1461131 - Mono sounds play through left speaker only on multi-channel speakers

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Audio/Video: cubeb, defect, P2)

Description

[stephan.hartmann1]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180503143129

Steps to reproduce:

open any youtube video, mono livestream on twitch or sample sound track, for example here:
https://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_frequencychecklow.php


Actual results:

Sound only comes from left speaker


Expected results:

Sound from all front speakers

Comment 1

[stephan.hartmann1]

Additional Info:

I think that this is a bug previously resolved: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=979705
In this thread, "vtqobex" also said: "See 970147, especially comments 40 through 43. Like that issue, this may be specific to Creative sound cards, but I don't know for sure."
I do in fact have a creative sound card.

Bug was introduced after automatic update to https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/rev/ea4f3168c604994f051644b467aad92723448d12 (2018/05/03)

Sorry if there is anything left out, i just made an account to report this.

Comment 2

[Maire Reavy [:mreavy]]

So this probably isn't the same bug, but has similar symptoms and likely is related to work on multi-channel support in cubeb/etc

Comment 4

[Maire Reavy [:mreavy]]

I needinfo'd the reporter of bug 1461935 for about:support details. This may be affecting twitch.tv and twitter but it's unclear how many users.  I wanted to call this out as something that should be investigated and watched at a high priority.

Comment 5

[Radim Kocman]

I can confirm the same problem on: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0

I have a creative sound card with 5.1 speakers, and I was also experiencing the same symptoms while back with Bug 979705.

Comment 6

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

I am testing in 60 with both the internal stereo card and and external usb 7.1. All of them are working as expected, which means I am hearing the sound from L/R or FL/FR respectively. Unfortunately I don't have a creative sound card to verify there.

BTW the same test works in 61 and 62.

Comment 7

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

Just a moment, my 7.1 device was reported as stereo in about:support. I configured it as 8-channels, and now I am having the issue in 60. I don't have it 59. I am running a mozregression ...

Comment 8

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

31:03.88 INFO: Last good revision: c1c7615bd5932e752733b4302cfeda6885460183
31:03.88 INFO: First bad revision: 590643620ec4133f4a7da750cea986a763d26ad6
31:03.88 INFO: Pushlog:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=c1c7615bd5932e752733b4302cfeda6885460183&tochange=590643620ec4133f4a7da750cea986a763d26ad6

590643620ec4	Alex Chronopoulos — Bug 1432733 - Update cubeb from upstream to 2b98e3d. r=padenot

Comment 9

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

Bug 1432733 is a cubeb import that contains a number of fixes. This error has been caused by cubeb commit:
* 6c45dde Fix issue 378: Pass through as more data as possible when upmixing [1]

The code of that commit has been completely modified in Bug 1432779 which is landed in 61. The new does not have the issue.

So this error appears only in 60, Beta and Nightly are fine. 

[1] https://github.com/kinetiknz/cubeb/commit/6c45ddec417704cae7c85e916cc8d3d6a62a7b6f

Comment 10

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

I have verified the above by testing versions from the corresponding dates.

Comment 11

[Nils Ohlmeier [:drno]]

Since this is not a security related issue and it's fixed in Beta I'm afraid there isn't much we can do about it at this point any more.

Alex is there any way to cover this with a test to prevent future regressions?
If not we should probably close this as it's not actionable.

Comment 12

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

(In reply to Nils Ohlmeier [:drno] from comment #11)
> Alex is there any way to cover this with a test to prevent future
> regressions?

We need a multi-channel virtual device in order to reproduce it and we do not have any in testing. I am afraid we cannot do much.

Comment 13

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

Do we need to fix this in ESR?

Comment 14

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

e.g. revert https://github.com/kinetiknz/cubeb/commit/6c45ddec417704cae7c85e916cc8d3d6a62a7b6f ?

Comment 16

[Radim Kocman]

Just a note, the behavior for mono sounds has been changed in 61 on 5.1 speakers.
Prior 60, it played from the front left and front right speakers. Now, it plays from the center speaker.
However I am not sure which behavior should be considered as the right one.

Comment 17

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

This is the expected behaviour. Prior 61, we had no proper surround audio support to speak of.
The mono layout is mapped to the centre channel. This how both apple and windows audio framework handle that layout by default. Linux pulse audio has a dedicated mono channel, but to make things consistent across platforms it was decided not to use it.

If you prefer stereo output, you can set the preference media.forcestereo.enabled to true in about:config

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: I think jlb intended this for Firefox, not Thunderbird

Comment 19

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM][PTO June 24-28]]

It doesn't sound like we intend to fix anything here? Can we wontfix the bug?

Comment 20

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

Yeah, no need to keep it open.