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I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 and using Firefox 76.0.1 as my Web browser.

For some reason, the audio on certain Web sites comes through as a garbled, fuzzy, unintelligible mess. This does not happen on every site; I can watch videos on YouTube fine all day long, but any video on Twitter is unwatchable. System audio—Clementine, Rhythmbox, Skype, VLC, etc.—is all fine.

For example, here is a recording of how this video sounds on my computer.

  • I've tried headphones, but it made no difference
  • I've run through every configuration within Sound Settings - none made a difference
  • I've tried Firefox in safe mode but the issue persists, so it's not my extensions
  • I've tried on another computer but the issue persists, so I don't think it's hardware-related
  • I've tried Chromium and the video sounds fine, so I think it must be a Firefox issue
  • I don't have any speech-dispatcher processes running (per this answer)
  • I've disabled media.webspeech.synth (per this answer)
  • Unlike a lot of similar issue reports (e.g., this one) this issue does not go away with time and happens every single time for certain sites (but never for others)
08915bfe02
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2 Answers2

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This is a very old question, however it still shows up as one of the top results when searching this issue, so I'm adding in the solution that worked for me.

After coming across an obscure post on the Linux Mint Forums I found the solution that ultimately fixed it for me. In my case the audio garbling was caused by the Firefox recommended extension "User-Agent Switcher" and the audio was immediately fixed by either removing the extension, or by selecting basically any user-agent other than "default" in the extension (make sure you refresh after changing the user agent).

I'm not sure why it causes that issue but after 6 months of the problem I'm just glad its finally solved for me. Hopefully this helps others.

SparkleStep
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SparkleStep's answer is partly right, but I was never using the Firefox add-on mentioned. However, I was using Random User-Agent (Switcher) by Paramtamtam four years ago, and testing it now confirms that it has the same issue.

The issue seems to be present whenever the User-Agent contains AppleWebKit or Safari. Checking on an actual Apple device using Safari does not cause the issue, nor does using a different browser on the same device but spoofing it to be Safari, so my best guess is that there's some library or something on Apple devices that the real Safari depends on for audio, and spoofing that you're using Safari on a non-Apple device that lacks that library causes the audio to break.

08915bfe02
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