[SOLVED] Sound cracks while playing music

[agent_kith]

Looks like you're running Snakeoil OS inside a virtual machine. 

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
  Subsystem: Red Hat, Inc. Qemu virtual machine
  Flags: fast devsel

I'm not sure if Atom is good enough to run a VM, but that bridge (440FX) is too slow. Use something more modern, say ICH9 or something. Also make sure your VT-x is turned on in the BIOS
 

Code:

[Mon Jun  3 21:28:45 2019] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[Mon Jun  3 21:28:45 2019] ata1.00: cmd e7/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0
                                    res 40/00:02:00:08:00/00:00:00:00:00/b0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[Mon Jun  3 21:28:50 2019] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[Mon Jun  3 21:28:55 2019] ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
[Mon Jun  3 21:28:55 2019] ata1: soft resetting link
[Mon Jun  3 21:28:55 2019] ata1.00: configured for MWDMA2
[Mon Jun  3 21:28:55 2019] ata1.01: configured for MWDMA2
[Mon Jun  3 21:28:55 2019] ata1.00: retrying FLUSH 0xe7 Emask 0x4
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:10 2019] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xe7)
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:10 2019] ata1.00: FLUSH failed Emask 0x4
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:15 2019] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:20 2019] ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:20 2019] ata1: soft resetting link
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:20 2019] ata1.00: configured for MWDMA2
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:20 2019] ata1.01: configured for MWDMA2
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:20 2019] ata1.00: retrying FLUSH 0xe7 Emask 0x4
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:35 2019] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xe7)
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:35 2019] ata1.00: FLUSH failed Emask 0x4
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:35 2019] ata1.00: limiting speed to MWDMA2:PIO3
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:40 2019] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:45 2019] ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:45 2019] ata1: soft resetting link
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:45 2019] ata1.00: configured for MWDMA2
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:45 2019] ata1.01: configured for MWDMA2
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:45 2019] ata1.00: retrying FLUSH 0xe7 Emask 0x4
[Mon Jun  3 21:29:59 2019] ata1: EH complete

The reason for sound cracking is basically the virtual disk cannot keep up. Identify the reasons for these bottlenecks, and things will work.

Snakeoil OS is designed to run in real time, this can't be done when running in a virtual machine. This is potentially going to affect the SQ, even if you can get rid of the cracking, there is still this mysterious thing called jitter. You can see a shadow of this in cyclictest (Look at the standard deviation).

If you just want to test the sound of Snakeoil, just use the LiveCD. This gives you a working SnakeoilOS environment without first installing.