RetroPie x86 - audio 'pop' when loading games

Panja

Every time when the actual game is loaded you hear a brief 'POP' out of my speakers.
I have this with every game tested.

Running Ubuntu 18.0.4.2 with the latest RetroPie, hardware is connected to my TV through HDMI.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Panja

Any one have a clue?

Libation

@Panja I used to have my Retropie connected to a monitor with built in speakers, had the same issue. I turned down the Retropie volume a bit, helped a little. Switched to a different monitor, issue went away. Do you have another screen you could test it on? Check out this link, might provide a solution: https://dbader.org/blog/crackle-free-audio-on-the-raspberry-pi-with-mpd-and-pulseaudio Scroll down to read: Update: The problem seems to be fixed
EDIT - Please back up your system before trying anything from this page, just in case something goes wrong. Not sure if this works for x86 retropie.

Panja

Thanks for the reply.
Unfortunately that doesn't fix it for me.

Also the problem is on multiple TV's.
I have 2 TV's and tested on both.

It's not a show stopper, it's just annoying.
It's not really a cracking sound it's a (pretty loud) pop sound when the actual game loads.

Panja

I don't know if it's related but I'm also seeing an error message when loading games:

lvl0: VolumeControl::init() - failed to find mixer elements!

Libation

@Panja said in RetroPie x86 - audio 'pop' when loading games:

failed to find mixer elements!

Found a link here describing the same error. The user at the bottom of the topic found a solution that worked for them: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11256/failed-to-find-mixer-elements/6

Panja

Thanks again!
Already set the Audio Device to PCM.
Though I did it through Sound Settings in ES menu.
After checking the file through SSH, it's indeed change to PCM.

But without luck, problem remains.

Libation

@Panja Is this Stretch or Jessie? My research seems to indicate this issue happened with Jessie, but was fixed with Stretch.

Panja

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04.2 (Bionic Beaver), not running Debian or Rasbian.
(It's running on x86 hardware)

Libation

@Panja Apologies my friend, I've gotta tap out. Beyond my level of knowledge. Hopefully one of the smarter people on this board chime in.

Panja

No worries man. Thanks for trying! Appreciated.

Panja

I just did a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04.2 and a fresh install of RetroPie.
With this new installation I have found the problem (bug?)!

When I disable navigation sounds in sounds settings (EmulationStation) the problem returns. When loading a game and the game starts: POP!
When I enable navigation sounds in sounds settings (EmulationStation) the problem is gone!

To be honest it's a but frustrating because I do not like the navigation sounds in my ES Theme but it's good that I found the problem...

[update]
Fixed it by creating a silent WAV file and replaced the navigation sound files in:
/etc/emulationstation/themes/carbon/art
There are 2 WAV files in there which I replaced. Probably only one was the culprit for me but I changed them both.

movisman

@Panja

Had originally replied over on the 18.04.1 thread which you posted on, but will reply here - glad to see you have a workaround for it.

I (think) my navigation sounds are turned on, need to check - also the theme I use (Chicuelo) doesn't have any wav files or scrolling sounds though, so I don't think i've ever played around with that setting. I don't get any pop or ALSA errors.

Do you still get ALSA related errors with the navigation sounds turned on? Or does that only appear when the option is turned off?

Panja

Sorry, been away from the keyboard for a few days.

Thanks for your replies!
I re-installed and I do not have any errors anymore.
Though I still have the POP sound when launching a game.
But fixed (workarounded) with a silent WAV file.

Parabolaralus

@Panja said in RetroPie x86 - audio 'pop' when loading games:

Sorry, been away from the keyboard for a few days.

Thanks for your replies!
I re-installed and I do not have any errors anymore.
Though I still have the POP sound when launching a game.
But fixed (workarounded) with a silent WAV file.

Well i switched to Kubuntu 19.04 at work this morning and came across your issue and since i remembered this post thought it would be nice to list my fix.

So the issue seems to be that after a few seconds of silence it would put the audio chip in sleep mode causing a pop whenever any audio file was being played afterwords...drove me nuts for the first few minutes setting up this thing and hearing a pop with every ding noise!

I came across this when googling it: Pop noise

If it goes down do the following:
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and at the very bottom add the following line:
options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

Then probably reboot.

I hadn't been able to reproduce this before because my main machine is AMD and this problem is Intel specific.

Panja

Thanks for helping out mate, appreciated!
Will have a go with this in a few days and let you know.
Cheers.