bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Raghav Gururajan]

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Hello!

Not sure the issue is with upstream or with guix system.

While streaming/watching movie on some (more than one) websites, audio
has constant cracking sounds and voice of characters in the video
becomes robotic.

When I stream/watch the same movie on ungoogled-chromium, the audio is
just fine.

This issue with Icecat has been there for quite some time (across
multiple updates). I also tried running IceCat on safe-mode and got the
same issue.

INFO: My Guix System and Icecat are up-to-date.

Regards,
RG.

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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice via Bug reports for GNU Guix]

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Raghav,

Raghav Gururajan 写道：
> While streaming/watching movie on some (more than one) websites, 
> audio
> has constant cracking sounds and voice of characters in the 
> video
> becomes robotic.

If by ‘robotic’ you mean (extremely) low-pitched then, yes, this 
has been the case for roughly the past half year.

I asked around on IRC, even sending URLs to innocent people who 
were unable to reproduce the problem, so I then assumed it wasn't 
in Guix proper.  I almost never watch videos on the Web so I 
didn't care much, but you might be happy to learn you're not 
alone.

Could you share a (free) example URL?

Kind regards,

T G-R

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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[ison]

On Sun, Sep 01, 2019, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice via Bug reports for GNU Guix wrote:
> 
> If by ‘robotic’ you mean (extremely) low-pitched then, yes, this has been
> the case for roughly the past half year.
> 
> I asked around on IRC, even sending URLs to innocent people who were unable
> to reproduce the problem, so I then assumed it wasn't in Guix proper.  I
> almost never watch videos on the Web so I didn't care much, but you might be
> happy to learn you're not alone.
> 
> Could you share a (free) example URL?

I believe the cause is "media sources", although I'm not sure
exactly what that is, if you disable it it seems to "fix" the issue.
I found this solution from some old firefox bug reports that seemed to describe
similar audio distortions.

A good site to test it on is nicovideo.jp, since on other sites if I
disable mediasources the videos just refuse to play altogether.
So for example here is a reference video, I simply clicked the first
video I saw and it reproduces the audio distortion:
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm35513757

When I play it the audio is very low pitch and crackly. However, if
I open about:config (just enter about:config into the address bar),
search for "mediasource", and then double click
"media.mediasource.enabled" so it shows false, then reload the video
and it plays perfectly without any distortion.

As I mentioned though, most sites seem to not like it when
mediasource is disabled, so it's not a perfect solution, but at
least it shows where the problem lies.

bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice via Bug reports for GNU Guix]

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Ison,

Thanks so much for your answer!

ison 写道：
> When I play it the audio is very low pitch and crackly. However, 
> if
> I open about:config (just enter about:config into the address 
> bar),
> search for "mediasource", and then double click
> "media.mediasource.enabled" so it shows false, then reload the 
> video
> and it plays perfectly without any distortion.
>
> As I mentioned though, most sites seem to not like it when
> mediasource is disabled, so it's not a perfect solution, but at
> least it shows where the problem lies.

Indeed: my sole use case for Web video seems to insist on whatever 
this feature is.  I can't link to it here for freedom & legal 
reasons, but let's say their content is *majorly* ball-based.

With .mediasource disabled, I get an error:

  “Your browser does not support the playback of this video. 
  Please try using a different browser.”

I'd really rather not.

I remember getting this same error in Epiphany when I tried to 
play it there.  At least now I have a lead…

Thanks again,

T G-R

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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Martin Becze]

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I also have this problem with icecat. With ungoogled-chromuim the video
is scrambled. I wonder if the two issues are possible related.

On 9/1/19 1:15 PM, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice via Bug reports for GNU Guix wrote:
> Raghav,
> 
> Raghav Gururajan 写道：
>> While streaming/watching movie on some (more than one) websites, audio
>> has constant cracking sounds and voice of characters in the video
>> becomes robotic.
> 
> If by ‘robotic’ you mean (extremely) low-pitched then, yes, this has
> been the case for roughly the past half year.
> 
> I asked around on IRC, even sending URLs to innocent people who were
> unable to reproduce the problem, so I then assumed it wasn't in Guix
> proper.  I almost never watch videos on the Web so I didn't care much,
> but you might be happy to learn you're not alone.
> 
> Could you share a (free) example URL?
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> T G-R


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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[sirgazil via Bug reports for GNU Guix]

I'm not sure, but this could be related to playing media files with DRM. 

If I recall correctly, last year, when I visited any news post on https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ on Debian 9 using Firefox ESR, the browser would ask me to enable DRM. If I answered NO, then I would see the

“Your browser does not support the playback of this video. 
 Please try using a different browser.”

message (or a similar message) instead of videos, and the audio player would display blank (the player that should show up when clicking the big dark blue button that says ニュースを聞く). If I enabled DRM, the media would play fine.

Visiting the same website now that I use IceCat on the Guix system I get the distorted sound in videos and no audio player.

I wonder if people using IceCat in other distributions have the same problem. I was going to report this issue to Gnuzilla, but it seems their mailing list is not very active.


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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Maxime Devos]

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FWIW, I encounter this in IceCat, but not in Firefox, maybe somehow 
Firefox->IceCat introduces some audio bug.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues -- a test case (related to HLS streams)?

[Maxime Devos]

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Hi,

I found a test case that could be shared:

In https://hls-js.netlify.app/demo , if viewed with IceCat (but not with 
Firefox), the audio is somewhat off (not low pitch, but something else?).

This seems to be a demo for "MPEG-2 Transport Streams", and for the 
video where I noticed low pitch, going by the 'network' tab, MPEG-TS was 
used.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Maxime Devos]

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I found an apparently similar report for yt-dlp: 
<https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/4280>.

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bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Mark H Weaver]

One of the differences between Firefox and IceCat is the default value
of the "privacy.resistFingerprinting" setting in <about:config>.  The
default in Firefox is "false", and the default in IceCat is "true".

I've found that some audio/video players that misbehave in IceCat will
start working correctly if you set "privacy.resistFingerprinting" to
"false".  It might be worth a try.

        Mark

-- 
Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice
but very few check the facts.  Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.

bug#37244: Icecat Audio Issues

[Maxime Devos]

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On 30-09-2022 05:08, Mark H Weaver wrote:
> One of the differences between Firefox and IceCat is the default value
> of the "privacy.resistFingerprinting" setting in <about:config>.  The
> default in Firefox is "false", and the default in IceCat is "true".
> 
> I've found that some audio/video players that misbehave in IceCat will
> start working correctly if you set "privacy.resistFingerprinting" to
> "false".  It might be worth a try.

That avoids the 'low pitch' issue for me.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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