had this issue on 12.04 but after some sec it went away on vlc by let it play the movie.
then on upgrade to 12.10 it became worse, it was always present and although after a while disappeared any jump back (shift + left arrow) made it come back. fixed it by removing rtkit and restarting pulse, my audio is: 00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to pulseaudio in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/751265 Title: pulseaudio distorts VLC audio Status in “pulseaudio” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Binary package hint: pulseaudio Audio quality full of hiss (similar to what it might sound like if you pulled your headphone/speaker plug out halfway). The hiss distortion is constant and affects all VLC 1.1.8 audio. True for all audio sources: internet stream, mp3, cd, flv, etc. Problem occurred on a clean install of Ubuntu 11.04 beta (32-bit) using only the included repositories, and updated as of today's date. Pulseaudio version: 1:0.9.22+stable-queue-24-g67d18-0ubuntu2 Disabling pulseaudio allows VLC to play cleanly. Have not observed audio distortion with other players using pulseaudio. Would like to see VLC operate properly with pulseaudio. I had no issues on same machine using Ubuntu 10.10 and VLC 1.1.4. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04 Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.22+stable-queue-24-g67d18-0ubuntu2 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-7.39-generic 2.6.38 Uname: Linux 2.6.38-7-generic i686 AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23. Architecture: i386 AudioDevicesInUse: USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: blaine 2039 F...m vlc Card0.Amixer.info: Card hw:0 'Audigy2'/'SB Audigy 2 [SB0350b] (rev.4, serial:0x20061102) at 0xcc80, irq 19' Mixer name : 'SigmaTel STAC9750,51' Components : 'AC97a:83847650' Controls : 211 Simple ctrls : 46 Card1.Amixer.info: Card hw:1 'U0x46d0x8ca'/'USB Device 0x46d:0x8ca at usb-0000:00:1d.7-6, high speed' Mixer name : 'USB Mixer' Components : 'USB046d:08ca' Controls : 2 Simple ctrls : 1 Card1.Amixer.values: Simple mixer control 'Mic',0 Capabilities: cvolume cvolume-joined cswitch cswitch-joined penum Capture channels: Mono Limits: Capture 0 - 3072 Mono: Capture 0 [0%] [18.00dB] [off] Card2.Amixer.info: Card hw:2 'Generic'/'HD-Audio Generic at 0xefddc000 irq 43' Mixer name : 'ATI R6xx HDMI' Components : 'HDA:1002aa01,00aa0100,00100200' Controls : 4 Simple ctrls : 1 Card2.Amixer.values: Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [on] Date: Tue Apr 5 06:32:13 2011 InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Beta i386 (20110330) ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=en_US:en PATH=(custom, user) LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: pulseaudio UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) dmi.bios.date: 01/08/2007 dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.bios.version: A07 dmi.board.name: 0HJ054 dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.chassis.type: 6 dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA07:bd01/08/2007:svnDellInc.:pnDellDM051:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0HJ054:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct6:cvr: dmi.product.name: Dell DM051 dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/751265/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp