Firefox sound broken in last update

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

f00bar
Established Member
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun May 12, 2013 7:40 pm

Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by f00bar »

I upgraded Firefox, and suddenly, it forces me to run PulseAudio, which I do not want. I am currently compiling it without PulseAudio. Then I saw this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16567 . Which would be nice if it really works. But I see no ports in Catia, so that claim is false. What is the recommended solution to get Firefox sound back, without activating PulseAudio?
CraigPid
Established Member
Posts: 197
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:52 pm
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 19 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by CraigPid »

What distro are you using? When I was complaining about the jack ports in Firefox it was an Arch Linux package of , I think, version 50. They took jack support out of the build in the next version as it was not really ready and more of a pain than just using the alsa loopback. If you are using Arch you could get ver 50 from the Arch archive. I looked at the scripts that they used to build it and it was "ac_add_options --enable-jack" that built in the jack support.
asbak
Established Member
Posts: 897
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:04 pm
Has thanked: 71 times
Been thanked: 64 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by asbak »

Unfortunately the FF developers have been Poetteringed (that £&£$(*£$&%$ guy is a wrecking ball cyber-menace against humanity) and they're dropping the ALSA back-end. For the time being the ALSA code is still in the source but it will be removed, probably sooner rather than later.

The typical FF dev response seems to be "use pulseaudio", and when people complain and point out why they have no intentions of using that abomination the typical response is "pulseaudio works great, if you have an issue open a bug report". Sigh....

Thanks to Damien Zammit and some others, jack code is in the FF sources, so you can compile it with jack enabled in case your current distro version doesn't currently have jack enabled. In Mint 18 my FF ALSA audio was also removed, and FF didn't have jack enabled. I compiled it and jack audio output from FF is now working for me.


#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#
# Perform at your own risk: #
#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#

To build FF with jack support, (or ALSA - for now):

Follow the mozilla developer instructions for compiling a development build and set up the build environment.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... reparation

Before starting the build, do:

cd mozilla-central

Create a customised mozconfig file in there. ALSA can be enabled by removing the #.

Code: Select all

 
echo "# My first mozilla config" > mozconfig
#echo "ac_add_options --enable-alsa" >> mozconfig
echo "ac_add_options --enable-pulseaudio" >> mozconfig
echo "ac_add_options --enable-jack" >> mozconfig
then build it with mach build
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
asbak
Established Member
Posts: 897
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:04 pm
Has thanked: 71 times
Been thanked: 64 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by asbak »

Yes, pulseaudio wormed its way into a number of mainstream distributions including Ubuntu but the entire point here is that folks who require better performing audio subsystems shy away from it because of its poor performance and other unnecessary and unwelcome complications.

People here tend to reconfigure their systems (some of which are based on Ubuntu) to use better performing audio subsystems, such as ALSA & JACK.

Therefore, FF's new audio regime basically forces one to either go the compilation route, to downgrade the browser (not the best idea due to security considerations), to be stuck with ghastly pulse-ebola only or to lose browser sound.
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
barbouze
Established Member
Posts: 186
Joined: Tue May 26, 2015 12:26 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 16 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by barbouze »

I was quite underwhelmed too by this situation, read here and there on why this choice has been done, gave PA another chance and re-enabled it as a jack module. Thanks to Cadence I can switch it on and off, when it's on It uses 1%-1.5% more CPU and other than that, everything is fine.
But it would have been better if FF devs allowed us to choose easily between PA ou Jack (or kept Alsa).
barbouze
Established Member
Posts: 186
Joined: Tue May 26, 2015 12:26 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 16 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by barbouze »

falkTX wrote:there's going to be an option in about:config to choose the audio backend, but alsa is still going away.
You mean we will be able to choose between Jack and PA? That's good news!
User avatar
chaocrator
Established Member
Posts: 313
Joined: Fri Jun 26, 2015 8:11 pm
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Been thanked: 1 time
Contact:

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by chaocrator »

since firefox developers refused to keep ALSA support and dropped it, i dropped firefox and moved to palemoon.
at least, it's significantly faster (i often work with hundreds of tabs, so i know what i'm talking about), and HTML5 stuff works OK at the moment.
asbak
Established Member
Posts: 897
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:04 pm
Has thanked: 71 times
Been thanked: 64 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by asbak »

Impressive, interesting to hear about the performance improvements you experience. I've long felt that FF was becoming more and more sluggish but I never bothered to investigate alternatives.

Thanks a lot for the tip and info, Palemoon sounds like a decent alternative.

For what it's worth, I've been trying out FF with jack enabled and it's not a very satisfactory solution, compared to how well ALSA and snd-aloop works.
Closing tabs causes xruns, youtube video sound is sometimes out of sync etc.
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
CraigPid
Established Member
Posts: 197
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:52 pm
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 19 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by CraigPid »

I would imagine Palemoon will go that route also since they use Mozilla code. I suppose we're going to have to find a different solution than the alsa loopback.
I built Firefox on Mint and I couldn't figure out what to copy to the system to install it. In the documentation it say to do ./mach run from the build directory.There was no indication of how to install your build to the system.
CraigPid
Established Member
Posts: 197
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:52 pm
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 19 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by CraigPid »

Well never mind. ./mach --help tells the story.
asbak
Established Member
Posts: 897
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:04 pm
Has thanked: 71 times
Been thanked: 64 times

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by asbak »

Yeah the Mozilla build and configuration documentation sucks.
CraigPid wrote:I would imagine Palemoon will go that route also since they use Mozilla code. I suppose we're going to have to find a different solution than the alsa loopback.
Hopefully this won't happen anytime soon. PM seem to pride themselves on stating that they are not Mozilla so perhaps there's hope they'll be reasonable and sensible about this and leave ALSA in.

I've now got FF with Jack which works so-so (since they're removing ALSA anyway I figured there wasn't much point in persisting with it on FF) and followed chaocrator's advice and installed Palemoon.

It feels faster than FF and ALSA is still there, hopefully for the forseeable future.
Normal service has resumed, yay! :D
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
User avatar
chaocrator
Established Member
Posts: 313
Joined: Fri Jun 26, 2015 8:11 pm
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Been thanked: 1 time
Contact:

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by chaocrator »

PM developers clearly stated that they are going to keep many things that firefox has dropped. see PM site for details.

btw, for those who are interested in migration to PM: there is no such thing as internal PDF viewer.
i'm using mozplugger as the workaround.
Last edited by chaocrator on Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
chtfn
Established Member
Posts: 76
Joined: Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:21 pm

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by chtfn »

How does one use Jack as the Firefox audio backend?
chtfn
Established Member
Posts: 76
Joined: Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:21 pm

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by chtfn »

42low wrote:Don't understand something. So question.
Why do you all use ff within your recording setup? What's the goal of that?
To search for answers to the dozens of issues Linux audio users run into? :wink:
Thad E Ginathom
Established Member
Posts: 369
Joined: Fri Sep 23, 2011 1:03 pm

Re: Firefox sound broken in last update

Post by Thad E Ginathom »

How was it a whole year before this problem hit me in a big way? :lol:

Anyway, along came Firefox 52, and sound was not my first concern: looking at it is. This Australis thing is not for me and never was. Classic Theme Restorer is a must. Firefox 52 no longer supports that and a host of other plugins that make my environment feel like home :cry:

PaleMoon say that they are never going to Australis, so that is my long-term browser target. However, it does not support lots of other small add-in things I'm used to. Escape route, to keep using the addins, including the one that puts everything in the right places, Firefox 52 ESR.

but no ALSA.

This is curious: I still get sound from Youtube, using the ALSA bridge. Youtube looks after its own audio?

But stuff like BBC news videos remains silent and FF presents an annoying message that I need to install Pulse.

I have Linux Mint 17.3, with bare-bones KXStudio (Cadence, JACK, etc, but not the suite of musician's tools).

Pulse is actually installed, but KX has done its magic to keep it stopped. I don't really want to interfere with that and mess things up. Clicking on the Pulse Bridge button in Cadence does nothing. I guess... because Pulse is not running.

(and err... Hi! Haven't been here for quite a while)
Post Reply