How do I stop sound pops

Support & Help Requests
1

Just installed linux mate on my old acer laptop due to Windows 7 being obsoleted this month.

So far everything is fine except for regular sound pops from the laptop speakers.

My laptop has a realtek sound card I believe and i'm wondering if the pops are due to power saving but for the life of me I can't work out how to configure it.

So has anyone else encountered this and know how to fix it?

Is it something to do with power saving or something else?

I'm a beginner with linux so would appreciate any help

2

I have an old acer as well. It came with NT. I never had any issues with sound but had other issues with power management and keyboard. My issues were all resolved by upgrading the bios.

3

I had the same problem. I solved it by

echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

I put in rc.local so it is executed at boot. Of course, systemd doesn't do rc.local by default, so you'll have to go through some gyrations to make it work. Or you can use

cron @reboot

sudo crontab -e (to edit crontab)
add a line @reboot command-you-want-executed-at-boot-time)

4

The powersaving feature of the ALSA sound driver is known to often cause these issues.
You can disable it as follows:

  1. open a terminal
  2. make a backup of the ALSA config file:
    sudo cp /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf.bak
  3. edit the ALSA config:
    sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
  4. add the following line at the end of the file:
    options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N
  5. press CTRL+O , then ENTER to save the file
  6. press CTRL+X to exit the editor
  7. reboot