Alsa Underrun problems with Skype and Skype ALSA problem on Ubuntu jauntu

[Lev Olshvang]

Hi Geoff,

Perhaps you know what is going wrong with Ununtu jaunty Skype - recently 
I upgraded from ububtu 8.10 to 9.04  and although sound work well with 
all non-skype applications the Skype complains that it have problem with 
audio playback and capture device.

Strace shows the problem is :

ALSA lib pcm.c:2205:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi


And I saw in ubuntu forums that smbody  just installed skype build with 
static oss bound,
but I woul dlike to stay with alsa model.




geoffrey mendelson wrote:
>
> On Sep 3, 2009, at 11:44 PM, mbrace7forums at aim.com wrote:
>
>>  Sound on Skype is very unpredictable. Sometimes it works well and 
>> sometimes it doesn't. I often get brake up (pauses) with speech. Or I 
>> find that the Skype Sound settings in Options have changed. Or before 
>> it worked now it won't.
>
> I get the same problems (breakup) and other random problems under both 
> MacOS and Windows on several different computers. I think it is a 
> SKYPE problem, not a Linux one.
>
> You can turn on a display of packet information and see how many 
> dropped or out of sequence packets you get. You can improve it if you 
> open a UDP port on your router for SKYPE. The port is a user setting 
> so you can do it for more than one computer if you share a router.
>
> BTW, SKYPE is very careful to keep the exact details of their protocol 
> hidden, though some people have packet sniffed it. Because it is 
> hidden, one of the things I can't do is to give it priority (QOS) over 
> other things on my router. Therefore SKYPE is often a less than 
> desirable way for me to communicate. I use SKYPE, and yes they do get 
> some of my money, but most of my money goes to SIP providers who use 
> an open protocol. YMMV.
>
>
> Geoff.
>