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The bad old Noise issue in the headphones on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

rated 0 times [ 1] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2180 / 1 Year ago, fri, april 28, 2023, 5:41:59

I have migrated to Ubuntu from Windows recently. It has been a great experience. But, one thing annoyed me the most and that is the headphones noise issue. It is a very common problem and I have almost gone through every question asked about this issue on the forum. I am using Ubuntu 16.04.1 on my DELL INSPIRON 15 3542 touchscreen laptop.

I have tried :

alsamixer and disabling the Loopback Mixing

Adding 0 in the /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save file

INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=false
in /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave

Nothing worked, not even temporarily.

Now, what I have observed is whenever I open the PulseAudio Volume Controller and keep it open, the noise is gone! As soon as the application is closed, the noise comes back. So, this seems to work temporarily and a cheap solution. Can anyone look into this matter and come up with a permanent solution for the issue?

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rontablis

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3 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago oatglori · Accepted Answer

A lot of users are facing noise problem when headphones are connected and are fed up with it just like I am. This solution is for them. There are a lot of solutions given on askubuntu but none have worked for me.

Things were good when I used Windows 8.1. There was no such sound issue. Well, but now I am on Ubuntu and I have no plans of going back to Windows.

I have accepted the fact that my laptop's sound system is not shielded properly.
I haven't addressed the root of the problem, but just kind of made it a virtually unnoticable.

So, the hack is quite simple. As the problem persists only when there is no playback, I came up with a hack to always have a playback!
Now, this should be true only when the headphones are connected. And the playback should stop when headphones are removed.

Follow these simple steps-

Step #1: Install mplayer and configure it.

sudo apt install mplayer    

nano ~/.mplayer/config

type in that file-> lirc=no

Step #2: Download this mp3 file from here (silence-10sec.mp3)

Step #3: Create a folder in home directory and name it .hush

Copy the mp3 file in your .hush directory

cp ~/Downloads/silence-10sec.mp3 ~/.hush/

In that folder, create a script file and name it silence.sh

Copy paste this code in the script file.

#!/bin/bash



plugged="jack/headphone HEADPHONE plug"

unplugged="jack/headphone HEADPHONE unplug"



acpi_listen | while IFS= read -r event;

do

    if [ "$event" == "$plugged" ]

    then

       mplayer -really-quiet -loop 0 ~/.scripts/silence-10sec.mp3 &

    elif [ "$event" == "$unplugged" ]

    then

       pkill -f mplayer

    fi

done

Make it executable with the command chmod +755 silence.sh

Step #4: Type startup applications in the Dash and add the path of silence.sh script to it.

So, basically what we are doing is listening to events of headphones been connected and disconnected and playing or stopping the blank mp3 file in a loop. Now, I have used mplayer because I know that I am never gonna use that for any other purpose and killing its process is completely safe for me.

I came up with this idea when Serg answered to one of my questions.

He came up with this script and I just made modifications to it to suite the requirement.