Audio Cut Out, Crackling, Static on Discreet AMD 6650M over HDMI Audio Out

[xipherzero]

I installed HoloISO on a HX90G from MinisForums which has a AMD 5900HX processor and a discreet 6650M GPU. All works extremely well with the exception of the HDMI audio. It intermittently cuts out, crackles or sounds like static when certain applications are attempting to send Audio out. It is not all applications and is intermittent leading me to think it may be a buffer overrun or something like that, but I don't know what to adjust to get the audio working as expected.

Any assistance including what logs to even dig through would be helpful as this is the only gating issue for this little minicomputer being my primary SteamOS box.

 

[xipherzero]

Further experimentation seems to indicate the issue only exists within gamescope mode from boot. Plex HTPC is having the most issues from gamescope mode. When I launch the plex interface from Desktop Mode (X Session) audio works as expected. IF I launch steam within a gamescope window within the X session plex works as expected.

```
gamescope -h 2160 -w 3840 -r 60 -e -- steam --gamepadui
```

But, if I simply boot into gamescope mode the audio drops out every couple of seconds watching a video on Plex and crackles or cuts out in other applications.

 

[b-m-f]

I am experiencing the exact same issue.

Setup:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Motherboard: X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI
Graphics Card: Radeon RX 6600

The audio is delivered over HDMI to a Denon receiver.

Problem:

Audio Crackling/Popping and Dropout only occur when games are launched from the SteamdeckUI ( after boot, or when returning there from the Desktop)

Observations:

- Launching a game from the desktop seems to be more stable (I have had no long gaming session yet).
- restarting pipewire-pulse or pipewire/wireplumber via systemd does not change anything
- AMD seems to have had issues in the past when it comes to delivering audio via HDMI

Fix:
Using the analog out audio from the motherboard reduces the audio issues by a lot! There are almost not noticable anymore and occur less often (again no long gaming session, will report back)

 

[xipherzero]

Update:

• Updated HoloISO image to 6.1-test build which is available in the Actions Build bot #142.
  https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso/actions/runs/4405749941
• Fully updated locally installed packages based on repositories defined in /etc/pacman.conf (Mostly *-rel repositories).
• At this time Audio is mostly stable (Very minor intermittent crackling and no audio cutouts) and working as expected over HDMI. This build of HoloISO is using a 6.1 linux kernel which likely contains updated drivers that helps address the underlying issue.

I would like to see how an updated stable release of HoloISO runs on this HW. My suspicions are that all will work as expected, but it's likely that we wont see another stable release of HoloISO until after the Mesa 23.1.X build of HoloOS is released in the stable branch from Valve.