Skype on F-20

[froyo]

I have quite severe problems with Skype on F-20. When initiating the first call, there is no sound output (pulseaudio settings seem ok). Even the skype test sound does not play. After hanging up and calling again I get loud noise (not white noise, but heavily distorted). This noise does not go away by hanging up. I have to shutdown skype to get rid of the noise. The problem is present using internal and external microphone/speakers. Is anybody else having a similar problem?

My setup (F-20 alpha + all updates):

pulseaudio-4.0-4.gita89ca
pulseaudio-libs-4.0-4.gita89ca
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.27
alsa-lib-1.0.27.2-2
kernel-3.11.3-301

Lenovo X1 Carbon:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
Subsystem: Lenovo Device 21f9
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47
Memory at f1510000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

[bob]

Be sure to report any issues like this via Bugzilla.

[froyo]

Done: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1017944

[dcharlespyle]

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

Change the line that reads Exec=skype %U to the following:

Exec=env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 skype %U

Save the file. You should be able to use Skype again until they get around to figuring out what to do with pulseaudio's new incompatibility with Skype. If a value of 30 does not work, try using the number 60.

The above workaround helped me. Hopefully it will help you as well.

[froyo]

Great! This solves the problem for me! Thx!!!

[smr54]

It didn't work for me unfortunately, but still, the fact that it's working for the majority is a good sign.

[dcharlespyle]

It didn't work for me unfortunately, but still, the fact that it's working for the majority is a good sign.

This fix does not work if you are using the setting tsched=0 in your pulseaudio configuration. Changing that to tsched=1 should enable the workaround to work.

[smr54]

Googling indicates that setting it to 0 is done by the user.
(I'm going by this page. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/GlitchFreeAudio)

So, I tried adding tsched=1 to the line where they mention adding tsched=0. No luck. A little more googling found an Arch article where they mention the tsched line in connection with the udev module line and I tried that too. Still no luck.

Did I hit the file and line that you were referring to, or is there another place I can set this?

[dcharlespyle]

Did you try the value of 60 rather than 30? And, did you type it exactly as I have it above?

[smr54]

Firstly, thanks for getting back to me on this.

At any rate, following the bug filed by froyo, it led me to the
http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/...x/td-p/1683361 link.

This may be because I use a window manager (dwm, openbox, or fluxbox) instead of a desktop environment, but although putting the line in skype.desktop didn't work, using it as part of the startup command did partially work--that is, running

 PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 skype

gave me sound from the speakers. Unfortunately, the microphone still didn't work. I tried both with and without alsa-plugins-pulseaudio, as sometimes, that has been the issue.

I had missed the note you gave about changing 30 to 60, but regardless of which value I used in the skype,desktop file, that didn't make a change.

I have a small Lubuntu install on the machine I use for Skype, and it works without problems there, so this isn't a disaster, and I do greatly appreciate your help.

[dcharlespyle]

Does your microphone work with other applications? Check your audio settings for your microphone. You also might have to set up your microphone again in Skype. Other than that, I am not sure what else might help at the moment.

[smr54]

No problem, thank you VERY much for trying. For now, it's taken more time than I'm willing to spend, so I'm just using Lubuntu when I have to skype.

[dcharlespyle]

I just tried Skype on OpenBox and on iceWM instead of in a DE and found that it also worked there as well as in a DE. In OpenBox, however, I had to jack up the setting from 30 to 120 for it to work right. If anyone else is reading this, is having problems with the microphone and audio with Skype, and wants to spend some time troubleshooting, I'll try to check back here periodically and help try to find other solutions.

[dakaujunk]

@dcharlespyle - I know this thread is old, but i can't thank you enough for the change to skype.desktop.

[smr54]

And to follow up, I just did a fresh install of F20 and did get skype sound to work. However, still didn't work editing skype,desktop, I had to start it with

PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 skype

Thanks again for your help with this.