Choppy Audio After Cloning Kubuntu To New SSD

Question

I'm running Kubuntu 20.04, & just cloned my system from a 2.5" SATA SSD to a new PCIe NVMe SSD. I used "dd", so it's 100% identical data.

Since the clone, sporadically, my system's audio seems to stutter/very briefly cut out - just cuts out for a fraction of a second, like what you might hear if you were wiggling a loose headphone jack. Here's a clip of it happening during whitenoise (it happens twice - the audio should be perfectly smooth, so those two little "jitters" or "crackles" are what I'm describing): https://sndup.net/nbfv. Here's another, happens 4x: https://sndup.net/cck9/

I tried replacing the original SSD, & the issue definitely goes away. Since it doesn't seem like an SSD should be related to sound, the only thing I can think of is that somehow having something on the PCIe bus is messing with the sound card/driver.

• The system is dual-boot, and the issue doesn't happen in Windows - only in Linux.
• I tried a different audio player (Rhythmbox vs Audacious). Same issue.
• I tried both speakers & headphones. Same issue.
• I tried disabling power_save_controller & power_save per here. Same issue.
• I tried setting tsched=0 in /etc/pulse/default.pa per here. Same issue.
• I tried adding intel_iommu=igfx_off to the kernel commandline, per here. Same issue.
• I tried putting options snd-hda-intel vid=8086 pid=8ca0 snoop=0 in /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf, per the same link as previous. Same issue (though I'd note that dmesg | grep snd shows snd_hda_intel: unknown parameter 'vid' ignored and snd_hda_intel: unknown parameter 'pid' ignored)
• I tried installing a completely fresh distro, KDE Neon 5.24 (on another partition). Same issue.

I've noticed that the "crackle" doesn't seem to happen for the first few minutes after a reboot, & it seems like it might be more prone to happen when the computer is "busy" (i.e. if I just start the whitenoise & don't touch the system, it never seems to skip, but if I'm actively browsing the web, it does - often coinciding with opening a new browser tab, a site loading, etc).

I should mention that although I've been using the new NVMe SSD for several weeks & it appears to be functioning just fine, I have noticed one other odd behavior, documented in more detail here: occasionally during bootup or shutdown, I see:

[  125.110891] pcieport 0000:00:1d.0: AER: Corrected error received: 0000:04:00.0
[  125.110895] nvme 0000:04:00.0: AER: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Corrected, type=Physical Layer, (Receiver ID)
[  125.110898] nvme 0000:04:00.0: AER:   device [10ec:5762] error status/mask=00000001/00006000
[  125.110899] nvme 0000:04:00.0: AER:    [ 0] RxErr                 
[  125.118946] pcieport 0000:00:1d.0: AER: Corrected error received: 0000:04:00.0
[  125.118950] nvme 0000:04:00.0: AER: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Corrected, type=Physical Layer, (Receiver ID)
[  125.118952] nvme 0000:04:00.0: AER:   device [10ec:5762] error status/mask=00000001/00006000
[  125.118954] nvme 0000:04:00.0: AER:    [ 0] RxErr
...repeating

This does not coincide with the sound issue, & is much more infrequent (i.e. maybe only 1 in 10 reboots, & as soon as I see it I just reboot once more & it's gone). So I believe they're unrelated, but just mentioning it as both behaviors started when moving to NVMe.

I'm at a loss as to how to debug/fix this, & have exhausted everything I could find on google - it seems very odd that just moving to a new SSD would introduce issues with choppy audio.

Answer 1

I migrated my HDD to SSD using Acronis True Image WD and within several days all audio on my laptop was randomly choppy.

Audio on MPC-HC (movie files) and even YouTube would cut in and out and sometimes just stop and cut back in through the whole movie.

I saw this is a common yet unknown issue with SSD migrations.

I began messing around with settings in my media player and came to a setting called "Audio Switcher" - Enable built-in audio switcher filter (requires restart). It was checked on. So I unchecked it and played the movie "the corner office". Audio was fine after that.

It appears the audio switching filter on a HDD operates differently than on SSD causing choppy audio while the video is fine.

Anything in audio that switches automatically or any filters you're using in your media player or within your default audio can cause this choppy issue everyone's having after SSD migration.

At least this seems to be the fix for me and it makes sense too based on using SSD Fresh program which tunes your SSD for better health such as turning off many services for HDD that don't work right on SSD. After optimizing my SSD using SSD Fresh I then had to fall back on basic audio and turn off all the filters or enhancements to troubleshoot and it ended up fixing my stuttering audio.