Linux 5.16 Aims For Better USB Low-Latency Audio Playback

[pegasus]

I'm fairly sure the broken piece is module-suspend-on-idle. Disable that in /etc/pulse/default.pa and everything should be fine again.

There's definite improvement - now there's only exactly one pop left and not multiple as before. Looks like I need to hunt down another one of pulseaudio smarts...

[arQon]

There's definite improvement - now there's only exactly one pop left and not multiple as before. Looks like I need to hunt down another one of pulseaudio smarts...

\o/
gl with the last bit. Make sure you post the answer here if you get it resolved.

[wooptoo]

Pulseaudio doing some poor quality resampling.

This is actually a valid concern.
Pulseaudio resampling can be turned off in:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

with:

avoid-resampling = yes

And restarting the daemon. systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

But you need to make sure that your sound card or DAC supports sampling rates like 192kHz/24bit natively if you intend to play hi-res audio for example.

[dimko]

Latency has been good for the past decade or so, what I still dislike with audio are clicks and pops on start of every song, presumably by opening some stream or something like that.

I am of same suspicion. Crackling noise is happening when something accesses sound card driver/activates hardware.
Which can be dealt with in 2 ways. MP3 player should NOT relieve it's control over sound device for as long as it is running. QMMP does exactly that, so I dont have issue you described. lsof /dev/snd/* proves that. For as long as QMMP is up i have output with no crackling.
And second method... I just forgot... I am getting old

[Sami]

This is actually a valid concern.
Pulseaudio resampling can be turned off in:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

with:

avoid-resampling = yes

And restarting the daemon. systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

But you need to make sure that your sound card or DAC supports sampling rates like 192kHz/24bit natively if you intend to play hi-res audio for example.

And/or

resample-method = soxr-vhq

Too bad pipewire (which I use) does not support soxr.

[dimko]

This is actually a valid concern.
Pulseaudio resampling can be turned off in:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

with:

avoid-resampling = yes

And restarting the daemon. systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

But you need to make sure that your sound card or DAC supports sampling rates like 192kHz/24bit natively if you intend to play hi-res audio for example.

Have it in mind, moment you break resampling - you are breaking any source of sound on PC that is not using current sampling rate.