Linux Mint 19.3 and Geforce GTX 970 Audio pops every minunt drives me crazy

Geforce GTX 970 using HDMI was just fine with windows 7.
I upgrade to windows 10 and audio would cycle the sound on and off making a loud poping sound that would be simliar to sound initalizing, but would do this every 1 - 2 mins…making it impossible to enjoy being on the computer, I have a Yamaha receiver and it would show the signal literally turning on and off , most likely to some silly “power saving non-since”. I only found a way to disable that using a registry hack.

I am giving Linux mint 19.3 a shot, and the 3 drivers it has on it to use from Nvidia all 3 do that “popping sound” every minute. I can’t stand to hear that and makes me wonder if any of this ever gets tested, who could live with that?

Well I looked at nvidia control panel in linux mint and I don’t see anything that would make me think you could turn of “power-saving” or whatever they want to call it.

Does anyone have an idea how to force the audio to stay on and never cycle on and off to “save power”?

This rather sounds like an electrical problem due to bad grounding/shielding.
You can check/set power saving on the driver:
cat /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

When I type that command into terminal it comes back with just a 0

so its set to zero i guess.

Also what could i do about checking the grounding/shielding? and if that were the case, why would it not ever have done that on windows 7 at all?

when I type
lspci | grep Audio
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

is what I get, not sure if that helps at all.

The command returning ‘0’ means that power saving/management is off on the sound driver, so that’s not the reason.
To check for the source of grounding issues, strip down you gear, e.g. disconnect all other devices from the receiver so you have just computer->receiver->speakers. Also rule out issues with the receiver e.g. by connecting the computer to a TV, using a different cable/connector.

I also have a Yamaha receiver and was having similar problems. I was able to fix the receiver showing the signal turning off and on by commenting out the following setting in /etc/pulse/default.pa:
load-module module-suspend-on-idle
so that it looks like:
#load-module module-suspend-on-idle

I still experience some seemingly random stuttering sound through HDMI on my GTX970, and am still investigating what exactly causes it in the first place. If I ever find out, manage to fix it, I will post it on this forum.

snd_hda_intel is also the driver for the nvidia hdmi audio.

You’re right, I stand corrected. I edited the post.

Nevertheless, pulse has its own ‘powersave’ function independent of the intel driver one.

Thanks pilkie01 I’ll give the comment out on the line a shot.
#load-module module-suspend-on-idle

I upgraded to 20.04 and it was still giving me trouble, but the commenting out the suspend on idle seems to have fixed it finally…

I think this should be commented by default and if someone really cares about saving 5 cents a year on electricity can go in there and remove the comment.