Sorry for bringing up an old post but I had problems similar to what was described here.
I was able to "fix" the crackling audio issues using the following lines in daemon.pa: high-priority = yes nice-level = -11 realtime-scheduling = yes default-fragments = 8 default-fragment-size-msec = 10 Note that this instance of PulseAudio was not running on a ubuntu machine but on a OpenWRT based router (BT HomeHub 5) which is used as a sink for a ubuntu based machine - however since this post came high in the list of search results when I searched the crackling audio issue, there is a possibility that my addition may help somebody. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to pulseaudio in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/301755 Title: Crackling noise after update to pulseaudio Status in pulseaudio package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Bug description: Binary package hint: pulseaudio After upgrading to Jaunty, when listening to audio through Pulseaudio, I get a crackling sound, that seems to be bound to system load. Not necessarily CPU load, the CPU load is well below 50% at all times, but I.E. harddisk access seems to provoke the crackling extra. When disabling Pulseaudio, running directly towards ALSA, the crackling disappear. My soundcard according to lspci: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2). (Motherboard built-in) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/301755/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp