this is quite unclear situation. so far it seems to me that kernel drivers are heavily involved. i'm sorry if they are not :) the computer (fujitsu-siemens lifebook c-1020) has heavily distorted sound - mostly with videos, but also with several music players. i suspect kernel drivers because of several facts : this problem is common for a lot of applications, including different media players and games. currently it disappears after suspend/resume cycle, but some kernel versions ago it was the other way around - sound was fine right after the boot, suspend- resume cycle broke it. changing audio output in mplayer (with -ao) doesn't help, it's the same with oss(alsa emulation)/alsa/sdl. some basic information : lspci output Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 30) dmesg alsa device list ALSA device list: #0: VIA 8233 with Cx20468 at 0xe100, irq 10 #1: VIA 82XX modem at 0xe200, irq 10 this is slackware-current system. i understand that currently provided information is insufficient, but i don't know what else is relevant and i will be happy to provide the needed information.
This might be a recent breakage of VIA quirks. Check LKML archives.
what i could find on lkml was mostly about disk constrollers, but that may be because problems with them are more severe. i can barely do simple testing, so best i can do here is provide links if that can save somebody a minute... (these are thread starting messages on that particular archive) http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0607.1/2469.html http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0607.2/0046.html http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0606.0/1227.html http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0605.2/0701.html http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0605.2/0702.html http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0605.2/2222.html
After upgrading from 2.6.16.16 to 2.6.17.11 I had skipping and looping sound with intermittent errors: ALSA sound/pci/via82xx.c:810: invalid via82xx_cur_ptr (2), using last valid pointer and ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:2231: playback write error (DMA or IRQ trouble?) The VIA quirks PCI_ANY_ID patch at http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0607.2/0046.html resolved it, though I don't know for certain that the unpatched fixup missed my board (Athlon XP, Jetway V2MDMP, VT8235 South Bridge)
I experience the same problem with a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo L7300 notebook, lspci: 00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50) 00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 80) My system is Gentoo 2006.1 with 2.6.18.1, and the problem occurs with both ALSA compiled into the kernel and as modules, with both OSS emulation and ALSA, with every mediaplayer. I have found some interesting sources with Google at http://bhhdoa.org.au/pipermail/ck/2006-June/006187.html
FYI, the patch in comment #3 is already in 2.6.19 tree.
Please reopen this bug if it's still present in kernel 2.6.19.