OK, I’m on Debian Trixie with Gnome and just got a new (used) geforce 1050ti graphics card. I installed the proprietary drivers, and everything was working fine (after wrangling wine issues) until I turned on the sound. Playing something simple from a single audio source would work OK. But if another program started playing something, or if I pause/played quickly, then the audio would get all distorted and echo-y.

So far, the only way I can get the audio to be stable is the following:

1. in gnome settings, set the audio output to HDMI/displayport
2. install easyeffects
3. under output/players, enable the PipeWire ALSA [fluidsynth] playback
4. under PipeWire/General, uncheck the “Use default output”, and change the output to “Built-in Analog Stereo” (which in my case isn’t hooked up with anything)

Alternatively, I can changev the Gnome settings to the “Built-in Analog”, and then in easyeffects, I can exclude the pipewire ALSA, and enable whatever programs I want to hear. The problem with this method is the Gnome volume control then doesn’t work.

I’m mainly posting in hopes this gets indexed and helps some other wayward linux weirdo in the future. But I’m also curious if yall have any suggestions for a more permanent fix. Remove ALSA? In the default configuration, it definitely seems like there’s some feedback or doubling or interference going on with pipewire and/or ALSA.

But linux audio is still black magic to me. I don’t even know if ALSA or pipewire is a lower level. It’s one of those situations where I half-solve a problem I couldn’t find by googling, and just want to put it out in the ether