Adobe Flash player 10 in Firefox 3 has problems with sound

[Patryk Zawadzki]

After some random time from starting Firefox it is no longer able to play flash sounds correctly. For example trying to watch a YouTube movie results in the video pausing a second or so into the playback. After about half a minute the video resumes and a stuttering sound appears (sound buffer looping over the first second or so of actual soundtrack). Scrolling controls work fine and the interface is responsive. Stuttering sound continues through the whole movie occasionally changing to some random 1-second sample of the soundtrack.

OSS is not loaded. Neither esound nor pulseaudio daemons are installed or active.

During the hang other applications have no problems playing the audio so the device is not locked. Even aplay works.

[patrys@purrr ~]$ sudo lsof | grep snd
mixer_app 8483 patrys 23u CHR 116,0 8373 /dev/snd/controlC0
firefox-b 30548 patrys mem CHR 116,16 8352 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
firefox-b 30548 patrys 88r CHR 116,33 8198 /dev/snd/timer
firefox-b 30548 patrys 89u CHR 116,16 8352 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
firefox-b 30548 patrys 90u CHR 116,0 8373 /dev/snd/controlC0

[patrys@purrr ~]$ rpm -q kernel-vanilla alsa-lib mozilla-firefox adobe-flash esound-libs
kernel-vanilla-2.6.25.5-1.i686
alsa-lib-1.0.16-2.i686
mozilla-firefox-3.0-3.i686
adobe-flash-10.0.0.0-1wla.i686
esound-libs-0.2.38-1.i686

[Patryk Zawadzki (patrys)]

Another machine with different hardware but exactly the same symptoms.

[Pedro Berrioategortua (berriop)]

try install libflashsupport

regards

[Bobby Reynolds (bobbyjoereynolds)]

I have a HP Pavilion XE 783 with an Intel pentium 3 celeron 1Ghz 128K cache CPU with 512MB RAM i810 chipset using motherboard graphics and sound. I had ubuntu 8.04 loaded on it. The sound was working ok with adobe flash version 10 within Firefox 3. I could watch youtube videos. I loaded it from the .deb package from adobe. I upgraded to ubuntu 8.10 and now the sound doesn't work when i try to play youtube videos in Firefox 3, the video works. I've tried autodetect, pulseaudio, etc. OSS is the only one that makes a sound when you hit the test button. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling it without success. Sound works in VLC and other audio applications outside the browser. I also have xubuntu and kubuntu loaded on the same PC and adobe flash 10 plugin works in firefox for Xfce and KDE window managers when I use those. Any ideas?

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

Please check the following things:

 1. ensure that you don't have a $HOME/.asoundrc.
 2. ensure that you have libasound2-plugins package installed.
 3. test latest packages from https://edge.launchpad.net/~crimsun/+archive
 4. test latest packages from https://edge.launchpad.net/~themuso/+archive

Thanks!

[wren42 (wren42)]

I can verify that I see the same systems on Ubuntu 8.10. I'd be glad to provide any details about my configuration that would be helpful, but I don't know what those are off hand ;)

[wren42 (wren42)]

I can verify that I see the same symptoms on Ubuntu 8.10. I'd be glad to provide any details about my configuration that would be helpful, but I don't know what those are off hand ;)

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

can't be a big problem if nobody cares enough to test what i wrote ;)

[wren42 (wren42)]

libasound2-plugins is not a package in the Ubuntu 8.10 repository! I
assumed your advice was helpful only for PLD Linux.

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 7:01 AM, Alexander Sack <email address hidden> wrote:
> can't be a big problem if nobody cares enough to test what i wrote ;)
>
> --
> Adobe Flash player 10 in Firefox 3 has problems with sound
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/249817
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[wren42 (wren42)]

Huh. Or at least it wasn't showing up in Synaptic. Apt-get seems to recognize it. That's... really strange, since they should be using the same database for package info. I'll try out your advice sometime soon and report back.

[wren42 (wren42)]

For the record Alexander's suggestion worked like a charm! Thanks!

[Cactus (uzi18)]

what about latest adobe flash fro cvs ?

[Cactus (uzi18)]

Could it be different solution :

$ cat ~/.libao
default_driver=alsa

$ rpm -qa libao*
libao-devel-0.8.8-1.athlon
libao-0.8.8-1.athlon
libao-pulse-0.9.3-2.athlon
libao-alsa-0.8.8-1.athlon

[UbuntuCleric (ubuntucleric)]

Hi:

I am also experiencing this problem on Ubuntu 8.10. I cannot find many of those libao packages that Cactus mentioned, so perhaps it doesn't apply to me. I am wary of installing non-official packages, especially for stuff like sound. Are there any other of solutions (the only way for me to fix it now is restarting Firefox)?

Cheers,
UbuntuCleric

[Ariel Faigon (ariel.faigon)]

I'm seeing the same problem.

No pld-linux here. I'm running kubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) on a desktop.
I don't have pulseaudio at all, so most bugs describing similar symptoms are not relevant to my case.
This bug is the closest I could find.

My hardware uses an intel audio chip:

  $ lspci | grep Audio
  00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

libflashplayer is Adobe 10 (latest official release from adobe). I don't use the 'free' replacement because symptoms are much more severe (firefox 3.x frequently crashes)

The bug is intermittent, sound would play for a while in firefox flash videos and then get into this stuttering state. Restarting firefox always solves the problem for a while until it starts again.

I'll try the above suggestions next.

[Patryk Zawadzki (patrys)]

Working configuration (I'm a PLD Linux dev, not Ubuntu), requires PulseAudio:

$ sudo lsmod | grep snd
snd_pcsp 9120 2
snd_hda_intel 311948 5
snd_pcm 58500 4 snd_pcsp,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 18184 1 snd_pcm
snd_hwdep 7684 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc 8072 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd 41124 17 snd_pcsp,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_hwdep
soundcore 6496 1 snd

$ rpm -q pulseaudio alsa-plugins-pulse gstreamer-pulseaudio
pulseaudio-0.9.14-1.i686
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.19-1.i686
gstreamer-pulseaudio-0.10.13-1.i686

$ cat ~/.asoundrc
pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}

[SEWilco (scot-wilcoxon)]

Ubuntu 9.10 Firefox 3 sometimes loses the ability to play sound in Flash.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for flashplugin-nonfree (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]