[Bug] Sound slowdown when running VICE for longer time

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The information in this article applies to the following versions of VICE:

• version 1.20, and possibly before, on Linux

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PROBLEMEXPOSITION

After running VICE for one minute or longer, the sound starts to stagnate. This has been reported on machines running KDE and ARTS support.

CAUSE

still unknown

SOLUTION

none yet.

WORKAROUND

The following three alternatives have been reported to fix the issue:

• Change the sampling frequency for the sound output from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz
• There was at least one report that mentioned adding a .asoundrc with the following content (for a Sound Blaster PCI audio adapter) fixed the issue:

    pcm.sbpci {
         type hw
         card 0
    }
    
    pcm.!default {
             type plug
             slave.pcm "sbpci"
    }

• Use uss/esd instead of ARTS for the sound output
• Disable sound output

Note: You do not have to apply all three, but only one of these alternatives.

THANKS

Thanks to "s2k" from the german "forum64" for giving the hint with changing the samplig frequency, and to Hannu Nuotio for giving the hint with the .asoundrc file.

STATUS

The VICE team has confirmed this to be a problem in the VICE versions listed at the beginning of this article. We are still investigating on this issue. If you have any comments on it, feel free to contact us.

REVISION

• January 13th, 2007: Added hint with .asoundrc file
• November 19th, 2006: Original release of this document