Ubuntu: Crackling audio noises on a Dell M1530 (or HDA cards)
The problem I found (so did everyone else) when updating to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic was static/popping noises when your sound card is silent (aka goes into power-save mode). It applies to my Dell XPS M1530 laptop’s on-board sound and probably to the same chipset elsewhere.
The fix couldn’t be simpler! Simply edit this file (as root):
/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
and comment out the last line. Then, restart ALSA to save you having to do a reboot to check it worked:
sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils stop sudo alsa force-reload sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils …