Loud distorted/crackling noise

[andygb03]

I’m loving OSMC so far, it’s great but whenever I try to play anything out of the 3.5mm audio jack, I just get a loud distorted noise over the actual audio. When nothing is playing it is very loud, when something is playing it is a little quieter. If I lower the volume on the system and increase the volume on the speakers it gets worse. I am running the latest build of OSMC and the raspberry pi is brand new.

It is not an issue with cables/power/speakers or the settings as I have tried many different ones of each and it does not happen with other distros, such as raspbian. The audio through HDMI is fine, but at my desk I connect it to a monitor that does not have speakers so I need the 3.5mm jack.

I found a similar post from before but there was no solution:

OSMC RC RPI2 Analogue Sound problem

Hello there, first of all, I want to thank you for this great kodi distro! Everything’s working great since the RC1, except for analogue sound output, on my RPI2. The sound is really bad and I always hear distorted noise, making it impossible to watch anything. I already tried to reinstall, replace the audio cable and the usb cable, nothing seems to make any difference. Perhaps someone can help me out here, as I really would love to enjoy OSMC to full extent. Thanks a lot in advance, A.

The person just bought a USB sound card and used that to play audio to speakers.

Does anyone know why this happens or how I can fix it?

[sam_nazarko]

You can try the new audio improvements.

Add

audio_pwm_mode=2

to /boot/config.txt

[andygb03]

Wow. This worked perfectly, absolutely no distortion whatsoever with speakers or earphones. Thanks!

[the_bo]

Amazing fix Sam thanks

[leinadhok]

@sam_nazarko

You can try the new audio improvements.

Add

audio_pwm_mode=2

to /boot/config.txt

Thanks for the tip, sam.

[the_bo]

Just noticed sound is very muffled using this fix especially during music.

I guess this is to compensate for less hiss and distortion.

Is there reason why raspberry pi 3.5mm jack has lots of distortion and interference?

A great improvement anyways. Keep up great work sam.

[ActionA]

@the_bo

Is there reason why raspberry pi 3.5mm jack has lots of distortion and interference?

Rpi 3.5mm has never been known to be anywhere near audiophile quality. Quite the contrary actually.

[sam_nazarko]

@the_bo

Is there reason why raspberry pi 3.5mm jack has lots of distortion and interference?

Because it’s a PWM filter.

Sam