Static sound crops up between switching songs

[arjungm]

It sounds like some kind of weird popping white noise that happens during song switches, and abates after a while.

Any documented fixes for this bug?

Ubuntu 12.04, Compiled from git source

[PromyLOPh]

pianobar does not handle the sound playback itself – it relies on libao.
Your description sounds like a buggy/bad sound card or driver to me
which makes a noise when opening/closing the device. You can try to play
around with libao’s settings, set a different backend (alsa/oss/…).

[Nybbling]

I am experiencing the same issue (also Ubuntu 12.04, compiled from source) and what I noticed is that white noise isn't static: it's the song playing at high speeds. My second counter would decrement by 8-12 seconds for every real second.

The song would slow to normal speed when switching windows form terminal to something else then back again rapidly, or you can just wait and sometimes it slows on its own. This happens once in awhile (maybe once in 2 weeks) and when when it does it happens on and off all that day.

I haven't noticed any issues with any other sound producing processes so though I totally agree the likely culprit is sound driver, there's gotta be a variable tied to pianobar.

[PromyLOPh]

How does libao access the audio device on Ubuntu? Does it talk to alsa
directly or is there a sound server involved?

[LinuxMercedes]

I have the same issue on my Ubuntu 12.04 machine. In /etc/libao.conf, the default driver is set to alsa (and the quiet option is set).

[codyps]

Try using the "pulse" driver instead of the "alsa" driver on ubuntu. I've not experienced this particular issue, but I'm using "pulse".

Also note that libao.conf parsing is extremely fragile: adding comments and keeping options from other drivers can cause libao failures. (See https://trac.xiph.org/ticket/1971)

My ubuntu 12.04 libao.conf (which doesn't have issues AFAICT):

default_driver=pulse

Also, the "alsa" output driver has been buggy for me (See https://trac.xiph.org/ticket/1972)

[LinuxMercedes]

Using pulseaudio seems to have fixed the issue.