Audio issues after long time running

[ekimekim]

I'm running KSP 1.0 64-bit on linux.

Sometimes I leave KSP running in the background overnight or while doing other stuff. I generally leave it paused at KSC with the Esc menu open and the background music audio option set to 0%

When I come back, all audio (not just music) is accompanied by a crackling distortion. This noise is only heard when sound is otherwise made.

Restarting the game fixes the issue.

I was not experiencing this bug, even with identical actions, prior to 1.0.

[Claw]

Hmm. Not to be nit picky, but does this only happen after leaving it open all night? If so, maybe closing it when done, or putting your computer to sleep while away would help the sound system/card reset? I've had luck with putting my computer to sleep.

Also, welcome to the forums!

Cheers,

-Claw

[LordFerret]

Not related to Linux, I'm using Win 8.1 here (for now), but in v0.90 I had a similar problem - leaving the machine running for extended periods of time at the Esc menu ... upon return, back into the game, I would experience extreme lag (on the order of 4fps). Restarting KSP solved the problem. I've not run into this with v1.0 yet, but I'll make a point of trying it. At some point, when I set one of my other Linux (Debian) laptops up with KSP, I'll test it there as well and see if I get a similar result.

What version of Linux are you using ekimekim?... and what sound card/driver system (ALSA?) & desktop ?

[ekimekim]

Yes, I do realise there's an obvious workaround

Still, it's annoying. I'm in the habit of stopping and doing other things for a while, and I don't want to have to exit/start up every time I switch back, or remember it's running and to close it when I leave the computer.

I'm using Arch Linux (kernel version 3.19.3-3-ARCH), window manager is XMonad, ALSA for the sound with my standard motherboard sound card.

lspci gives me:

Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

[LordFerret]

I did some searching on this last night, and there isn't much to be found. I got the impression however that some suspected the ALSA daemon was having a time-out issue with the sound card. One source I read made suggestion about updating the sound card's drivers (check the OEM's site), but there was no real follow-up on the success of that (or not). So, I'm wondering now if your computer is a laptop, and if so, could this be related to power management?... left sitting idle, in order to conserve power (even while running connected to a power source, plugged-in), laptop power management schemes can spin down drives and turn off displays and other resource utilization. Maybe take a look at that if the case applies? Next time you run into this, check the status of the ALSA daemon and see what state it's in as well as the status of the sound card itself.

[sal_vager]

This is caused by pulse-audio, which can be killed (it restarts itself) in the task manager.

It can occur at random and the longer you leave KSP running the greater the chance that it will occur, there's no fix to pulse that I am aware of but running KSP with "padsp KSP.x86" may prevent it from occurring (not fully tested) by forcing OSS mode.

[ekimekim]

Some more info. Sorry, I'm new to the forums and having trouble finding old threads / getting notifications correctly.

Firstly, I'm on a desktop. I'm running ALSA but not pulseaudio (I don't have the package installed, and no pulseaudio daemon is running). No ALSA daemon is running either.

Also, I have a second condition under which this occurs: This time I had music off already, left it running in the VAB and got similar effects when I returned a few days later.

This is the output from amixer:

Simple mixer control 'Master',0

Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined

Playback channels: Mono

Limits: Playback 0 - 64

Mono: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 64

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'PCM',0

Capabilities: pvolume

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 255

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 61 [24%] [-38.80dB]

Front Right: Playback 61 [24%] [-38.80dB]

Simple mixer control 'Front',0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 64

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Front Mic',0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 31

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 31 [100%] [12.00dB] [on]

Front Right: Playback 31 [100%] [12.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Front Mic Boost',0

Capabilities: volume

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: 0 - 3

Front Left: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]

Front Right: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]

Simple mixer control 'Surround',0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 64

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Center',0

Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined

Playback channels: Mono

Limits: Playback 0 - 64

Mono: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'LFE',0

Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined

Playback channels: Mono

Limits: Playback 0 - 64

Mono: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Side',0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 64

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Line',0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 31

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] [-34.50dB] [off]

Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] [-34.50dB] [off]

Simple mixer control 'Line Boost',0

Capabilities: volume

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: 0 - 3

Front Left: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]

Front Right: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]

Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0

Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined

Playback channels: Mono

Mono: Playback [off]

Simple mixer control 'IEC958 Default PCM',0

Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined

Playback channels: Mono

Mono: Playback [on]

Simple mixer control 'Capture',0

Capabilities: cvolume cswitch

Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Capture 0 - 46

Front Left: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on]

Front Right: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Capture',1

Capabilities: cvolume cswitch

Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Capture 0 - 46

Front Left: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [off]

Front Right: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [off]

Simple mixer control 'Auto-Mute Mode',0

Capabilities: enum

Items: 'Disabled' 'Enabled'

Item0: 'Enabled'

Simple mixer control 'Digital',0

Capabilities: cvolume

Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Capture 0 - 120

Front Left: Capture 60 [50%] [0.00dB]

Front Right: Capture 60 [50%] [0.00dB]

Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0

Capabilities: cenum

Items: 'Front Mic' 'Rear Mic' 'Line'

Item0: 'Rear Mic'

Simple mixer control 'Input Source',1

Capabilities: cenum

Items: 'Front Mic' 'Rear Mic' 'Line'

Item0: 'Rear Mic'

Simple mixer control 'Rear Mic',0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: Playback 0 - 31

Mono:

Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] [-34.50dB] [off]

Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] [-34.50dB] [off]

Simple mixer control 'Rear Mic Boost',0

Capabilities: volume

Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right

Limits: 0 - 3

Front Left: 1 [33%] [10.00dB]

Front Right: 1 [33%] [10.00dB]

I have no special asound.conf.

[sal_vager]

Okay well KSP isn't designed with being left on for days at a time in mind, it's not a use case that's ever been tested.

Anyway we can't really tell much from what you've provided, so please see the support stickies and put your game logs and system info on dropbox.

Testing this is not something I can really do here sorry, and I hesitate to ask anyone else to leave either their computer or KSP running for so long.

It's a bit odd that you don't have the alsa daemon running yet use alsa for sound though, also have you noticed this with any other games? FTL will crackle on my machine after a few hours play, even if I restart it, the only way I can fix that is to kill pulse audio.

[ekimekim]

From what I can tell by a google around, the alsa-utils daemon you're referring to is used to do state save/restore to/from disk. In systemd systems you instead use seperate alsa-store and alsa-restore one-shot "services" on boot and shutdown. So probably not related.

I haven't noticed this in any other games. Off the top of my head, games I've left running for days without issue include Cities: Skylines, Prison Architect, Infinifactory and The Talos Principle.

At some point I'll try to do some more intensive testing on the issue - right now all my reports are just observed consequences of normal use.

Will try to remember to post detailed game logs next time.

In any case, thanks for the suggestions. It really isn't a big deal if I can't fix this, just figured I might as well try.