Chromium audio

Cath O'Deray

Cath O'Deray

 
With Teams, neither the microphone nor the speaker can be changed.

Is this normal?

1643337875882.png


www/chromium only in this topic, please.
 
In skype for web within chromium with standard options, the microphone could not be changed. (And possibly speakers, I do not remember.)

Rebuilding it with [the.dreaded] pulseaudio [/the.dreaded] gave me the options to change all that lot.
 
Thanks to the person who volunteered to test 👍

Before opening Chromium, I used mixer(8) in FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT to change the default e.g.

mixer -d3

– with a SteelSeries Siberia 350 v3 headset at pcm3.

Code: 
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: ugen0.6: <SteelSeries SteelSeries Siberia 350> at usbus0
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0 on uhub6
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: <SteelSeries SteelSeries Siberia 350, class 0/0, rev 1.10/2.08, addr 20> on usbus0
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Play[0]: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Play[0]: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Play[0]: 22050 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Play[0]: 16000 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Play[0]: 11025 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Play[0]: 8000 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Record[0]: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Record[0]: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Record[0]: 22050 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Record[0]: 16000 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Record[0]: 11025 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: Record[0]: 8000 Hz, 2 ch, 16-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x2ms buffer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: No MIDI sequencer.
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: pcm3: <USB audio> on uaudio0
Feb 27 12:24:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd kernel: uaudio0: HID volume keys found.

At <https://teams.live.com/>, audio and video were fine.

During the call, I could
  • switch from one camera to another
  • not switch audio (a minor annoyance, not a show-stopper).


Code: 
% pkg info -x chromium
chromium-97.0.4692.99
% uname -aKU
FreeBSD mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd 14.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT #4 main-n253343-9835900cb95-dirty: Wed Feb 23 00:14:15 GMT 2022     root@mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd:/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/sys/GENERIC-NODEBUG amd64 1400053 1400053
%

Applicable package upgrades include chromium 98.0.4758.102_3.

I'll retry <https://teams.microsoft.com/> with a work colleague, maybe next week.

Postscript, 2022-03-17

I have been on leave for much longer than expected. The opportunity to test with a work colleague must wait until my return to work.
 
Last edited:
I switched to Chromium the other day, but I noticed immediately the sound quality is bad and stutters a lot. I didn't experience this with Firefox. Any suggestions? For inexplicable reasons I can't successfully build certain big ports anymore, so ideally it would be some sndio tweak (I guess that's the default from pkgs?).
 
argwings said:
… sound quality is bad and stutters a lot.
Click to expand...

The same for me, long ago. Excruciatingly bad.

Audio was fine, today.

I didn't experience this with Firefox.
Click to expand...

The same for me.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Hopefully sndiod_enable: YES will provide a lasting improvement for you.

I do have it enabled, but can't remember when I set the preference.

If symptoms recur: let's have the version of FreeBSD, the version of Chromium, and whether your packages are from latest or quarterly. Thanks.
 
It's still not ideal, I'm afraid. OSS was perfect. I'm using latest but I didn't build Chromium from source. I'm on FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE-p7.

Specifically chromium-98.0.4758.102_2 and sndio-1.8.1.
 
I rebuilt sndio just to make sure I was actually on the latest version, since I was using a lot of packages. I'll build something heavy and see if I'm getting the same stuttering as before. It seems alright foro the moment!
 
The same here. I am using PulseAudio by default. Can use padsp program to wrap oss capable audio into the PulseAudio. But Chromium uses sndio by default. And the sound is jittered. Why not use OSS as default backend?
 
I don't think an OSS backend exists in Chromium and it's probably not trivial to write one. Firefox actually officially supports FreeBSD as far as I know.
 
Well, I usually use Firefox, but some web conferencing works only in Chrome(ium). SNDIO is really PITA. Setting AUDIODEVICE does not seem to work with my bluetooth headset. What is more Chromium does not seem to allow changing audio backend on the fly like Firefox can with CUBEB so I can select OSS or PulseAudio :-(

Most OSS applications can be wrapped with PADSP commnand that routes OSS audio to PulseAudio. I does not work with sndio.

PulseAudio is nice because I can change single stream input/output on the fly - for instance I can listen to music on loudspeakers, web browser on bluetooth headset, and some other stuff on USB audio card.. and I can change that without restarting application :)

Thank you for your feedback and time.. another reason not to use Chromium.. but explain that to Zoom or Teams users ;-)
 
I haven't really tested Pulseaudio on FreeBSD much but whenever I derp around on Linux it seems pretty reliable nowadays. I feel like I have too many audio options already, so I just try to keep using OSS everywhere if possible. The perceptual audio quality is just better to me also.

If sndio gets more adoption it will naturally improve. The upgrade I did before (from quarterly I presume) was already noticeable.
 
cederom said:
tremendous port rebuild
Click to expand...

Oof! From a brief, cancelled run:

[main-default] [2022-03-01_20h37m42s] [sigint:] Queued: 273 Built: 0 Failed: 0 Skipped: 0 Ignored: 0 Fetched: 0 Tobuild: 273 Time: 00:00:38

Many of the 273 might build quickly, but with gargantuan Chromium at the tail end, it's simply not appealing.
 
Hmmm Chromium sound quality was really bad for me till I tried changing the default (48 kHz) sndio sample rate to 44.1 kHz.
I just added this lines to /etc/rc.conf:
Code: 
sndiod_enable="YES"
sndiod_flags="-r 44100"
It solved my problem. Maybe you can tinker with that 👍
 
grahamperrin said:
Oof! From a brief, cancelled run:

[main-default] [2022-03-01_20h37m42s] [sigint:] Queued: 273 Built: 0 Failed: 0 Skipped: 0 Ignored: 0 Fetched: 0 Tobuild: 273 Time: 00:00:38

Many of the 273 might build quickly, but with gargantuan Chromium at the tail end, it's simply not appealing.
Click to expand...

Could you please provide full invocation of poudriere bulk build that will allow me to select audio backend and build that Chrome package for me in 38 seconds ?

I am not familiar with poudriere but I have jails and port tree ready. Also my poudriere (version 3.3.7_1) bulk does not know -b switch. Your example above shows 273 tobuild and 0 built. If there is any magical way to shorten (i.e. 38h -> 38s) any port build with selected config options using poudriere then I was not aware of that.
 
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