Playback of static audio files waits until whole file loaded, ignores ranges on Firefox 115 with html5 about howler.js HOT 2 OPEN

to see where the changed FF114->F115 behaviour originates from I was looking at canplay / canplaythrough logic (canplaythrough is 3s+ of buffered frames from the current position) and checked the sources revisions.

There, the 'Rewrite TimeUnit.h' patchset is a candidate that introduced regressions (this one). A current FF117 nightly from 2023-07-23 has a change that fixes the behaviour. I haven't fully understood how ChannelMediaDecoder::ComputePlaybackRate alleviates it though (Edit: betting on the logic in DownloadProgressed()).

This isn't a howler.js issue, though workarounds help until the bugfix finds its release in the upcoming FF116 on August 1st.

from howler.js.

Hacky workaround:

if (isFirefox) { // it wouldn't break chrome, but I haven't tested exhaustively
  window.Howler._canPlayEvent = 'canplay' // fixes the "wait for file complete downloaded"
}
var sound = new Howl({
  src: 'foo.mp3',
  preload: 'metadata' // prevents loading/caching the full file in background
})

Tested on macOS 13.4 and Linux.

Weirdly related to #1495, although I wasn't affected by that...
(hat tip to Manuel, if you're reading this!)

A proper fix would probably address Firefox's (presumed) changed events:

• https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/blob/master/src/howler.core.js#L218
  (detect canplay first?)
• https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/blob/master/src/howler.core.js#L994
  (listen to multiple events?)

from howler.js.