Fresh Debian Bookworm (v12) installation with alsa but no sound server. aplay with no .asoundrc sounds great (default buffer_size is 16384). If I force the buffer_size to 32768 ([1]), then aplay sounds horrible ([2]). Is this a kernel driver bug? (If yes, I'll log it at https://bugzilla.kernel.org) I discovered this bug because pipewire sets the buffer_size to 32768 hence it triggers this bug - I've logged a bug against pipewire at [3]. Output from alsa-info at [4]. TIA. [1] To set aplay's buffer_size to 32768, I use the following ~/.asoundrc: pcm.!default { type plug slave { pcm { type dmix ipc_key 1234 slave { period_size 1024 buffer_size 32768 pcm "hw:0" format S32_LE } } } } [2] Upload of horrible sound at https://audio.com/jt-1796478503182974/audio/alsaonlybuf-32768nopipewire [3] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/3966 [4] http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=5dbfb02c81bb1523505c725a189b6f0133f2b3d7
