Skype sound goes bad after a few minutes (Solved)

[gary101]

Hi

Wondering if anyone has come across this or has some suggestions.

Downloaded Static binary tar.bz2 with Qt compiled in, skype starts fine and sound quality on both ends of the connection are excellent. Over the course of a few minutes though the other person complains in loss of sound quality (breaking up) and eventually they cannot hear me.

I have tried with swap turned on & off, torsmo does not show that I am running low of either memory or processing power.

I thought this was a hardware fault so I installed 2.14 as dual boot to my windblows xp 'puter and the problem occurs on this machine as well (skype is fine in xp).

As far as I can tell alsa mixer is set up ok as the sound quality when first connecting is excellent.

I am sort of lost as to what to try next, so any help appreciated.

(at the moment I have to have two computers running when skyping relatives in Germany & I really don't like to boot windblows just for this)

[cjayadevan]

Hello Gary,

I am running in the same path as yours. The difference is that mine is a 1998 machine which can not bear Doors XP. I didnt come across any solution but just informing that you have a company. Anyway, I will try to find out anything to sort this out and kindly do try for the same at your end to..
Please let me know if you get anything to fix that..
By the way I am much happier as I did not spend anything to by an YEX PI IMacine..

Regards
Jay

[Gekko]

Try Gizmo Project, the non-proprietary alternative to Skype, and tell me if that works.

http://ecomoney.eu/puppy/pups/communication/gizmo/
Download both, install Gconf2 first.

[gary101]

Thanks for the reply cjayadevan , glad to know its not just me.
If I come across a solution I will let you know.

Thanks gekko, I have thought about alternatives but I would have to persued all the people I call who also use skype. Unless there is another client where I can call skype users??

Meanwhile I will search for a solution. I am going to install a newer soundcard tomorrow & see if it makes any difference.

[gary101]

Installed a CMI8738 soundcard and that seems to have fixed it.

Seems that the onboard via sound is not upto the job when it comes to skype.

[xandas]

I am using skype in Puppy 2.02 John Murga Opera flavour and all works OK
despite my legacy sound blaster 16 old sound card.
Xan

[zygo]

gary101, I too have this problem. Can you tell us more about how to choose a suitable sound card?

[gary101]

Hi Zygo

Sorry to hear you have the same problem.

The card I am using is just one that I had lying around, all I can tell you is that it is a cmedia 8738.

The driver that alsaconfig picked up for this card didn't output any sound, but I used the windows driver with ndiswrapper worked fine, the sound quality is very good and no problems with skype.

So the only thing I can recommend is an upto date cmi/cmedia soundcard and use the windows driver that comes with it.
Possibly something like this....http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/48179

hope this helps

[mdd]

I'm having the same problem, when running the latest skype on 2.14 on a variety of laptops. The sound starts out fine, but then the remote person says that my sound starts degrading after a few minutes. This happens with both the ALSA and OSS sound devices selected.

It feels to me like a memory leak somewhere.

Any suggestions?

--MDD