Static in audio when Firefox is used

[epp]

I have a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Fx sound card installed (PCI-E x1 port), which uses the snd_hda_intel driver, on Mageia 8 (Xfce desktop) installed to hardware.

Code: Select all

02:00.0 Audio device: Creative Labs Sound Core3D [Sound Blaster Recon3D / Z-Series] (rev 01)
   Subsystem: Creative Labs SB1570 SB Audigy Fx
   Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18, NUMA node 0
   Memory at fe9fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
   Memory at fe9f8000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
   Capabilities: <access denied>
   Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
   Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

If I am listening to music and have Firefox open, the audio will begin to include static if I reach certain web sites. One of them is mail.com, when logged into their web site. This occurs if I am listening to music through YouTube in one Firefox tab and then login to mail.com or reach another site that triggers the static and also if I am playing music from the HDD using either Audacious or VLC. Using mail.com as an example, after logging out of the service, the audio continues to contain static, whether from the YouTube tab, or Audacious/VLC. The static then ends once Firefox is closed. I am not experiencing this when using Chromium.

Could there be any explanation or fix for this, aside from not using Firefox?

Thanks in advance.

[doktor5000]

You could use an Adblocker and plugins to block HTML5 audio/video autoplay. If nothing is playing on a tab, there should be no static because there's no sound output from that tab.

[epp]

I've been using uBlock Origin for quite a while.

As a result of a past bug report filed with Mozilla involving autoplay, where the Privacy & Security/AutoPlay setting on Block Audio and Video was not working, the workaround was to change the value of media.autoplay.blocking.policy in the config file from the default 0, to 2. Now, videos embedded on web pages and YouTube videos will not automatically start playing, which is the desired result.

But it doesn't solve the audio-with-static issue (including from the HDD) until Firefox is closed.

[doktor5000]

audio-with-static issue (including from the HDD)

What does the latter part mean - where's the relation between Firefox and your HDD ?

[doktor5000]

This is what I've found: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1367820
If you use the Mageia-packaged version, you could simply download the current firefox from Mozilla and run that, if you can still reproduce your issue you can report it to Mozilla directly.

And slightly related, you could try those setting:
https://tqdev.com/2021-firefox-ubuntu-crackling-sound and https://ectobit.com/blog/linux-mint-fir ... d-problem/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comment ... d_popping/

[epp]

audio-with-static issue (including from the HDD)

What does the latter part mean - where's the relation between Firefox and your HDD ?

That was the part that didn't make sense...why audio independent of Firefox, also had static, until I closed Firefox.

On all three of the links you provided, they all had one thing in common and that was media.webspeech.synth.enabled in the config, changing that to false. Upon doing so and restarting Firefox, the audio has been fine, no static. I will continue to test this.

Thank you for the links.