On Mon, Jun 09, 2025 at 12:29:09AM +0100, Chris Narkiewicz wrote:
> I have a pair of wireless headphones with USB dongle.
> When connected, device is attached as uaudio0.
>
> I noticed frequent clicks when playing music and browsing web.
> I adjusted sndiod buffer size and number of frames, but no result.
>
The clicking is probably caused by the browser "stealing" the CPU from
sndiod and/or from the usb driver. This can't be fixed by increasing
the audio buffer size; the default one is already huge, btw.
> I noticed that play.errors parameter is rising during clicking,
> suggesting buffer underruns:
>
> # audioctl -f /dev/audioctl1
> audioctl -f /dev/audioctl1
> name=uaudio0
> mode=play,record
> pause=0
> active=1
> nblks=2
> blksz=1020
> rate=48000
> encoding=s24le3
> play.channels=2
> play.bytes=2784600
> play.errors=12240
> record.channels=1
> record.bytes=1392300
> record.errors=0
>
> I tried to adjust the nblks and blksz to larger values:
>
> # audioctl -f /dev/audioctl1 blksz=8192 nblks=16
> audioctl -f /dev/audioctl1 blksz=8192 nblks=16
> nblks: 2 -> 16
> blksz: 1020 -> 8192
>
To change the hardware parameters, use "-f /dev/audio1", but
see below.
> So far, so good - I thought.
>
> When starting mpv (or mpd), the value is reset to
> nblks: 2
> blksz: 1020
>
> and clicking continues.
>
> Why the value is accepted initially only to be reverted when I start
> playing sound?
The program using the device (sndiod in your case) sets its own
parameters, so they change as soon as the program starts using the
device.
To change the parameters, configure the program. Ex, for sndiod:
rcctl set sndiod flags -z 480 -b 960
