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Topic: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support (Read 2886 times) previous topic - next topic
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Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Hi all,

Struggling to find a comprehensive answer to a simple question:
Browser support for MP3 seems pretty comprehensive according to this.

I'm wondering if the days of requiring ogg etc. is really required anymore. According to "Can I Use" (don't know if they're accurate) all major browsers now support MP3 for the HTML5 <audio> tag (just opera mini the exception).

Anyone have any suggestions about this?
I'd quite like to use opus. Hopefully full support for opus is coming.

Any help much appreciated. Apologies if this is a rather dull question, but a great deal of the HTML5 info on the web is 3 or 4 years old.

Thanks,

C.
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #1 –
Why don't you just include all 4 and let the browser choose what to use by the fallback mechanism?

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #2 –
Because it's a hassle to keep producing 4 versions of a file when one might do.
Increased upload time, increased server space, increased admin.

C.

PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #3 –
You would need both Opus and AAC to be compatible with most clients nowadays.

One format will simply not do, unless you go crazy and start experimenting with JS decoders.

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #4 –
Interesting. Does that mean this is wrong:
http://caniuse.com/#search=mp3

I wonder if AAC and Opus would be the way to go rather than MP3 and Ogg?

C.

PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #5 –
Firefox and Opera doesn't natively support decoding AAC and MP3, but it will work if underlying OS can supply decoders for those browsers.
The latest Firefox and Opera does support Opus so you can use that for cases where AAC isn't supported.
My recommendation is AAC and Opus.
Also make sure the Opus audio is in a WebM container rather than OGG, because Edge only supports it in WebM.

Quote
I wonder if AAC and Opus would be the way to go rather than MP3 and Ogg?
Ogg Vorbis might be useful if you want older versions of Firefox/Chrome/Opera (before 2012?) to work.
MP3 will have slightly better compatibility than AAC on certain less known older browsers such as IE Mobile, but IE Mobile has been replaced with Edge in Windows 10 Mobile.

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #6 –
@LithosZA

Thanks for the info. That's really helpful.
I've tested a number of browsers (including my own default browser "Palemoon"), and m4a (AAC) + ogg seems at present a sensible solution. I think you're right that over time this will likely become  AAC + Opus. So basically the HTML5 early days of MP3 + Ogg haven't really changed too much - I thought they might have.

Thanks again, the info you provided is much more practical than the various tables I'd browsed through.

Cheers,

C.

EDIT: One thing I noticed is that even though my htaccess file states:
AddType audio/ogg .ogg .oga .opus
That when only having .m4a and .opus Palemoon wouldn't recognise the audio, when I changed the <audio> code to include .ogg (without uploading the actual .ogg file) it did recognise and play it (because it played the .opus fle). So there seemed to be an issue where the browser can play .opus but looks for .ogg, regardless of the htaccess file. Almost makes we wonder what happens if you simply rename .opus files to .ogg -- but I'm sure that's not very sensible.
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #7 –
Opus seems to have really bad android support  http://caniuse.com/#search=opus , my notes say use Vorbis.
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #8 –
Yes. I'm sticking with aac + ogg.
I'll keep an eye on opus over the next few years.

Thanks everyone for the info.

C.
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)
 

Re: Web Audio in 2016 (HTML5) - Browser Support

Reply #9 –
MP3 support is not universal, it is not available in FireFox on Linux unless the user has the right GStreamer plugin.

Opus + AAC + MP3 is what I do, listed in the html5 audio tag in that order, and from the server logs it seems the MP3 audio is almost never requested by the browser. When it is requested, it's a gtk-webkit browser in Linux, they often use GStreamer so if the user disabled or doesn't have the Opus plugin, they may get the MP3 (there's a free Fluendo plugin for MP3)

When I have both Opus and Vorbis, the Vorbis is never played - so it seems that modern versions of every browser that support vorbis also support opus now.