Sound indicator is jumpy while music playing (grooveshark)

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Open sound indicator
Try and swipe the volume up and down
Try and increase/decrease volume with the hardware vol+ & vol- keys
Note that the slider takes a long time to update, and sometimes leaps backwards and forwards despite you only holding one button down.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: indicator-sound 12.10.2+14.04.20140401-0ubuntu1
Uname: Linux 3.4.0-5-mako armv7l
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: armhf
Date: Fri Apr 11 10:39:43 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-11 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - armhf (20140411)
SourcePackage: indicator-sound
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

This is a UI issue. We're using the same indicator-sound on unity7 and have no such issues.

[Nick Dedekind (nick-dedekind)]

Actually, I think it might be the accounts service. I upgraded on desktop and the same happens with unity7.
unity8 on previous revision worked on on desktop; so it's not the UI.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

It might be the sound syncing with AccountsService. All the dbus code I added is async, but there might be synchronous code elsewhere that is getting exercised now?

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

please test this with a newer image, there were issues in the sound layer (a double free in one of the android libs) that were fixed in 289. i can not reproduce it on 291

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

I still see this issue in image 299. After attempting to adjust the volume via the slider in the sound indicator, the volume changes can lag by as much a full minute. This happens especially when attempting to drag the slider (instead of simply tapping at the desired level).

Steps to reproduce the issue:
1. Start a song or a video.
2. Pull down the sound indicator.
3. Drag the volume slider to a new setting.

Expected result: Nearly instant volume changes, lagging by less than 100ms.

Actual result: The volume slider will do nothing at first, then jump around on its own for up to 60 seconds or so, preventing all other interactions with the device. The UI locks completely until the indicator catches up.

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

(actually, it seems the symptoms can sometimes be even worse... I changed it about halfway through my previous comment, the device stopped responding for a few minutes, and then the screen went blank and it restarted unity8)

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

Selene, the last thing you mentioned (u8 becoming unresponsive and restarting) means it crashed. Would be good if you could preprocess the .crash file (apport-cli or /usr/share/apport/whoopsie-upload-all) and upload the .crash somewhere.

As for the issue, it's definitely visible on desktop as well - just drag the slider around and see it jump after you release it.

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

We suspect http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/indicator-sound/trunk.14.04/revision/431 to be the culprit.

[Nick Dedekind (nick-dedekind)]

This is the revision that caused the issue
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/indicator-sound/trunk.14.04/revision/431

probably some sort of feedback loop.

[Nick Dedekind (nick-dedekind)]

It's feedback from asynchronous account service property changes . if we change the volume 10 times internally (and send off update to account services), then we get a slow trickle volume property changes from account services which changes the internal volume value.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Compare bug 1289477, the equivalent problem with the brightness slider.

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

Reproduced on utopic r2.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

So Nick identified that there is also a similar issue inside unity8. The indicator-sound branch we have fixes things a lot, but there is still a little bit of lagginess in there due to the unity8 side of things.

I'll look into that. But is there any reason we can't land the indicator-sound branch now?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package indicator-sound - 12.10.2+14.10.20140509-0ubuntu1

---------------
indicator-sound (12.10.2+14.10.20140509-0ubuntu1) utopic; urgency=low

  [ Michael Terry ]
  * Added timers to volume changes to settle frequent updates from
    account services. (LP: #1306499)

  [ Nick Dedekind ]
  * Added timers to volume changes to settle frequent updates from
    account services. (LP: #1306499)
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Fri, 09 May 2014 14:43:21 +0000

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

As of image utopic 60, this is much much better. The lag is a second or less instead of being up to a full minute.

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

In Utopic 140, it still lags a bit (up to a few seconds, if I drag it rapidly back and forth), but it's mostly not too bad. It just feels jittery, instead of being massively behind what the user told it to do. By jittery, I mean that sliding it smoothly from one end to the other tends to result in a lot of volume spikes along the way.

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

Still jittery and a bit laggy in Utopic 161.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

What device does it feel laggy on? On my mako, it doesn't feel bad.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

I haven't retested yet, but Saviq mentioned that he got it when playing music specifically. So I'll look at that as a reproduction method next.

[kevin gunn (kgunn72)]

retested on image #213 on N4

the slider itself isn't laggy and quite smooth.
however, when a song is playing in grooveshark it can be seen "jumpy".
And after playing with it a bit it does seem to have something to do with potentially be queuing events (in Qt?) and reading current volume to draw its placement ? (vs ignore current vol if touch even "release" hasn't occured)

[kevin gunn (kgunn72)]

removing tag as the severity/criticality has certainly changed

[kevin gunn (kgunn72)]

video easier to see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-CK1amiJBo

[kevin gunn (kgunn72)]

fixed with latest polish branch