InformAction Forums

How does NoScript use the Linux Alsa sound system?
Since I upgraded from Debian Lenny to Squeeze, with only Alsa and OSS emulation (no sound servers,before or after upgrading)
it only sometimes makes a quick blip noise, like a wrong sample rate.
I have successfully done: cat block.wav > /dev/dsp - that did work ok.
I also noted that if I simply open an AlsaPlayer (alsa-output-version) instance, then NoScript's block.wav plays ok every time.
If I close AlsaPlayer then NoScript's block.wav no longer plays correctly.
Even when the block.wav is playing as the bad sounding blip, Firefox or Iceweasel (most versions) will properly play web medias.
This leads me to believe that NoScript uses a different way to access the sound system than the browsers built in media players do.
Note, I do not have Flash installed, just the (HTML5) built in playback, which works fine.
Thanks for any help and Thanks for NoScript!

NoScript is pure JS, it certainly doesn't fiddle with the idle OS internals on sound and let Firefox do all the work (NSPR's field?).

Is your issue that the sound begins to play before the device wakes up? Does playing short sounds using the HTML5 player work?

Yes it works fine.
I copied the block.wav file from NoScript and converted it to block.ogg.
Because if I open block.wav Firefox asks me to use an external application to play it,but the ogg version, just naturally plays.
Even though in about:config, I have: media.wave.enabled;true.
This file plays correctly when I use the file menu "open file ..." - "block.ogg".
Actually when it comes up I hear the sound block.???, and NoScript asks for confirmation to play it.
When I click NoScript's confirmation box, then I hear two almost simultaneous plays of block.ogg and block.wav.
Once NoScript has been told to play this particular file I can play it many time over, quite correctly.
However when I go to a non-allowed (NoScript) site, the block.wav from NoScript is very quick and short, almost unoticable.
This experiment leads me to believe that Firefox uses a different way to play the embedded media as compared to the NoScript audio alert file.
As I said previously, NoScript plays fine if I have Alsaplayer running, even if it is not playing anything at all, just open and idle on my desktop.
If I close Alsaplayer, then NoScript is barely heard, and I have tried adjusting all of the Alsa-Mixer controls, no effect.
This may very well be Debian Squeeze's audio problem, but I was hoping that if I learned how NoScript passed the block.wav file to Alsa, then I could narrow down the problem; especially since all was well using Lenny.
If this is a device wakeup issue, is there a Firefox or NoScript audio delay setting?
Thanks for NoScript
& Thanks for any help

NoScript uses the play() method of the nsISound interface.
If you can consistently reproduce this issue, it may worth filing a bug report at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org