I use 13.04 since the release and I use Skype which was working well. But recently I've had remarks saying my voice was "crackling", even if the voice from my interlocutor was perfect. Making a test with Audacity and Cheese, I've seen that every recorded sound (with the front microphone of my laptop or a jack microphone) was crackling. It's not really like saturating, the sound has a lot of annoying pops. I've tried to check the settings, they were still on PulseAudio. I've even tried the extreme solution : re-installing Ubuntu (because initially it was working)… with the same problem. If I boot on Windows (dual-boot) I have no problem (so it's not physical). If anyone could help :) My laptop is a HP dv6-6165sf. The sound card is a "IDT 92HD81B1X5" (with BeatsAudio). Thanks a lot ! New tests - july 6th Hi again, I've tried editing /etc/pulse/default.pa with these three settings : load-module module-udev-detect use_ucm=0 tsched=0 load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0 load-module module-udev-detect use_ucm=0 The three of them don't change anything, except the last one (which was by default) which makes Audacity record without any crackling sound. But in Skype, Cheese and Kazam, the sound is crackling… I've installed again Ubuntu 13.04 (from scratch, deleting everything from /home), and I've updated it. The microphone is still cracking. Thanks for your help !