David Ellis wrote:

Lower your volume level on the card setup in mythsetup.........I think the
problem is with an input volume level that is too high.

David

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sérgio Gomes
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 5:00 PM
To: mythtv-users@mythtv.org
Subject: [mythtv-users] Crackling and popping in non-PVR analog card -- I
think I can say it's MythTV's fault

Hello everyone!

I'm probably one of the very few people left with a non-PVR analog card (a simple Hauppauge WinTV Go, based on cx8800). The audio goes from the TV card to the sound card via a simple external stereo cable, as I'm sure is the case in many setups out there.

Now, I have been having a problem with audio on my MythTV since I installed it yesterday: I get a lot of crackling and popping in my recordings and in LiveTV. I've been running several tests.

Outside MythTV:
- The audio gets to the sound card in great quality: if I turn on playback of the line-in channel, the sound is perfect - It is also not the recording hardware of the sound card that is ruining the sound, as both "record" and "arecord" record perfect sound - "record" and "arecord" still record perfect sound with high CPU and disk loads - "record" and "arecord" record perfect sound whether or not video is playing (with XawTV, for instance) - If I start recording sound then start mythfrontend and select "Watch TV", it won't get any sound (understandable, the device is busy), but the "record" or "arecord" program will keep on recording, and the sound is, once again, perfect
- Recorded MythTV shows play with crackling in mplayer

Inside MythTV:
- The amount of crackling (or at least the loudness) goes up with the loudness of the broadcast; if it's quiet there's almost no crackling, but if there are a lot of people talking or loud sounds, there is a lot of crackling
- Happens with ALSA and OSS
- Happens with MJPEG and MPEG4
- Happens with or without "Agressive Sound Buffering"
- Happens with both WAV and MP3, at any of the available rates
- Happens with or without internal volume controls, at any level
- Music and videos play without any problems
- The amount of crackling goes up with the quality of the video; there is almost no crackling at 160x160, but a lot of it at 768x576

So, given all this I think we can rule out any interference on the sound from external sources, hardware or other software, and assume the problem is limited to the TV functionality in MythTV. My guess would be that the sound is being clipped due to volume adjustments inside MythTV, and is only then recorded, assuming that MythTV does some volume processing on the sound (even if just boosting it).

Now, this is all fine and well and a good theory until the last point. I don't understand why the problem gets worse with higher video resolutions. That completely ruins my theory. With that in mind, I guess the problem could only be some kind of multiplexing or demultiplexing bug (probably multiplexing, because for it to be a demultiplexing bug it would also have to be present in mplayer), but that wouldn't account for the problem getting worse on loud samples (since WAV is constant bitrate).

So, I'm hoping someone who knows MythTV better than me can help me out with this... I'll gladly provide recording samples if anyone wants them. Here are my PC specs:

- Athlon 64 3200+
- NForce 3 motherboard (ASUS)
- Gentoo Linux with 2.6.12-r5 gentoo-sources kernel
- video4linux CVS (due to some cx8800 problems with the release version). --> shouldn't be the problem because of all the above reasons
- WinTV Go 2 with cx8800 chip
- Audigy 2 ZS (snd-emu10k1 module), with hardware mixing
- MythTV 0.18.1 compiled from source in AMD64 (as the rest of my system)
- Using PAL BG


Thank you for bearing with me through this exhaustive description.


Sérgio Gomes

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Well, I've tried that and it still happens :-/
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