I'm having issues with sound on Linux Mint, it worked fine for long time but suddenly begin to distort sporadically.
First I thought it was software related issue but reinstalled Mint from zero and the problem persist. Then I concluded it was the onboard sound chip failing.
I decided to use a cheap external soundcard (it's a generic one listed as Texas Instruments PCM2902 Audio Codec on lsusb) and the problem was fixed! So I thought my conclusion was right.
The problem is recently I upgraded the cheap external sound card with a better one (Focusrite Scarlett Solo) and with this soundcard I have exactly same problem of crackling and distorted sound that I had with the onboard sound chip (the cheap card still working fine).
So at this point I can't tell if it's a problem of hardware or software. I tried the Scarlett Solo on other machine with Ubuntu and worked fine.
It is possible that it's a Linux Mint sound config that isn't working either with onboard nor scarlett solo?
