WebAudio in Firefox

[Martin Best]

We have started to land WebAudio into Firefox. We will be tracking the status of this work at the following URL for those that want to know what is available and when. There are many nodes (each provides different capabilities) being added as part of the spec so we are tracking them individually. This work is expected to continue through Firefox 23-25.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAudio_API_Rollout_Status

Nodes are something that can be done in parallel and the remaining ones tend to be nice and self contained so if people want to help, love audio, and want to see us get this done faster. We would love to see this happen, please drop me an email, or let Ehsan know on the main tracking bug about getting involved. The tracking bug is on the wiki page above.

Come help us get it done by the end of Firefox 24!

Thanks,

Martin
E: mb...@mozilla.com
C: (647) 292-2748

[Kornmann, Ralf]

Nice seeing progress on the audio front as well.

So will WebAudio the preferred solution for sound and music in the Firefox HTML5 application world?

On Chrome we already switched over as the HTML5 audio object support has many problems.

________________________________________
Von: community-games-bounces+rkornmann=ea....@lists.mozilla.org [community-games-bounces+rkornmann=ea....@lists.mozilla.org] im Auftrag von Martin Best [mb...@mozilla.com]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 24. April 2013 22:59
An: communi...@lists.mozilla.org; dev-planning
Cc: Maire Reavy
Betreff: [MozGames] WebAudio in Firefox

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[Ehsan Akhgari]

On 2013-04-24 5:16 PM, Kornmann, Ralf wrote:
> Nice seeing progress on the audio front as well.
>
> So will WebAudio the preferred solution for sound and music in the Firefox HTML5 application world?

If all you need to do is just play back a simple audio file, then you
should still use <audio>. If your needs are covered by what Web Audio
can provide (dynamic audio processing, scheduling sounds and effects to
happen at precise times, etc.) then you should use Web Audio.

> On Chrome we already switched over as the HTML5 audio object support has many problems.

It's usually a great idea to report such problems to browser vendors,
since sometimes we do not know about bugs until users report them to us,
and just working around them might mean that the bug will never get
fixed. In the case of Firefox, please do file a bug if you find any
issues with regards to audio support or other things.

Thanks!
Ehsan

[Kornmann, Ralf]

We play multiple sounds at the same time. There seems to be some resource problem in Chrome with this. I am not 100% sure but I believe it was reported.

No Problem with Firefox so far.

Ralf

[Kevin Gadd]

The problems with <audio> in chrome are, IIRC, well known and have never
been fixed. I ended up having to switch to Web Audio exclusively in Chrome
for the same reasons. Presumably it is just a limitation in their
implementation.

I've personally had no real issues using <audio> for everything in Firefox;
it does everything I need for my (relatively simple) use cases. So I'd
recommend at least keeping your <audio> backend even if you opt to use Web
Audio when it's available, regardless of browser. In particular I think the
complexity of doing streaming and pausing/resuming via <audio> is much
lower than doing the same using the web audio API, so if you need to do
either of those things, you should probably use HTML5 audio if you can.

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--
-kg

[Alon Zakai]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kevin Gadd" <kevin...@gmail.com>
> To: "Ralf Kornmann" <rkor...@ea.com>
> Cc: communi...@lists.mozilla.org, "Ehsan Akhgari" <ehsan....@gmail.com>, "Martin Best" <mb...@mozilla.com>,
> "dev-planning" <dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org>, "Maire Reavy" <mre...@mozilla.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 11:18:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [MozGames] WebAudio in Firefox
>

> The problems with <audio> in chrome are, IIRC, well known and have
> never
> been fixed. I ended up having to switch to Web Audio exclusively in
> Chrome
> for the same reasons. Presumably it is just a limitation in their
> implementation.
>

Here is a bug I filed on this,

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=138454

Another audio bug I filed,

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=124926

They seem to be getting no attention.

- Alon