Bad Sound on nForce 3 chipset?

[snyberg]

I have a Shuttle SN85G4 system with an nForce3 150 chipset. When I boot up, and up until I login to FC2 (loads the GNOME desktop), the audio is clean, but when it finishes my login, there is massive amounts of very loud crackling sound. Is this a problem with Fedora, or my chipset? I remember listening to the audio sample during installation and it was crystal clear then. Any help?

[Bana]

Does the crackling then stop after a few seconds? What happens when you play xmms or other audio files? Go to the System Settings->Soundcard Detection and see if it works there (in Gnome).

[snyberg]

The crackling persists after login. I went to Soundcard Detection and it detected my nForce sound chipset correctly, and the sample sound plays, but there is still very loud crackling. Does this mean my hardware is somehow defective or got ruined in the past few days since I installed FC2? I need to know so I can return my system if that is the case.

[Bana]

Try installing the latest version of alsa 1.0.5a, it is rather easy, just unpack it and run a ./configure && make && make install as root. Also test aplay and make sure that your alsamixer levels are alright (you don't have an extraneous channel spamming your audio or something).

[lauterm]

Listen to Bana. I saw this elsewhere on the web. Sometimes audio input levels end up maxed out in alsamixer leading to poor sound. I think they were talking about a machine with a SoundBlaster in it, but this is definitely worth checking out before you contemplate sending it back.

[ahbrown41]

I am still getting this with FC3 and nForce3 sound. A constant irritating crackling that I cannot figure out how to fix.

My alsa is 1.0.6.


Has anyone else had this and gotten it to work correctly?

Thanks!

[tomtom]

I've had the same problem (with the same hardware) but on KDE, so I started KMix and unchecked 'Surround Down Mix' and that does the trick. It might be a tool such as KMix under gnome or try KDE ;-)