ALL Flash Audio Stuttering: YouTube, Pandora, etc

Report · Oct 04, 2013

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

Report · Nov 15, 2013

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.

Report · Nov 15, 2013

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?

Report · Nov 17, 2013

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.

Report · Feb 21, 2014

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.

Report · Dec 07, 2013

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.

Report · Dec 07, 2013

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

Report · Feb 20, 2014

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

Report · Feb 20, 2014

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!

Report · Feb 20, 2014

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.

Report · Feb 21, 2014

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/):

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

Report · Feb 21, 2014

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.

Report · Feb 21, 2014

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!

Report · Feb 22, 2014

Thanks for the explanation and looking into it

Report · Dec 06, 2014

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.

Report · Nov 23, 2014

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!

Report · Nov 24, 2014

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)?

Report · Nov 25, 2014

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.

Report · Dec 04, 2014

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

Will

Report · Dec 05, 2014

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

Device	MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch Late 2013)
Processor	2.6GHz Intel Core i5
Memory	8GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics	Intel Iris 1536 MB
Google Chrome	39.0.2171.71 ()
OS	Mac OS X 10.10.1
Flash plugin	15.0.0.242 /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Versions/39.0.2171.71/Google Chrome Framework.framework/Internet Plug-Ins/PepperFlash/PepperFlashPlayer.plugin
Flash plugin	15.0.0.239 /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin (not used)

Report · Dec 06, 2014

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

Report · Nov 27, 2014

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.

Report · Nov 27, 2014

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

Report · Dec 08, 2014

I've also been experience the same problem on my Sony Vaio, it's been a little over 1 week now with this stuttering, garbled audio. Everything is up to date, I've disabled all my add-ons, still having the same issue. YouTube works fine when I uninstalled Flash (HTML5 plays fine). I use Firefox mostly, this also happens when I browse on Chrome. I can't find any solution to this problem.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Report · Feb 26, 2015

I was experiencing a pronounced stuttering when playing any audio in Chrome v40.xx on Mac OS X v10.10.2. This included YouTube, embedded Flash players, the embedded .wav playback, and Google Hangouts. Deleting the "Spelunky HTML 5" extension eliminated the issue.