Stuttering sound on Ubuntu 8.04

Ubuntu LogoAs I mentioned in my last post I updated my media PC to Ubuntu 8.04 without any issues. Turns out that was not the case…

Over the weekend I discovered that my sound playback has started to stutter especially with apps like VLC playing back video. After doing some digging it appears to be an issue with PulseAudio which is the new sound engine for Ubuntu.

Apparently it has some buffering issues particularly on older/slow machines.

Luckily it is easy to fix. The following command:

`Ubuntu LogoAs I mentioned in my last post I updated my media PC to Ubuntu 8.04 without any issues. Turns out that was not the case…

Over the weekend I discovered that my sound playback has started to stutter especially with apps like VLC playing back video. After doing some digging it appears to be an issue with PulseAudio which is the new sound engine for Ubuntu.

Apparently it has some buffering issues particularly on older/slow machines.

Luckily it is easy to fix. The following command:

`

Will ‘kill’ the PulseAudio engine, Ubuntu will then fall back to the older engines and everything will be right.

For the moment I have just configured this command to run when my Gnome session starts up. Which turns off PulseAudio when I boot up.

I read that a patch will be out soon. If it works I’ll turn PulseAudio back on.