Audio not playing in iPhone SE 2020 (Auto detection wrong? Not working?)

[bencresty]

Hi,

I've seen several issues here now about iOS audio not working in special versions of iOSes or iPhones/iPads, but some of them are pretty old. It seems though as if this is never (really) solved as today it still doesn't work as expected.

Thinking Howler solved this issue by now I have a website online now full of audio using Howler. However, I got feedback from a visitor with an iPhone SE that audio doesn't play. This surprised me as this is such a long standing issue and people already written that html5 as a fallback worked for them. So why isn't Howler still not switching to html5 when used on an iPhone SE?

Today I sent this visitor a test version of the website, but with Howler set to html5 audio. Now he got audio and it's working fine he says. Unfortunately I'm unable to test this myself as I'm using payed Browserstack for testing and audio on iOS is not supported in Browserstack and I don't have any people near with an iPhone SE.

After the feedback of this visitor though I can say that iPhone SE IS working with html5 audio.

I don't want to set html5 as default because it's disrupting every other users experience. Because when the website is set to html5 audio every audio is chopped off too early or too late so it doesn't sound good.

The README here says that Howler falls back to html5 audio, but clearly in this case it doesn't.
Please, could Howler be adjusted so it automatically falls back to html5 for the devices not working with webAudio so these iOS devices finally work with Hower audio? Or at least add iPhone SE to the list of devices that don't support webaudio as it clearly doesn't work there.

Thanks in advance!!

[tfulpeducationguy]

+1 Bump

[inear]

Some of the issues regarding iOS is not possible to track by Howler. From what I experienced recently iOS 15 blocks the webaudio-context on OS-level after the page/app has been in background for more than 25 seconds, making the webaudio-context report 'running' but with no sound playing for the user. This happens in Safari as well as WebViews in cross-platform apps like Capacitor. Might not be related to this issue, if the user start a new session and still not getting audio (if of course waiting for the first mouse/touch-input). But it might be the case if the user had the page open, then switched tab or used their phone for something else for a while. I posted a solution here if you think it can be related: #1525