Skype Notification Sound Distorted in Ubuntu

It has been noticed and seems to be a common problem in Linux Community users that Skype doesn’t get along well with Linux Distros. Recently I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 & I was sure enough that it’s not going to be in peace for long. The very first problem I observed that the Skype notification sound distorted in Ubuntu when it played & also the distortion continued unless I logged out or shut down the machine.

Here are simple steps to follow in order to fix this issue:

1. Open the file /etc/pulse/default.pa in your favorite text editor with root privileges. E.g., sudo vim /etc/pulse/default.pa
2. Search for the line : load-module module-hal-detect
3. Append tsched=0 to the end. i.e., load-module module-hal-detect tsched=0
4. Restart pulse or just restart your machine & the distortion should be gone.
5. If you do not have a line with load-module module-hal-detect then search for the line: load-module module-udev-detect
6. Append tsched=0 to the end. i.e., load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0. And then restart the machine.

NOTE : Not sure what the side effects are by disabling Glitch Free Audio; but hey, at least it doesn’t bug you with its annoying sound anymore