1404447 - Multiple Firefox appearances in Windows 10 volume mixer

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1358372

(Core :: Audio/Video: cubeb, defect, P3)

Description

[cmdj169]

Attachment: Screenshot of the Windows volume mixer

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Build ID: 20170926190823

Steps to reproduce:

I had nine tabs open alltogether, three in one window and six in another window. One of these tabs was playing video with sound.


Actual results:

When starting the Windows volume mixer, there were two appearances of Firefox, one called 'Mozilla Firefox' and one called 'Firefox'. One had the previously set volume value and the other one had the full volume value (sadly, I can not remember which had the full volume value). To turn the volume of the playing video down to the wanted level I had to adjust the volume value of the second Firefox down.


Expected results:

Only one instance of Firefox should appear in the Windows volume mixer, which should control the value of all tabs. A per-tab option could be wanted by other users, but should be optional.

Comment 1

[Markian Zadony]

I noticed this problem when websites with ads started playing through my speaker, despite my setting Firefox x64 (56.0.2) to MUTE in the Windows 10 x64 sound mixer.

I choose to keep Firefox muted in Windows.  In the sound mixer, the entry for "Mozilla Firefox" always shows muted (good), but SOME entries for "Firefox" (without the "Mozilla") default to un-muted.  Even if I set "Firefox" to mute, at some point in the future, "Firefox" will show up not-muted.

However, I did notice something weird... This does NOT appear to be a problem with Firefox x64 (56.0.2) on Windows 7 x64.  That computer's sound mixer always has Firefox muted.

This problem, on Windows 10, appears to have started around Firefox 55 or 56.

Comment 2

[Gingerbread Man]

I see you're on the CC list for bug 1358372 but you didn't mark this as a duplicate. Is it different somehow?

Comment 3

[Anthony Jones (:ajones, :kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e)]

This is the same issue with multiprocess Firefox where each content process accesses the audio device directly. We're changing it to route the audio to the parent process, which should fix this issue. You can fix this at the expense of performance by setting the content process limit to 1 in about:preferences under Performance after unchecking "Use recommended performance settings".

Alternatively you can set media.default_volume=0 in about:config to make all media silent by default.