1740973 - Garbled audio with multiple tabs open

Status: REOPENED

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

Description

[James Kubon]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:94.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/94.0

Steps to reproduce:

I usually have multiple tabs pinned or set to open on startup. I first noticed this problem with Startmeeting ( Monday night conference calls at NationalLibertyalliance.org) but lately I have noticed the problem when listening to news feeds and occasionally when listening to music on youtube.

Actual results:

Audio either is or becomes garbled, sometimes I can close tabs and the problem goes away, other times after closing all the tabs and restarting Firefox I still experience garbled audio.

Expected results:

Audio should never be garbled ;-)

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[James Kubon]

Attachment: Firfox-config-details.txt

Comment 3

[Darkspirit]

Debian and OpenSUSE builds seem to suffer from some Rust/LLVM version mismatch. Ubuntu might be affected as well?

Comment 4

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

Thanks for the report.

• When the audio is garbled, is it only garbled in Firefox, or does it also cause issues in other programs?
• If the audio is garbled in Firefox, is it garbled for all tabs and pages or just some?

Comment 5

[James Kubon]

Hi Bryce;
I believe that it is only garbled in Firefox, I will attempt to duplicate the problem and try opening VLC or Rythmbox and see if the sound
is garbled in either of those apps as well..

As I usually only listen to one sound stream at a time, I generally only have a single tab playing audio. I can try to open an additional tab
with audio and mute the original tab and see if the new tab plays correctly.. Unless you have any other suggestions?

I will be listening into a conference call this evening (11/15/2021) and will report back later this evening as to the results...

Regards
Jim

Comment 6

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

Thanks for checking further. When you next notice the issue could you also capture a profile with the Firefox Profiler using the 'Media' preset in the profiler? If you could then share/upload the profile run and share the link here, it would be useful to see if that highlights anything about what's going on.

Comment 7

[James Kubon]

Hi Bryce et al;
I have been able to recreate the issue and used the profile tool as you suggested although I forgot to select the media option as you suggested
here is the link https://share.firefox.dev/3FpVL8X
I am going to try again with the media option enabled and see if I can get another profile with media option selected...

Comment 8

[James Kubon]

Hi Bryce et al;

here is the link for the file(s) created by the profile tool with media option turned on:
https://share.firefox.dev/3nsCgGY
17 tabs open tab 10 is the one playing the audio clip (5 tabs open for the profile tool) (1 tab pinned)
In this instance the only tab playing garbled audio is of the Kyle Ritenhouse trial
Please get back to me if you need any more info

Regards
Jim Kubon
Network Consultant

Comment 9

[James Kubon]

Hi Bryce et al;
I stopped and started the audio several times and the audio was garbled (with ~17 tabs open) I then went back and closed 11 tabs and the audio was no longer garbled, on the surface this seems to be a resource issue but I am at a loss to explain why this happens when sometimes only one or 2 tabs are open, or when I restart firefox the problem can still be there or not...(audio driver bug?) Yuck and now I can't get the audio to garble again...

Comment 10

[Darkspirit]

(Darkspirit from comment #3)

Debian and OpenSUSE builds seem to suffer from some Rust/LLVM version mismatch. Ubuntu might be affected as well?

bug 1735905 was apparently the bug encountered on Debian and openSUSE.

Comment 11

[Andrei Purice]

Hey James,
Can you test the issue while in Safe Mode? You can find helpful info here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode .
Also a fresh new profile could help. You can find more about creating a new profile here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile .
If possible, you can test this issue on the nightly build as well. Download the build from : https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/nightly/all/ .

Comment 12

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

:kinetik, any suggestions for debugging this further? Any info it would be useful to gather?

Comment 13

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Along with Andrei's questions for James, if the problem still appears in Nightly it'd be very useful to get a "Media" profiler capture with a Nightly build since that includes changes that will give us a better view into the audio remoting behaviour.

It'd also be helpful to know if the issue is present with the preference "media.cubeb.sandbox" set to false (a restart of Firefox is required after changing the pref).

Comment 14

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Another experiment is to try setting "media.webspeech.synth.enabled" to false (and restarting) - that's a long standing issue documented in bug 1444567. Thanks!

Comment 15

[James Kubon]

Apologies for the delayed response, Thanksgiving holiday got in the way.. :-)
I tried the suggestion to run Firefox in safemode and was not able to duplicate the garbled audio problem..
I tried streaming multiple sound sources and was not successful in recreating the problem.
I note that there was a software update to my machine last week and have not been able to recreate the problem either in normal mode or in safe mode since that update.
I can still try the nightly build, but if I can't seem to recreate the problem, I am not sure if there is any value in that.

Comment 16

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Thanks for the update! Since you're no longer experiencing the issue, I'll close the bug. If you encounter it again, please let us know and we'll reopen the bug and continue the investigation.

Comment 17

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

James reported this is still occurring via email. I asked him to retest and capture a profile with a current Nightly if possible (since that will have bug 1738768), and also to try again with the "v2" AudioIPC backend (bug 1748160).

Comment 18

[James Kubon]

Apologies for the delayed response, my dual monitor setup stopped working (Update broke AMDGPU) and had to reload system with 20.04.3
backup again, and while listening to a meditation sound track with Rythmbox, I happened to open a browser Tab and audio immediately became garbled and distorted..
Dmesg indicates a seg fault:
[ 401.538096] single[6961]: segfault at 24 ip 00007f099b43262d sp 00007f09237fd770 error 4 in libglib-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f099b3de000+84000]
[ 401.538107] Code: 04 4c 8b 3b 8d 48 ff 48 89 c5 49 89 ce 49 c1 e6 04 4d 01 f7 4d 8b 27 4d 85 e4 0f 84 cd 00 00 00 49 8b 44 24 08 48 85 c0 74 43 <48> 8b 10 49 89 54 24 08 49 89 c4 49 8b 47 08 48 85 c0 74 08 48 83
[ 2907.127592] [drm] Failed to add display topology, DTM TA is not initialized.
[ 2907.164619] [drm] Failed to add display topology, DTM TA is not initialized.
[ 5135.831150] [drm] Failed to add display topology, DTM TA is not initialized.

Will try and capture the information asked for this evening...

Comment 19

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.