Audio issue in Emulationstation menu

Breeliance

Hello people, this is me again with yet another issue I need help with <3
I managed to set up my raspberry pi with dietpi OS and a seperate lxQt Desktop as well as emulationstation both properly running for the most part, yay <3
However recently I faced some audio issues that I'm desperately searching your help to fix

My System:

DietPi version 9.9
G_DIETPI_VERSION_CORE=9
G_DIETPI_VERSION_SUB=9
G_DIETPI_VERSION_RC=0
G_GITBRANCH=‘master’
G_GITOWNER=‘MichaIng’
G_LIVE_PATCH_STATUS[0]=‘applied’
G_LIVE_PATCH_STATUS[1]=‘applied’
G_LIVE_PATCH_STATUS[2]=‘not applicable’
G_LIVE_PATCH_STATUS[3]=‘not applicable’

Distro version | bookworm 0

Kernel version | Linux DietPi 6.12.25+rpt-rpi-2712 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.12.25-1+rpt1 (2025-04-30) aarch64 GNU/Linux

Architecture | arm64

SBC model | RPi 5 Model B

Power supply used | 5,1V 5A (official PSU)

SD card used | KingSpec 128GB M.2 2242 NVMe SSD (+Geekworm X1001)

Steps to reproduce
So recently I stumbled over an issue where in the Emulationstation menu the sound does weird crackling noises, it doesn't give me the navigation menu sounds at all or just crumbled versions of it and when I hover over a game (I've got little video previews of every game running on hovering the specific game) then the ingame sound is all messed up.
If I start a game however I don't have any sound issued at all.
Recently I navigated to the retropie audio settings and enabled "pulse audio" that seemed to have fixed it for a while.
However I mainly use my retropie plugged in via HDMI to my PC Monitor/Elgato HD60 S+ but occasionally I use it with my Crowview Note (some Kind of "Laptop" where the Pi itself works as external processor) and there I had the issue that I didn't get any signal from the device at all.
I fixed that by including

"hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=82
hdmi_drive=2 "

into the config file and for the session on the Crowview Note everything seemed to run fun.
Now that I switched back to my PC Monitor however I again have the weird distorted audio issues in the emulationstation menu and I just can't seem to fix it permanently.
Maybe you can help me with that <3

EDIT: The Problem just occurs when streaming the audio with my capture card, while using my HDMI Channel (passthrough or native) the sound problem doesn't occur)

Expected behaviour
Normal sound even in menu

Actual behaviour
Weird audio in emulationstation menu

mitu

On a Pi system, we don't support running under a desktop session and the Audio part in EmulationStation only knows about ALSA. Also on a PI we only support RaspiOS - though it may work under DietPi by chance we don't test RetroPie under other Pi related distros.

On the other hand, as long as ALSA works fine, even emulated under PulseAudio/PipeWire, EmulationStation should also work fine, there's nothing RetroPie can do about the system's audio manager.

Breeliance

@mitu

the emulationstation runs seperated from the desktop session.

And what are solutions/fixes you'd recommend given you'd deal with a raspiOS environment? (I don't think it differs too much honestly).

mitu

@Breeliance said in Audio issue in Emulationstation menu:

And what are solutions/fixes you'd recommend given you'd deal with a raspiOS environment? (I don't think it differs too much honestly).

Try to use ALSA only and no PulseAudio/Pipewire, then configure the audio output from RetroPie to make sure ALSA is properly configured.

Breeliance

@mitu

Thanks for your response,
I now noticed that the problem occurs just in OBS Software/Discord (when Monitoring the sound or to viewers of the stream) however the sound problem does NOT occur when switching to my monitors HDMI channel (signal gets passed through the capture card).
This explains why I didn't have the issue with the Crowview Note.

However I still don't have any clue how to solve that problem x.x

mitu

@Breeliance Then the issue is not in Linux/RetroPie/OS Configuration, but in OBS/Discord. I don't have any experience with any of them to guess what could be the problem.