Serious Audio Bug on iOS 14 - Existing Appstore Game Now Unplayable

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  • As I noted in that other thread about positioned sound, the audio playback engines are managed by the browser, so issues with the playback engine are out of our control. You most likely should contact the browser vendor directly for any such issues.

  • Were you using the HRTF option? If so I wouldn't call this a bug per say...

    HRTF is a very very computationally expensive method. Back in the day PCs required specialist hardware on separate audio cards to handle it. Some modern devices like the Microsoft Hololens still have dedicated hardware for it. Sadly great positional audio somewhat died out with dedicated audio hardware, if you ever played something like Thief 2 with the hardware support, it was amazing.

    True HRTF is still relatively rare even in modern AAA games on PC/console, and often they'll only implement it for selected sounds, i.e. short sounds that are important for positional awareness, like foot steps, gun shots etc. I wouldn't think of using it on mobile. My guess is the crackling/popping is because the CPU cannot process the HRTF audio fast enough to fill the audio buffer - and this is why it's more noticeable on mobile than PC.

    If you still want to use positional audio, the equal power option should be much cheaper to process. I believe there is an even more lightweight stereo panner node in web audio but not in Construct 3, that is something I would really like to see implemented to help mobile performance.

    As to why the old iOS versions didn't display this issue, my guess is they only had limited web audio support, so maybe positional audio support was only recently added, i.e. on older iOS it probably detected it wasn't supported so reverted to normal audio.

    This is interesting, yes I was using the HRTF model, it's the default on the audio object. I'm still curious to learn why this causes all audio to become distorted once the positioned audio has messed it up, ie. when I return to my main menu which has no positioned audio, all audio is now distorted, some kind of memory leak?

  • I don't know about web audio to answer that sorry. Maybe if it can't process the HRTF fast enough it has a backlog of audio commands that it's still trying to process? But that's a completely wild guess...

  • AlexFrancois I am using m4a files and the audio does not play

    Ashley good point, I will start a new thread that better describes my issue.

  • Hi all! Have the same issue! Updated my project and while testing through iOS TestFlight found this issue on iPhone and iPad :( after some time (5+ minutes) sound starts to crackling and then becomes totally white noise! This is really sad, I using audio positioning and can't remove it from a game! Currently tested with WebM audio format of sounds.

    I'm checked, Framerate mode - it's set to V-Synced, so it appears not only in Unlimited mode as Ashley said. Do you found any good workaround for this problem, AlexFrancois?

    P.S.: Noted, that this problem is less significant while Remote Previewing on a device, but becomes significant in the compiled build (or it looks so). Sometimes it intensifies if changing volume with device buttons while playing.

  • I don't think it's clear at all that you're having the same problem as described in this thread, especially since I don't think it was ever really clear what the problem in this thread actually was to begin with. When I made my own tests, everything seemed to work fine.

  • I don't think it's clear at all that you're having the same problem as described in this thread, especially since I don't think it was ever really clear what the problem in this thread actually was to begin with.

    The description of this problem is quite similar to what I have, so decided that this is the same problem.

    Hmm, it's turned out to be quite simple to reproduce this issue in a blank project.

    Here is an example project attached. To check it, you need iOS device and a bit of patience. On my PC all works fine, on Android - I can't check it right now, but on my iPhone8 and iPadPro-2ndGen (both on iOS 14.7.1, testing by C3 Remote Preview) audio starts crackling (or pops) after about 2-3 minutes and then becomes harder and harder until all audio is messed up in noise.

    Interesting moment - I also have a very old iPadAir with iOS 12.5.4, and on it - all works fine, almost no sound issues, just a few "pops" maybe in 5 minutes.

    By the way, on the same devices (with iOS 14.7.1) I have my old game C2 build (compiled somewhere in 2017) that still works fine without this issue.

    I will create a bug report with this example file, but not sure how it can help...

    drive.google.com/file/d/1tZ2VQ7SGzFNkpCI9tsAuvys9ZW7NR8zT/view

    update: bugreport github.com/Scirra/Construct-3-bugs/issues/5063

  • I'll look in to it, but as I think I mentioned previously, the audio output is handled by the browser, not Construct. So you might want to cut out the middleman and report it directly to Apple.

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  • I observe the same issue.

    I try to don't preload the Webm song. A simple button with an event (play song by name) and the song is played on xCode simulator.

    But, if I preload the song with an event (preload by name), and after I try to play song by name, all sounds crashed. I have to kill app to reinitiat.

    Confused...

  • Hello everyone!

    Just want to add some update to this thread - after the bug report, Ashley redirected it to Apple. Big thanks for that, because I'm even don't know where to post it and how, moreover there was some tech discussion in which I am not competent enough. bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi

    And if I understand things right - we will see this bug fix in some upcoming iOS updates! Hurray! :)

  • Great! I'm happy to hear this has been resolved!

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