After recent upgrade of Skype for Linux to 8.18.06 I hhave noticed deteriorating quality of sound playback. When calling to other Skype users they do not complain on the quality of sound coming from my side.
The Web version of Skype that runs in Google Chrome, or Chromium browsers does not seem to have this problem.
A thread on Skype Community forum dedicated to this problem has two possible solutions.
Solution 1
This solution seems to be taken from a blog post "Changes to Skype and issues in sound quality" at mikw623t.worpress.com.
As root in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
Add a line
default-fragment-size-msec = 5
Then as a non-privileged user restart the PulseAudio daemon using the commands
pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio --start
This seems to correct the problem.
Solution 2
Start Skype as
env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=90 skypeforlinux
Question
Solution 1 seems more attractive because it is a "fix once and forget" solution. However this solution is not specific to Skype and will affect other tasks that use the PulseAudio daemon. Are there any downsides of solution 1? What exactly is going on here?
Configuration details
I am seeing this on a notebook with Intel Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller, running Linux 4.4 series kernel.
I have also observed similar issues on an Intel Atom D2700 system with Intel NM10/ICH7 HD Audio controller running 3.19 series kernel.