FIXXED My crashing issues.. streaming, facebook.. others.. static in speakers, lagg..

[matthew907]

Ok, so it was crashing for months.. I updates.. there's probably over 200 crash reports submitted from it..
There was another issue.. static. 
I am running with 2 monitors and would have 1 firefox window open in each. 1 streaming netflix or hulu.. etc.. the other for browsing, facebook, etc.. I thought this might be the issue.. but it wasn't. Also noticed FF would slow down quite a bit..

Running linux Mint/Ubuntu

Here's what I noticed.. when I opened sound settings, applications, I saw "speech-dispatcher", several types of it running.. Since I was trying to clean up processes, i decided to uninstall those things, since I never use them.

sudo apt-get remove speech-dispatcher

Then rebooted system.
All good. it's been over 24 hrs, no crashes,  no static, no lag/slow downs..

So freaking happy, was driving me nuts.
Just thought I'd pass it along.. I just got lucky.

[RisingPhoenix]

Thank you for this, I was searching for hours and your solution worked!!!😊

[dentoll]

Interesting catch speech-dispatcher causing audio static and slowdown isn’t something most people would think to check. It ties into PulseAudio/PipeWire speech services, so if the system kept spawning or hanging those processes, it makes sense you'd see lag in apps like Firefox and some audio distortion when streaming. Removing it likely stopped the repeated audio-service calls in the background. Nice find — thanks for sharing the fix!

For others dealing with similar issues on Linux Mint/Ubuntu (crashes, static, lag while streaming), it's worth checking background audio processes or even switching between PulseAudio/PipeWire to test stability. And in cases where distortion remains, sometimes a simple audio reset or running a sound-cleaning tone can help if the speakers themselves got a bit noisy from dust/moisture. I’ve had success with sound-vibration clearing tools like for that side of things but your command fix is definitely the key one here for software-related static.🙂