PIXI Sound mp3 loop 'pause'

[charlie_says]

I was just working on a test, using PIXI sound with an MP3 loop.

The issue is there's a  small pause before the loop re-plays, meaning it doesn't really loop properly.

The loop is currently repeated by calling a replay function in the onComplete parameter in the options, but I get the same result if I replace that with loop:true (I expect that under the hood it works the same way, but I didn't check yet.)

This isn't exclusively a PIXI sound issue, I remember having the same problems with MP3s in Flash - so what I'm really interested in is ideas to work around the issue?

Edited May 25, 2020 by charlie_says

[bubamara]

using m4a instead is the workaround

[charlie_says]

hmmm thanks, on testing m4a (I was using mp3 deliberately as I know it performs worse) that does work better, but it's not seemless and peformance between browsers is a bit variable too. I think what this means is I'll need to work on  a different way of organising my sounds :S

[Exca]

The mp3 looping problem is caused by the format. It can be mitigated by fiddling around the original sound source and compression: https://www.compuphase.com/mp3/mp3loops.htm

I'd suggest using multiple formats and drop them based on browser support. Most of the audio libraries have alternateExtension -configuration (or something similar) to handle this. I usually go with ogg as first choice and then mp3 for those that dont support ogg.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Exca

[charlie_says]

Thanks @Exca that's really useful stuff.

[bubamara]

On 5/26/2020 at 8:53 AM, charlie_says said:

hmmm thanks, on testing m4a (I was using mp3 deliberately as I know it performs worse) that does work better, but it's not seemless and peformance between browsers is a bit variable too. I think what this means is I'll need to work on  a different way of organising my sounds :S

AAC LC should give you seamless playback, but not AAC HE. Can't say much about performance, but I prefer using m4a + ogg (Vorbis) as fallback.

[charlie_says]

Just in case anyone comes here for information - using sound sprites actually works much better for loops, probably for the reasons relayed in the above posts.