22 Replies Latest reply: Dec 6, 2014 7:01 AM by finnmousie RSS

    ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc

    mamarinaccio Community Member

      Within the last few days, something must have updated that is causing ALL my Flash Player streams to stutter miserably while playing in either Chrome or Safari. This inludes sites like YouTube, Pandora, Grooveshark, Spotify, etc.

       

      I'm running Mac OS X Version 10.8.5 on a MacBook Air 1.3Ghz Intel Core i5, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3.

       

      Adobe Flash version is the latest version.

       

      The stutter is an infrequent clicking that sounds like my speakers are being destroyed. Strictly a Flash problem because all local music and non-flash players play audio perfectly.

       

      Please help or participate if you're having a similiar problem.

       

      Best,

      MM

        • 1. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
          djslife Community Member

          Yes! I've had the same problem, in the last few days. All browsers, audio stutters when using the UI. Scrolling, switching tabs etc. Any use of the computer causes audio on Soundcloud and Mixcloud to stutter. YouTube HTML5 player is fine.

          • 2. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
            Mike M Community Member

            Odd that it does it with Chrome as well, because it has its own proprietary Flash Player, independent of the one Safari uses.  Have never experienced this on my Mini, and I test in Safari, Opera, Chrome, and Firefox.

             

            You may want to try a "clean install" to get rid of the plugin(s) instead of simply updating them. How to perform a "clean install" of Flash Player in Mac OS X

             

            Also, does this happen under a different account? Have you tried it under another account?

            • 3. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
              djslife Community Member

              I had to do a nuke and repaving of OS X and still get the same problems. It's the latest versions of the plugin that are doing it. the one in Chrome is still produced by Adobe, it is just built into the browser, rather than as a separate download.

               

              EDIT: just tested on a new account and it also stutters. This is why people hate Flash! A Core2Duo shouldn't even hesitate to run smoothly!

               

              EDIT 2: Disabling Flash in chrome://plugins causes Mixcloud to fall back (?!) on HTML5 player. No stutter.

              • 4. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                TheWalt2 Community Member

                I am having this exact same issue, and uninstalling Flash is not an option.  Looking forward to any real solutions, especially from Adobe.  This is a chronic problem.

                • 5. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                  CHOI TIKF Community Member

                  Same here, and I have a thread that hasn't been answered for days :/

                  • 6. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                    DNZ15 Community Member

                    Hello,

                     

                    I had the same problem, the audio and video stuttered. (Using a quite old MacBook with OSX Mavericks on it)

                    not that it matters that much because this is a simply a Chrome/Flash Player problem.

                     

                    A workaround (that worked for me) is to type chrome://plugins/ in the URL bar en click "details".

                    Now if you go to shockwave player, you will see two or three Flash player installs(plug-ins). You simply need to disable one or two of them and test with refreshing a youtube clip and open a new tab or so, and check if it still stutters.

                     

                    My guess is that the build-in Flash player has a conflict with the installed Flash player on the system (that's why you have more than one Schokwave player plug-in installed in Chrome). This is a problem (bug) that should be fixed.

                     

                    I hope that I've helped some people

                    • 7. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                      Jeromie Clark Employee Hosts

                      I'm more than happy to research this.  The truth is, the majority of us use Macs as our primary machines.  I haven't seen this issue before.  We definitely haven't been messing with audio codecs lately.

                       

                      Can you guys give me some specifics to help narrow down the testing?  Operating System Version, Problematic URLs, Model (Macbook Pro [Late 2007]), Browser and Flash Versions would all be helpful in trying to identify the common denominator.

                       

                      Thanks!

                      • 8. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                        Jeromie Clark Employee Hosts

                        Also, if this is laptop-specific, does the issue happen both when the laptop is plugged in and when it's unplugged?  I'm wondering if there's a power-conservation thing in play here.

                        • 9. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                          Mike M Community Member

                          djslife wrote:

                           

                          The one in Chrome is still produced by Adobe, it is just built into the browser, rather than as a separate download.

                          No... you're totally wrong.  The Flash Player plug-in for Mac you can download here is an NPAPI plugin. The proprietary plug-in in Chrome is a PPAPI plugin. Adobe doesn't make that modification... Google does. Chrome is the ONLY browser using the PPAPI plug-in. Safari, Firefox, Opera, SeaMonkey, IE, iCab, Maxthon, OmniWeb... all use the NPAPI plug-in.

                           

                           

                          Disabling Flash in chrome://plugins causes Mixcloud to fall back (?!) on HTML5 player. No stutter.

                          That's because HTML5 (mp4) doesn't require a plug-in.  That's actually not a "fallback". MP4, WebM or OGG is a default on pages where HTML5 video has been implemented. Flash is now the fallback.

                          • 10. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                            DNZ15 Community Member

                            Hello,

                             

                            I use:

                             

                            - a MacBook medio 2009

                            - OSX Mavericks (10.9.1)

                            - Latest Google Chrome version 33.0.1750.117

                            - Latest version of Flash Player at the moment (12.0.0.70)

                             

                            I did the following in Chrome to get around the problem (in chrome://plugins/):

                             

                            Schermafbeelding 2014-02-21 om 19.58.19.png

                             

                            If I remember good, I've had the audio stuttering problem about half a year, a year, something like that. I'm not using my MacBook daily but when I played some music for example with YouTube , It annoyed me a lot that the music stuttered when I opened a new tab in Chrome or when I was typing when I Googled something. Also when loading a page or clicking a link the stuttering occured.

                             

                            I tested If the problem occured when my laptop was plugged or unplugged but that didn't alter the behaviour.

                             

                            I guess the problem just occures when there are two or more flash-plugin entries in the Chrome plug-in tab enabled. Why would you need two Flash Players to play a video or audio etc. anyway? I guess it's just some conflict between the two plug-ins but I'm just a simple guy that does a wild guess.

                             

                            I hope you can do something with this info

                            cheers


                             


                             


                            • 11. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                              Jeromie Clark Employee Hosts

                              Okay, so it's happening in the PPAPI version (Google's Pepper Plug-In API) of Flash Player, and not the older NPAPI version (Netscape Plug-In API).  While you can run the NPAPI plug-in in Chrome for the moment, it's deprecated and support will be removed for all NPAPI plug-ins pretty soon.  The PPAPI Flash Player is on by default.

                               

                              I spent most of the day running Pandora in Chrome yesterday with the PPAPI version of 12.0.0.70 on 10.8.5 with a early 2013 Macbook Pro and wasn't running into this.


                              When we see popping in audio streams, it's frequently CPU contention. The PPAPI plug-in architecture sandboxes Flash Player as a defense-in-depth measure for preventing crashes from becoming exploitable.  This is an important protection in the modern threat landscape, but it means that there's a *lot* of extra processing happening vs. the NPAPI plug-in, which can talk to the hardware directly.

                               

                              I have some older Mac hardware around, so I'll spend some time with that today to see if I can get it to happen there.

                              • 12. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                Jeromie Clark Employee Hosts

                                I'm able to reproduce this on my late 2008 Macbook Pro by opening pandora in one tab and then firing up complex pages like cnn.com and yahoo.com in other tabs.  It does *not* happen on my 2013 Macbook, even with 20+ tabs going.

                                 

                                I filed the following bug to track the issue.  Please vote on it if you're experiencing this problem - we weigh votes significantly, and they will help get the issue a higher priority.

                                https://bugbase.adobe.com/#bug=3712016

                                 

                                Thanks!

                                • 13. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                  DNZ15 Community Member

                                  Thanks for the explanation and looking into it

                                  • 14. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                    davidmtml Community Member

                                    Hey everyone, was searching for an issue to this problem a bit ago and ran into this thread. I eventually solved the issue (for myself at least) by giving flash player higher priority via task manager.  Set it to "above normal", and all was well.  Hope this helps!

                                    • 15. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                      Jeromie Clark Employee Hosts

                                      This thread is about Mac, but thanks for the feedback.  Those of you that are affected, are you still seeing this in the latest Flash Player (15.0.0.223)?

                                      • 16. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                        mathildeo Community Member

                                        Yes, I got this problem recently. Brand new macbook pro (from around august) and this problem didn't happen until now recently (November)

                                        Tired the disabling in chrome://plugins , worked for a day and then I closed my mac. Didn't turn it off, just closed the top. When signing in again, it started with the stuttering again, still with the plugins disabled.

                                        • 17. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                          jas515 Community Member

                                          I don't know if my problem is the same as everyone else's here, but here's a capture of the issue I'm having:

                                          http://screencast.com/t/NZu2CzcNXbP

                                           

                                          I'm running a MBP with 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Yosemite (10.10.1), and Chrome 40.0.2214.10 beta (64-bit) (because I saw in another thread somewhere else that running the latest beta might fix this - it doesn't).


                                          If I restart the browser, the chatter/stutter goes away temporarily.

                                          • 18. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                            mathildeo Community Member

                                            Exactly the same problem for me. As you say, restarting the browser and/or mac does fix the problem temporarily.

                                            • 19. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                              will_in_KC Community Member

                                              Yes, I'm still seeing this on this even later version of the plugin:

                                              Adobe Flash Player (2 files) - Version: 15.0.0.242

                                               

                                              Shockwave Flash 15.0 r0


                                               

                                                Model Name: MacBook Pro

                                                Model Identifier: MacBookPro9,1

                                                Processor Name: Intel Core i7

                                                Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz

                                                Number of Processors: 1

                                                Total Number of Cores: 4

                                                L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

                                                L3 Cache: 6 MB

                                                Memory: 8 GB

                                                Boot ROM Version: MBP91.00D3.B08

                                                SMC Version (system): 2.1f175

                                                Sudden Motion Sensor:

                                                State: Enabled

                                               

                                               

                                              System Software Overview:

                                               

                                                System Version: OS X 10.10.1 (14B25)

                                                Kernel Version: Darwin 14.0.0

                                              • 20. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                                dglasser13 Community Member

                                                I am also seeing this issue. Videos played in Chrome stutter. Restarting the browser resolves the problem temporarily.

                                                 

                                                DeviceMacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch Late 2013)
                                                Processor2.6GHz Intel Core i5
                                                Memory8GB 1600 MHz DDR3
                                                GraphicsIntel Iris 1536 MB
                                                Google Chrome39.0.2171.71 ()
                                                OSMac OS X 10.10.1
                                                Flash plugin15.0.0.242 /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Versions/39.0.2171.71/Google Chrome Framework.framework/Internet Plug-Ins/PepperFlash/PepperFlashPlayer.plugin
                                                Flash plugin15.0.0.239 /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin (not used)
                                                • 21. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                                  finnmousie Community Member

                                                  I am experiencing these issues mostly with Chrome on new iMac and recent Macbook Air. Firefox appears to play the videos fine.

                                                  • 22. Re: ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc
                                                    finnmousie Community Member

                                                    I just checked my Flash Player preferences and I do NOT have PPAPI Plugin installed. I am running NPAPI version 15.0.0.239. This is contrary to your comments and I am experiencing the audio skipping in Chrome.