1468381 - Firefox does not respect system audio settings in MacOS

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

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

Description

[Janne Himanka]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0
Build ID: 20180607135512

Steps to reproduce:

Entered a site that attempts to play audio


Actual results:

I have a 2012 Macbook Pro, MacOS 10.13.5 (17F77), with MOTU Traveler Mk3 audio interface. MOTU has several analogue and digital outputs. I normally use just the AES/EBU digital outputs, and the analogue outputs are not connected to anything. This is the system default and all audio-using applications that I use, including Chrome and Safari, respect this default and use the AES/EBU output, except Firefox. From MOTU's software mixer I see that whenever I play audio with Firefox, it goes to the first two analogue channels of the MOTU. I have carefully gone through all OS and MOTU settings that could pertain to this and set them to use AES/EBU. Firefox is version 61.0b12 developer edition. 


With version 60, most sites that want to play audio work. Soundcloud does not. 


Expected results:

Firefox should respect the system default settings.

Comment 1

[Nils Ohlmeier [:drno]]

Alex is this a known problem? Can you help me triage this?

Comment 2

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

I believe it's a problem with the new multichannel configuration in cubeb. @jya can you please verify?

Comment 3

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

I have no bandwidth to check into that.

Comment 4

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

FWIW, no changes were made on which device to use, the new code use the existing device that was already opened. If the default output selection was broken, it can't be due to the multi-channels configuration, which only checks on the number of channels that particular device use.

Comment 5

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

Can you please provide the output of about:support page. You can use the "Copy raw data to clipboard" button and attach it to the bug. Thanks.

Comment 6

[Janne Himanka]

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Comment 7

[Alex Chronopoulos [:achronop]]

To recap what is going on here on Firefox 60 most of the sites works well, which means that they use the AES/EBU digital output, but Soundcloud is not working well, which means it is using the analog output.

On the other hand, on Firefox 61 none of the sites work well which means that playback, in every case, goes through the analog output.

If that's the case can you please run mozregression [1] to find out which commit, between 60 and 61, has changed the behavior? 

[1] https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/quickstart.html

Comment 8

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

The regression is probably jya's patches that manually map to the first two channels. We should have a look at how we used to do things and revert back to this, while still allowing multichannel output.

Comment 9

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to Paul Adenot (:padenot) from comment #8)
> The regression is probably jya's patches that manually map to the first two
> channels. We should have a look at how we used to do things and revert back
> to this, while still allowing multichannel output.

but this isn't related to how many channels are used but that an audio device different to the one selected is being used  (going to the analog output rather than the digital one).

Comment 10

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

This is related to the fact that we're using the first two channels of a device regardless of how the device is setup. It is possible to configure a device such that the stereo output is not the first two channels.

The Web Audio API and anything else that uses a MediaStreamGraph uses UNDEFINED mapping, and then it goes wrong.

Comment 11

[Kenneth Falck]

I have the same problem in Firefox 64.0 on MacOS Mojave, using 18-channel Roland MX-1 as audio output (channels 17 and 18 are the stereo outputs I have configured in Mac audio settings). This is how Firefox sees the device:

      {
        "name": "MX-1",
        "groupId": "jp_co_roland_RDUSB01A3Dev_AudioEngine:00311000:0",
        "vendor": "Roland",
        "type": 2,
        "state": 2,
        "preferred": 15,
        "supportedFormat": 12336,
        "defaultFormat": 4096,
        "maxChannels": 18,
        "defaultRate": 96000,
        "maxRate": 96000,
        "minRate": 96000,
        "maxLatency": 4106,
        "minLatency": 39
      },

It seems that Firefox ignores the system audio setting and outputs only to channels 1 and 2. When using a 2-channel audio device it works fine.

Comment 12

[Andreas Pehrson [:pehrsons]]

(In reply to Paul Adenot (:padenot) from comment #8)
> The regression is probably jya's patches that manually map to the first two
> channels. We should have a look at how we used to do things and revert back
> to this, while still allowing multichannel output.

Based on this it's a 61 regression (bug 1432779 or bug 1431221).

Comment 13

[spetinga]

Hello, though I am not a developer I am a passionate FireFox user. I am seeing this same issue while using FireFox 69.0.3 on macOS Mohavi with a Universal Audio Apollo x8 interface. When I configure the main macOS audio to route out interface output channels (i.e. channels 5/6), all apps route correctly through the macOS settings (i.e. Chrome, Safari, iTunes, Virtual Instruments, DAW software, etc). FireFox still routes out the main channels 1 and 2.

Is this issue able to be fixed? Is there any manual workaround I can use. I would love to continue to use FireFox on my recording workstation but this issue prevents this.

Thank you!

Comment 14

[Andreas Pehrson [:pehrsons]]

With multiple reports I'll confirm this. Chunmin, do you have bandwidth enough to put this on your plate?

Comment 15

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

I will take a look.

Comment 16

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

Attachment: GitHub Pull Request

Creating a new mixer that would follow the user-defined channel settings.

Comment 17

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

bug 1605471 will import the new mixer (Attachment 9106610 [details]) in the rust backend to see if this can be solved.

Comment 18

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

Can people here try again in a Nightly build? We've made some modifications recently that has fixed similar problems for other people, that had opened other bugs about this.

Comment 19

[spetinga]

I was able to download the Nightly build (74.0a1 2020-01-09 64-bit) and test this on a Mac (macOS Mojave 10.14.6). I can confirm this is working properly and FireFox's audio now recognizes and correctly routes audio through the assigned Mac OS output channels.

Great job... thank you for addressing this!

A nice addition would be to allow users to select the output device and output channels FireFox uses (for users with systems that have multiple interfaces or outputs).

Cheers!

Comment 20

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

The new mixer is the MacOS Rust backend only for now, but it will be set as the default backend on MacOS soon.