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This is planned, and important, and we'll fix it hopefully soon, it's long overdue. I'm sorry this hasn't happened yet, it's always a game of priorities that ca

This is planned, and important, and we'll fix it hopefully soon, it's long overdue. I'm sorry this hasn't happened yet, it's always a game of priorities that can never satisfy everybody on time. It however ranks fairly high on my personal list. As one could imagine it's a bit (read: a lot) more complicated than just pausing the AudioContext after some time of silence, but we'll get it fixed regardless, it's possible because others did it. There are tradeoffs we're willing to do. Source: Firefox implementer of a lot of things around this, editor of the Web Audio API standard.

patcon 2y ago
Thank you for your words on this, and energy on everything else!
zX41ZdbW 2y ago
Thanks! What the article does not tell is why it plays white noise (instead of silence).
- jsheard 2y ago
  It might be that nothing is actually being played, but opening an audio session wakes up your systems DAC/amplifier so you can hear the analog noise floor. In that case the noise is actually always there during playback, you're just more likely to notice it during silence. Computers are a really hostile environment for audio, if possible you're always better off getting an external audio interface to put some distance between the analog signal path and any EMI spewing components.
  - II2II 2y ago
    > Computers are a really hostile environment for audio My first thought was the author should be happy that they don't live back in the bad old days of computing. Audible noise was the norm, even when you were playing audio. At least for PCs with sound cards. I don't recall the situation being quite as bad on other platforms. Modern PCs are much better on this front. I have vague recollections of a quote from the Computer Chronicles in the mid-1990's. It went to the effect of turning a $2000 computer into a $200 stereo ...
    - tonyarkles 2y ago
      And don’t forget RFI if a cell phone was close to your speakers. You’d hear a noise right before your phone started to ring!
      - andrecarini 2y ago
        I could even hear an actual radio broadcast coming off my speakers whenever they were powered. Maddening!
        cafeinux 2y ago
        This kind of thing amazes me. Radio is such a simple, yet omnipresent, technology that even something not made to listen to radio can accidentally catch and play the signal like an actual radio player would. I sure hope it's never going away.
        K0balt 2y ago
        When I was growing up, we lived within 6km line of sight from a powerful AM broadcaster on 660KHZ. By some stroke of fortune, our woodstove smoke pipe and the tinfoil backed insulation of the house, Along with the grounded base but rusty bolted on top of the woodstove created some kind of resonant receiver at that frequency. It would generate sufficient voltage to deliver the occasional electrical shock, which was very mysterious because we had no idea how this stove could shock you, even when the mains were turned off. The mystery of the source of the power was shocks when we built a wire drying rack above the stove, which acted as a sound transducer. With the glove rack, we were treated to 24/7 programming, mostly community oriented stuff like “problem corner”(community issue discussion) bush relay messages for remote listeners outside of telephone reach, “tradio” (call in radio Craigslist, basically), news shows, talk shows, and some occasional music. To me, it was just completely normal, never having known anything else besides electrocution hazard wood stoves and radio show mitten racks lol. It did fuel a fascination for electronics, though, so by the time I was seven I was an avid reader of popular electronics magazine. Forrest Mims. What a treasure of an engineer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims
  - joecool1029 2y ago
    I knew about OP's problem for years with discord's piece of shit webapp being the most egregious offender. For my system the sound falls into a low power state and there's an audible pop/click when something wakes it up. Even with the tab silenced and all notifications turned off it would still periodically do this. Other sites that used WebRTC had same problem but not as frequent. I think I worked around the issue eventually by disabling the automatic low power state at the expense of some additional battery consumption.
JohnBooty 2y ago
Thanks for all of your hard work. Firefox is so important.
zoogeny 2y ago
Please don't take this kind of criticism personally. There was a recent blow up from an open source maintainer because he viewed this kind of criticism as a frustration. Just know that most people understand everything you are saying here. Many things to do, finite amount of time. I have personal experience of Firefox developers going above and beyond to make high-usage sites work for their users. I know first hand the lengths they will go to when issues affect users. Thank you and keep plugging away.
- godelski 2y ago
  I'm a long time Firefox user and have no intention of changing. I fully agree but want to make an important distinction. Sometimes people are complaining about development work and sometimes people are complaining about priorities. This is definitely the latter and I do not think it necessarily a developer issue. Firefox does have the opportunity to become so much greater, but it does require a lot of work and time. I'd argue, give the developers the time and resources. I know Mozilla has their hands in a lot of pies, but Firefox is probably the most important one, even if it isn't the most revenue generating one. Firefox is the symbol of Mozilla and it needs to be the best. The developers have proven how much they can change things and make things better. The Rust partial rewrite was nothing short of a success. So I want to see that progress continued and to keep pushing in that direction.
pentagrama 2y ago
Thank you for your work and also sharing the status here. There is a bugzilla link to follow the progress of the fix?
lknuth 2y ago
Thank you! Your work is keeping the web open.
Centigonal 2y ago
I appreciate you and everybody else's work on Firefox! Thank you!
noah_buddy 2y ago
I would like to become a better use of Firefox by debugging issues I find locally. Any guidance on where to start?
- buovjaga 2y ago
  Dev doc index is here, includes links to articles about debugging: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/ https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/
  - noah_buddy 2y ago
    Thank you!
h14h 2y ago
I hope this kind of thing can shoot up the priority queue! Battery-stealing and generally janky behavior is likely the main reason folks stop using a piece of software. Thanks for your work, and for talking about the issue on a public forum! It's so critically important that Firefox maintains/increases relevancy. I'm sure it's unbelieveably difficult work given the resources behind Chromium & Blink.
Glyptodon 2y ago
On Linux there are weird audio issues that lead to speaker pop, and sometimes opening a new tab can make the audio running from other tabs permanently distorted and static-y until you reboot. (Not a complaint. I've always wondered if it was a browser or audio system issue.)
- pacifika 2y ago
  Yeah I’m getting this feedback on video calls. I thought maybe it was related to hibernation or microphone input level resetting to 120%
- kruffin 2y ago
  When I had this issue, it was fixed by disabling and removing the speech-dispatcher. Something to do with text to speech (I never use it but is sure to be a pain if you do need it) automatically doing things that corrupt the audio stream globally. https://tqdev.com/2021-firefox-ubuntu-crackling-sound https://tqdev.com/2021-firefox-ubuntu-crackling-sound
4ndrewl 2y ago
Thank you for all your work on Firefox!
stefanka 2y ago
Thank you!!
darkwater 2y ago
Thank for your work, from a Firefox user. Also, the OP is probably already aware of this: "It's not perfect as resuming takes a little bit of time and it may not always resume, as there are multiple paths to starting audio. But it's good enough for me."
JoshTriplett 2y ago
Thank you for your work on this! I think many people would be curious to hear about the additional complexity above and beyond "suspend when silent", if there's an already-written thing you could link to. (I do know that resume-when-playback-starts sometimes causes the first bit of audio to get lost, or all of the audio for short things like notification sounds.)
- genewitch 2y ago
  I have a record player with bluerooth that doesn't understand 45s exist, even though the manufacturer included the adapter; also Bluetooth drops out during quiet parts, such as those in podcasts or old radio programs or any music made prior to 1997 within reason. So I ask: define silence. Define sleep. Because you get it wrong you have a $200 device headed for the landfill.
  - 2big2fail_47 2y ago
    why do you have a record player with bluetooth in the first place. isn't that against the very concept of an analogue medium?
rambambram 2y ago
Big thanks from a Firefox user.
h43z 2y ago
Cool to hear. This should deserve to be a high priority bug. Thanks for your work on firefox.
moffkalast 2y ago
> we'll fix it hopefully soon, it's long overdue. I'm sorry this hasn't happened yet If one could describe the state of Bugzilla in two sentences, that would be it :P
EasyMark 2y ago
For every one person "complaining" there are 999 of us quiet ones out here that use and love your product hours out of every day . I hope devs at firefox can cut through gruff articles with click baity titles and extract nuggets of usefulness from them though.

patcon 2y ago

Thank you for your words on this, and energy on everything else!

zX41ZdbW 2y ago

Thanks! What the article does not tell is why it plays white noise (instead of silence).

jsheard 2y ago
It might be that nothing is actually being played, but opening an audio session wakes up your systems DAC/amplifier so you can hear the analog noise floor. In that case the noise is actually always there during playback, you're just more likely to notice it during silence. Computers are a really hostile environment for audio, if possible you're always better off getting an external audio interface to put some distance between the analog signal path and any EMI spewing components.
- II2II 2y ago
  > Computers are a really hostile environment for audio My first thought was the author should be happy that they don't live back in the bad old days of computing. Audible noise was the norm, even when you were playing audio. At least for PCs with sound cards. I don't recall the situation being quite as bad on other platforms. Modern PCs are much better on this front. I have vague recollections of a quote from the Computer Chronicles in the mid-1990's. It went to the effect of turning a $2000 computer into a $200 stereo ...
  - tonyarkles 2y ago
    And don’t forget RFI if a cell phone was close to your speakers. You’d hear a noise right before your phone started to ring!
    - andrecarini 2y ago
      I could even hear an actual radio broadcast coming off my speakers whenever they were powered. Maddening!
      - cafeinux 2y ago
        This kind of thing amazes me. Radio is such a simple, yet omnipresent, technology that even something not made to listen to radio can accidentally catch and play the signal like an actual radio player would. I sure hope it's never going away.
        K0balt 2y ago
        When I was growing up, we lived within 6km line of sight from a powerful AM broadcaster on 660KHZ. By some stroke of fortune, our woodstove smoke pipe and the tinfoil backed insulation of the house, Along with the grounded base but rusty bolted on top of the woodstove created some kind of resonant receiver at that frequency. It would generate sufficient voltage to deliver the occasional electrical shock, which was very mysterious because we had no idea how this stove could shock you, even when the mains were turned off. The mystery of the source of the power was shocks when we built a wire drying rack above the stove, which acted as a sound transducer. With the glove rack, we were treated to 24/7 programming, mostly community oriented stuff like “problem corner”(community issue discussion) bush relay messages for remote listeners outside of telephone reach, “tradio” (call in radio Craigslist, basically), news shows, talk shows, and some occasional music. To me, it was just completely normal, never having known anything else besides electrocution hazard wood stoves and radio show mitten racks lol. It did fuel a fascination for electronics, though, so by the time I was seven I was an avid reader of popular electronics magazine. Forrest Mims. What a treasure of an engineer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims
- joecool1029 2y ago
  I knew about OP's problem for years with discord's piece of shit webapp being the most egregious offender. For my system the sound falls into a low power state and there's an audible pop/click when something wakes it up. Even with the tab silenced and all notifications turned off it would still periodically do this. Other sites that used WebRTC had same problem but not as frequent. I think I worked around the issue eventually by disabling the automatic low power state at the expense of some additional battery consumption.

JohnBooty 2y ago

Thanks for all of your hard work. Firefox is so important.

zoogeny 2y ago

Please don't take this kind of criticism personally. There was a recent blow up from an open source maintainer because he viewed this kind of criticism as a frustration. Just know that most people understand everything you are saying here. Many things to do, finite amount of time. I have personal experience of Firefox developers going above and beyond to make high-usage sites work for their users. I know first hand the lengths they will go to when issues affect users. Thank you and keep plugging away.

godelski 2y ago
I'm a long time Firefox user and have no intention of changing. I fully agree but want to make an important distinction. Sometimes people are complaining about development work and sometimes people are complaining about priorities. This is definitely the latter and I do not think it necessarily a developer issue. Firefox does have the opportunity to become so much greater, but it does require a lot of work and time. I'd argue, give the developers the time and resources. I know Mozilla has their hands in a lot of pies, but Firefox is probably the most important one, even if it isn't the most revenue generating one. Firefox is the symbol of Mozilla and it needs to be the best. The developers have proven how much they can change things and make things better. The Rust partial rewrite was nothing short of a success. So I want to see that progress continued and to keep pushing in that direction.

pentagrama 2y ago

Thank you for your work and also sharing the status here. There is a bugzilla link to follow the progress of the fix?

lknuth 2y ago

Thank you! Your work is keeping the web open.

Centigonal 2y ago

I appreciate you and everybody else's work on Firefox! Thank you!

noah_buddy 2y ago

I would like to become a better use of Firefox by debugging issues I find locally. Any guidance on where to start?

buovjaga 2y ago
Dev doc index is here, includes links to articles about debugging: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/ https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/
- noah_buddy 2y ago
  Thank you!

h14h 2y ago

I hope this kind of thing can shoot up the priority queue! Battery-stealing and generally janky behavior is likely the main reason folks stop using a piece of software. Thanks for your work, and for talking about the issue on a public forum! It's so critically important that Firefox maintains/increases relevancy. I'm sure it's unbelieveably difficult work given the resources behind Chromium & Blink.

Glyptodon 2y ago

On Linux there are weird audio issues that lead to speaker pop, and sometimes opening a new tab can make the audio running from other tabs permanently distorted and static-y until you reboot. (Not a complaint. I've always wondered if it was a browser or audio system issue.)

pacifika 2y ago
Yeah I’m getting this feedback on video calls. I thought maybe it was related to hibernation or microphone input level resetting to 120%
kruffin 2y ago
When I had this issue, it was fixed by disabling and removing the speech-dispatcher. Something to do with text to speech (I never use it but is sure to be a pain if you do need it) automatically doing things that corrupt the audio stream globally. https://tqdev.com/2021-firefox-ubuntu-crackling-sound https://tqdev.com/2021-firefox-ubuntu-crackling-sound

4ndrewl 2y ago

Thank you for all your work on Firefox!

stefanka 2y ago

Thank you!!

darkwater 2y ago

Thank for your work, from a Firefox user. Also, the OP is probably already aware of this: "It's not perfect as resuming takes a little bit of time and it may not always resume, as there are multiple paths to starting audio. But it's good enough for me."

JoshTriplett 2y ago

Thank you for your work on this! I think many people would be curious to hear about the additional complexity above and beyond "suspend when silent", if there's an already-written thing you could link to. (I do know that resume-when-playback-starts sometimes causes the first bit of audio to get lost, or all of the audio for short things like notification sounds.)

genewitch 2y ago
I have a record player with bluerooth that doesn't understand 45s exist, even though the manufacturer included the adapter; also Bluetooth drops out during quiet parts, such as those in podcasts or old radio programs or any music made prior to 1997 within reason. So I ask: define silence. Define sleep. Because you get it wrong you have a $200 device headed for the landfill.
- 2big2fail_47 2y ago
  why do you have a record player with bluetooth in the first place. isn't that against the very concept of an analogue medium?

rambambram 2y ago

Big thanks from a Firefox user.

h43z 2y ago

Cool to hear. This should deserve to be a high priority bug. Thanks for your work on firefox.

moffkalast 2y ago

> we'll fix it hopefully soon, it's long overdue. I'm sorry this hasn't happened yet If one could describe the state of Bugzilla in two sentences, that would be it :P

EasyMark 2y ago

For every one person "complaining" there are 999 of us quiet ones out here that use and love your product hours out of every day . I hope devs at firefox can cut through gruff articles with click baity titles and extract nuggets of usefulness from them though.