1684320 - The microphone is not working or is heard at a very low level, almost inaudible

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

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

Description

[Adrián Vázquez]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:83.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/83.0

Steps to reproduce:

I am using Windows 10 and Firefox 84.0.1 (also tested 85.0 beta and still does not work). I checked this with several platforms, but for testing purpose I will use a simple one:

1. Go to https://online-voice-recorder.com/es/.
2. Press "start" button. Firefox asks for permissions and my microphone is shown properly.
3. After recording some audio, we can listen it.

Actual results:

Recorded audio is almost inaudible, most of times I can not hear anything. This does not happen with desktop apps (using Windows 10) or other browsers (tested with Microsoft Edge, Brave and Opera). I installed a previous version (83.0) and it works fine, so it seems that something has been introduced in the last release that generates this bug.

Expected results:

Recorded audio should be fine, as it is in previous Firefox releases with the same OS and configuration.

Comment 1

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

Hi a.vazquezrd,
Seems to be the same for me on the latest Firefox Release 84.0.1 as on Chrome. Since you mention that it works fine on Release 83 for you, can you please give it a try using the mozregression tool and see if you can find what exactly could've introduced this issue on your side?

Mozregression tool: https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Also, can you please provide the "Media" section from about:support?

Comment 2

[Adrián Vázquez]

Attachment: Mozregression log

Hi,

Thanks for your answer. It is the first time that I use Mozregression tool, so let me know if I am missing something. This is the full log generated by Mozregression when comparing 83-84 releases:

Comment 3

[Adrián Vázquez]

I don't know if it could help, but here is an screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/3kIrSae.png.

Comment 4

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

Thanks for going through the mozregression process! Unfortunately I can't reproduce this issue, so I wonder if it is not something specific to hardware. Please also provide the "media" section from about:support when you have the time. Is this also reproducible on Firefox Nightly 86?
Based on the log, we have the following:
Found commit message:
Bug 1670917 - Update cubeb_ops layout in MockCubeb. r=cubeb-reviewers,padenot

Hey Paul, can you please take a look over this when you have the time?

Comment 5

[Adrián Vázquez]

Here is the Media section: https://i.imgur.com/cNFNpgq.png. I also tested in Firefox Nightly 86 and it does not work. I have to say that I have tried doing a clean install of Windows 10 and installing Firefox, but it still doesn't work.

Comment 6

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

Reporter, thanks for the very useful report. Can you test the following:

• going to about:config (type this in the address bar)
• search for media.cubeb.wasapi-raw, it should have a value of 1 by default, set it to 0
• try your scenario again (no need to restart I believe)

If this fixes the issue, then we'll probably need to know more about your setup.

Comment 7

[Adrián Vázquez]

It works! I am pretty sure that this may affect very few users and, as you say, it is related to my setup or my hardware. As I have already commented, I tested this with a clean install of Windows 10 and updated audio drivers. If you want to go deeper to fix this, let me know what information do you need and I will try to provide it and make the tests you need, as far as possible. Otherwise this seems to be a valid workaround for now.

Comment 8

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

Would you mind sharing the brand and model of your computer? Do you know if you have an audio-related software installed that is necessary for it to work correctly?

For example, on the DELL XPS 15 that I use for Windows development, there is a piece of software called Waves MaxxxAudio that is (I think) mandatory for audio to work, but we try to bypass it on the input (=microphone) side, because it increases audio input latency quite a lot, and this is problematic for video-conferencing type scenarios. This is just an example, I'm sure there are lots of other software of this type on Windows.

Maybe setting the same pref to 3 instead of 0 can help as well? Here is the description of each value: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/modules/libpref/init/StaticPrefList.yaml#6947-6952

Comment 9

[Adrián Vázquez]

My computer is an Acer Aspire E5-571G with an Intel i5-4210U, 8GB RAM and NVIDIA GT840M as GPU.

As far as I know, I don't have any audio-related software installed, or at least it isn't showing up in my program list, with the exception of Realtek drivers (version 6.0.1.7589, I found an slightly older version in Acer's support page, mine has been updated using Windows Update I think: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/5344?b=1).

Setting the pref to 3 instead of 0 does not work. Using 2 also works, but I think this does not change anything as it would be only enabled for the output and the problem is with the input, if I have not misunderstood.

Comment 10

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

(In reply to Adrián Vázquez from comment #9)

Setting the pref to 3 instead of 0 does not work. Using 2 also works, but I think this does not change anything as it would be only enabled for the output and the problem is with the input, if I have not misunderstood.

Indeed, that's what I would have expected as well, but it was worth a shot.

The "driver" is about 450MB, I checked, and it includes a bunch of Dolby software that seem to cause a bunch of issues on their own when randomly searching for dolby advanced audio acer microphone.

We might want to detect your setup and not apply the optimization we're doing here.

Comment 11

[Jan Alexander Steffens [:heftig]]

Attachment: about:support

I have the same problem here, with an Intel NUC8i7HVK, Windows 10 20H2 19042.804, Realtek Audio driver 6.0.8955.1. Happens with both Firefox 85 and Nightly. I've attached the about:support for Nightly.

Testing on https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/peerconnection/audio/:

With media.cubeb.wasapi-raw=1:
Opus, ISAC, RED work.
G722 and PCMU do not (only silence).

With media.cubeb.wasapi-raw=0: all five settings work.

With media.cubeb.wasapi-raw=0 and audio enhancements disabled in the sound settings, the behavior is like with media.cubeb.wasapi-raw=1.

Comment 12

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

Attachment: Bug 1684320 - Don't use raw input streams on Windows/WASAPI. r?kinetik

Comment 13

[Jan Alexander Steffens [:heftig]]

I wonder if the problem is the raw streams bypass format or rate conversion, so cubeb doesn't get the requested format.

Comment 14

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

The raw stream is supposed to bypass any processing, that's about it. It works very well on my XPS15, reducing round-trip latency by about 100ms (!).

Comment 15

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/9d072242465b
Don't use raw input streams on Windows/WASAPI. r=kinetik

Comment 16

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9d072242465b

Comment 17

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

Adrián, this seems to be fixed now on the latest Firefox Nightly. Could you download that build and check it out there?
Select to download Firefox Nightly from here: https://www.mozilla.org/ro/firefox/channel/desktop/

Comment 18

[Adrián Vázquez]

I have checked it with latest version of Firefox Nightly and it seems to be solved for me now, thanks!