Quote from: KozmoNaut on 2018-11-19 20:14:16

Quote from: magicgoose on 2018-11-19 18:50:46

Perhaps I am extremely unlucky. Sounds sometimes breaks down both for built-in soundcard on the mobo, and an external USB DAC (which main function is to record guitar but I tested how it could work for output because I can).
By the way do you think it's worth it to try replacing the kernel with some kind of "realtime" versions as described here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/RealTimeKernel to see if it makes the problem less frequent at least?

That does sound very strange, and I'm afraid it's not something where I am aware of an easy solution. Maybe it's some sort of hardware conflict, maybe something particular to your hardware. I'm not sure what the best venue for help is, if the Ubuntu forums aren't helpful.

I don't think a realtime kernel will help, this seems like something else.

This is an anecdote about my own situation.  I use one of those USB plug-in headphone amplifiers.  It works great, except the Linux volume controls initially worked very poorly.  Basically, the specific USB headphone amp that I use isn't quite 100% supported (It is an audioengine D3 -- I think.)   Anyway, I found a driver/kernel patch to fix the volume control issue, and every kernel that I update to needs the patch.   They still don't support it in the mainline kernel, but being a kernel developer of one kind or another since the late 1970's, it is no biggie for me to patch the kernel.  (I update to the latest Linux development kernel -- way ahead of normal releases -- about once a month, unless I am in play-with-kernel mode, then I do it over and over again.)  Bottom line is that Linux does tend to have spotty support for less than 100% mainstream HW, but when it does have support, it is usally either pretty good, or passable.
Windows is really good when you just want something to work -- perhaps suboptimally, perhaps more slowly, or perhaps irritatingly esp when the system is doing one of those irritating upates, but it does work most of the time.
Linux is really good if you want something that works knifedge-good.  I mean, it will generally give you everything that your CPU and system can give you in performance, and when the software works -- it is second-to-none.  However, Linux does often require care and feeding unless you choose hardware that is well known by the developers.

I LIKE using Linux (I wish it was FreeBSD, but that is ancient history), and I am generally satisfied when I use it because I am not usually waiting or frustrated because of an eccentric or poor design concept (e.g. Windows being infested with Belady's anomaly for a decade before being improved.)
I tolerate using Windows because it is what a lot of people use, and they are happy with it.  If I write a piece of software, I will be able to benefit more people if I write it to be able to run on Windows.
It would be nice if the world used a Unix clone, and there was a super good GUI from day one so that more people would have been able to adopt it early on.  We don't live in that world...

Aside from that, I've found that video drivers tend to react VERY poorly with USB audio; both are high-bandwidth, low-latency applications, and the video driver will naturally want to hog everything and as a higher-class citizen, gets that. When a major video driver update screws up your audio, your choices are basically hack the kernel or hope for the best and try not to trigger it. I've had the same USB DAC since 2006 (Turtle Beach Roadie, now called SRM) and the ins and outs of it working well could fill a very boring novel. The worst was a year or so when just scrolling anything on Windows would cause audio stutter. Driver developers really aren't good at playing well with other drivers.

AFAIK threading has been supported for long time and other drivers should not be able to fsck up others anymore. Scrolling could cause stuttering if process priority of scrolling app is higher than audio apps.

https://d2.alternativeto.net/dist/s/20646eb1-fc4b-df11-82d2-0022190f5762_2_full.gif?format=gif&width=1600&height=1600&mode=min&upscale=false

Even this kind of peaking should not affect audio with Win 7 and newer, maybe even Vista.

I submitted results there.

[...] foo_dsp_resampler is lvqcl's SoX-based component[...]

Hi Case, thanks again for doing this, but do you know if it's there yet?  I've looked under Windows and Microsoft and don't see anything new there, and the last updated still says July 17, 2018.  Maybe it's normal, but I thought I'd seen results appear there sooner in the past.