume this will go back to 100 again. But don't worry. Skype will still work just fine, not sure why.

On my other systems the default 100 PCM value doesn't seem to create any problem with skype. So this may just be a difference in the hardware drivers for some soundchips.  Or something that happens with the way I installed my system. Maybe my PCM value was above 100 but that may only be shown as 100. Whatever the reason its fixed with this ...

UPDATE: After some reboots this problem seems to reappear on my machine. Will dig further :/

UPDATE2: A nice commenter pointed out the solution: http://www.nbuntu.cz.cc/2011/04/distortion-of-sound-in-skype-22.html

11 comments:

  1. I have this problem to (ubuntu 11.04) 64 bits, but your solution doesn't work with me

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  2. Hi,
    This worked for me on ubuntu 11.04 http://www.nbuntu.cz.cc/2011/04/dist...e-22.html:eek:

    ReplyDelete
  3. the link is http://www.nbuntu.cz.cc/2011/04/distortion-of-sound-in-skype-22.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. sorry but after restart this solution doesn't work

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  5. thx ... http://www.nbuntu.cz.cc/2011/04/distortion-of-sound-in-skype-22.html

    works find for me :).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello !!

    Just to make it clear, the aforementioned post is :


    ''In home directory create a blank file name it .asoundrc , and paste it as follows

    pcm.skype {
    type plug
    slave {
    # normal ALC883
    pcm “hw:0,0″

    # skype wants 24 kHz recording input,
    # but ALC883 doesn’t support that.
    # do a rate conversion on the fly.
    rate 48000
    }
    }

    Restart Skype!! Solution worked in Ubuntu 10.10 ''

    A I am a new user in linux and only rarely use the shell command line, coule someone please explain me what all the above # means ?? Is ts some kind of instructions to do something ? It doesn't make much sense to a newcomer like me.

    Many Thanks,
    Efthymios

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  7. # start a comment line. Basically the application reading this file doesn't care what you write after a # till a new line starts. Usually used to put additional information to something. So months later you still know why you wrote something in there.

    does that explain what you meant?

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  8. In ubuntu 11.04 64bits there is a solution but it's kind of annoying, get vmware, run a virtual machine with windows or ubuntu or whatever, close the virtual machine and restart skype and the sound will be good. VM ware does something to the sound settings but I can't figure out what!

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  9. Ah there's a permanent fix for ubuntu 11.04 (64bit)
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/751265
    comment #23

    ----
    You have to modify the following line in /etc/pulse/default.pa

    load-module module-udev-detect

    with :

    load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

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  10. Perfect solution, thank you very much Marc. :)

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  11. I've posted another possible fix for distorted, scratchy sound in Ubuntu 12.04. I posted it as a fix for Wine problems, but since it's just a single modification to pulseaudio's config file, it may help in other cases as well. Good luck!
    http://dotcadot.ca/content/bad-sound-wine-14-under-ubuntu-1204-x64

    ReplyDelete