Audio cuts out when playing Homeworld 3
Distro: Arch
Packages: wireplumber 0.5.2-1
, pipewire 1:1.0.6-1
, pipewire-alsa 1:1.0.6-1
, pipewire-audio 1:1.0.6-1
, pipewire-jack 1:1.0.6-1
, pipewire-pulse 1:1.0.6-1
, pipewire-zeroconf 1:1.0.6-1
I'm unsure how to go about providing additional debugging information for this, because almost nothing seems to show evidence that it's happening. However, I did record a video.
I have no idea where in the Linux audio stack this bug belongs, so if, upon looking at it, I need to put this elsewhere, please point me in the correct direction.
To describe the issue, when playing Homeworld 3 via Proton on Steam, with either the latest official Proton build from Valve or with Proton-GE 9-5, I'll experience a bug that causes audio to cut out for my system's built-in audio device across all applications. If, for example, I have Spotify running in the background playing a podcast, the podcast won't output audio anymore.
What's particularly strange is that the bug can sort-of be temporarily fixed, sometimes for entire seconds at a time, by spamming the "sensors" keybind in game, which, I presume, is constantly trying to play the sound for either entering or exiting the sensors mode. I have no idea if attempting to perform new audio events is somehow triggering the bug to occur and then causing it to "fix" itself.
I can link a video to the bug happening. Sorry that it's about ten minutes, but honestly, I have no idea where to start with this since dmesg
and journalctl
didn't seem to be turning anything up, and any output in the logfile created by setting PROTON_LOG=1
in the environment options in the game's command line settings seemed to be wholly unrelated to when the sound issue would occur.
Interestingly, pavucontrol
, helvum
, and coppwr
seemed to show some very strange ouput stuff when the bug would trigger, almost like the audio device would stop existing, then pop back into existence. I have no idea at what level of the Linux audio stack this is occurring, however.
Please let me know if there are any additional logging options or settings I should look at to help with determining the cause of this, or at what level of the audio stack this is occurring.
I'm going to hook up a USB audio device I have and set that as the default and see if the issue persists.