Pulseaudio cant play an mp3 without skipping

You should be able to resolve the audio abberations by turning glitch-free back on in /etc/pulse/default.pa. See https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-February/007108.html and https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-February/007150.html.

I'm using tsched=0, but since a couple of days pulseaudio lags and hogs the CPU (well above 30% pulseaudio alone).
With or without tsched=0, pulseaudio 0.9.14-0ubuntu7 is a regression. I noticed however that also ALSA got updated. The problem may lie more down the stack.

Enabling glitch-free does not fix the issue. It still skips anything so much as coughs on the computer. Also, by a core functionality of ubuntu is broken here... this should not be a "low" priority bug.

Is this symptom reproducible using the package in my ppa?

muuuuuuuuuuuuch better

This bug was fixed in the package pulseaudio - 0.9.14-0ubuntu11

---------------
pulseaudio (0.9.14-0ubuntu11) jaunty; urgency=low

  [ Daniel T Chen ]
  * Reenable 0030_set_tsched0.patch, which re-disables glitch-free;
    too many users are reporting regressions and audio aberrations.
  * Adjust 0003_change_resample_and_buffering.patch to use linear
    resampler to work better with lack of PREEMPT in jaunty's
    -generic kernel config (LP: #207135, #322250, #332761, #335955,
    LP: #336965).
  * Last upload, specifically 0091_workaround_alsa_horkage, fixes:
    LP: #235990, #237443, #279847, #317997, #323185, #330814,
    LP: #334874.
  * sudo -H change in ubuntu6 fixed LP: #312505.
  * Closing old bugs fixed in 0.9.11+: LP: #187963, #193520, #211052.
  * Refresh 0006_regen-autotools.patch.
  * Add 0043_load_sample_dir_lazy.patch to cache
    /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/* in default.pa.
  * debian/:
    - control: Build against libcap2-dev (LP: #339448);
    - copyright: Update copyright from Debian's 0.9.14-2;
    - rules: Add DEB_OPT_FLAG = -O3 as per recommendation from
      pulseaudio-discuss/2007-December/001017.html.
  * Refresh fixes from git HEAD:
    - 0038_handle_errno_properly.patch,
    - 0091_workaround_alsa_horkage.patch,
    - 0092_fix_null_pointer_access.patch.

  [ Luke Yelavich ]
  * Add a special case to prevent Pulseaudio from being started when the
    blindness accessibility profile has been enabled from the Ubuntu live CD,
    and for an accessibility install. Unfortunately Pulseaudio and speech do
    not currently work very well with each other, and its too late in
    the cycle to solve this problem any other way.

 -- Luke Yelavich <email address hidden> Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:00:40 +1100