Is there a way to get better service quality? - achieving smooth playback in the Web Player

I’ve had Syrinscape for 5 years now(?) Being a DnD hardcore player it’s my choice for getting sound, moods and music into the game. I’m combining it with Foundry and the free downloadable syrincontrol module that allows me to access Syrinscape from within the game. So - what you’re offering - the promise of this - is great. I love it. But there are some really annoying issues that have remained basically the same from day 1. The fact that I’m I need to connect online and use your servers. It’s a great idea. But almost every time we play the server starts lagging or the streaming starts to break up. It’s at the point where I prefer to download the sounds to the offline player to secure that I can actually use what I’m paying a pretty heft sum for to the quality I would expect.

But the offline player hasn’t been touched for ages. It won’t allow me the flexibility of the online version. What’s more - it stops me from integrating Syrinscape into the Foundry VTT experience.

So my question is - is there anything I can do, or maybe you’re working at to solve this? Am I the only one experiencing these streaming issues, lagging, crackups in sound, non-responsiveness to the interface as you interact with it?.

Really sorry to raise this and if it feels negative but - I really love this - I want it to work.

/Cheers!

Beorn

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I concur completely. The online player is too laggy even on a high-end machine with premium internet.

I would LOVE to see the offline fantasy player developed.

Heya @bjornsundell and @msplanton, :beers:

Thanks for your questions and comments etc :slight_smile: Always VERY welcome! :cupcake:

I’ll give you a whole lot of info that should be useful to LOTS of peeps!

Soooo… the Web Player is a VERY different beast to the Unity based Fantasy Player.

It has allowed some AMAZING things (eg Players joining without an account or app install, automatic download of required Samples without preinstalls, better quality panning and reverb), BUT also the Web Player is MUCH more exposed to the power profile of both the system and browser it is running on.

Very interestingly there are some specific things that the Web Player struggles with that didn’t cause problems for the Fantasy Player (these are the things causing the sound to break up on some content).

After much experimentation we have discovered there is a fairly clear threshold between ‘sound-good’ and ‘sound-bad’ in the Web Player, and as long as we keep the demands on the Web Player below a certain threshold on any given device then the sound stays smooth and nice.

We have also discovered there were a number of specific problematic behaviours which we are now hunting and eliminating on all public content.

To do so, we have got ourselves a ‘beloved-old-laptop’ which we are now using as our benchmark machine. If content plays happily on this device we are confident to release it to the public AND it should play happily on most players machines out in the big-scary-wide-world.

So, ALL new content, since about 4 months ago plays well on this device AND now we are going back through ALL old content to ensure it works too.

AND we have created a ranked list of ALL Moods on Syrinscape with a weighted measure of how hard it might be for a device to play back the content on the Web Player… the team is working our way through that list, from worst downwards. We have currently ‘fixed’ 125 Moods, out of probably about 300 that may be causing issues on some devices.

The things causing the most problems:

  • we have found several commonly used Elements that (by obeying their parameters) end up triggering 10s of simultaneous Samples overlapped-apped-pped-ped-ed. Unity didn’t have a prob doing this, the Web Player finds it harder. It has been easy to fix these Elements without changing the sound of the final mix hardly at all.
  • some Moods have been using MANY different Reverb presets simultaneously that actually sound VERY close. It doesn’t really make sense using “city”, “forest”, “mountain”, AND “plain” all in one Mood, especially when the actual location we are trying to synthesize is in the “city”. Rationalising these four reverb units to just "city is often enough to push the Web Player from sounding bad to sounding good.
  • and finally, sometimes simply turning off a couple of VERY quiet Elements that aren’t really contributing anything can also get the Web Player over this threshold. For example, we are playing sound… we have four different wind loops going in our location ambiance (simple ambiances are often not very busy so that works)… but now battle has started (very noisily) and with lots of roars and weapon sounds and foley, we really don’t need ALL those winds anymore (they are only adding white noise, thus actually reducing clarity), so switching a couple of them off clears up the sound.

Soooo… all that goes towards saying:

  • the Web Player is amazing
  • it has trouble playing some of our older content on SOME devices
  • we are fixing
  • let us know when you run into something specific that won’t play smoothly and we’ll take a look at that first (send us the SoundSet name + Mood name) via the support email.
  • when you find something that doesn’t play, simply clicking off a few Elements should usually clear things up = ESPECIALLY if you see an Element with its play-ring madly spinning as it triggers lots and lots of Samples all at once. Help us hunt those too!
  • when building content, restrict yourself to 3 or 4 simultaneous reverb presets in any given Mood + watch out for those naughty Elements, and fix them by spreading out the playback a little.

The Web Player IS our focus for development and improvement still for the moment, but that of course doesn’t rule out circling back to the Fantasy Player at some point. Where we focus our time depends on user feedback (like that above), and usage data (what people are actually running for their games) which is overwhelmingly the Web Player right now.

So, MAINLY, continue to make yourself heard. We need to know what people are experiencing! And we listen! So many of the really good features in Syrinscape (including Online Player itself) are there because users suggested them! :slight_smile:

Phew! Quite the post from Ben.

Ask more questions to clarify as might be useful!

And let us know how you go with the comments above.

3 Likes

A thing that can help right now:

  • Try running Syrinscape in a separate browser (ie if you normally use Chrome, run Syrinscape in Firefox). Run this browser with NO other tabs open and with NO browser extensions running in the browser that the Syrinscape Web Player is running in. The Web Player is at the mercy of the system’s and browser’s preference for apportioning CPU access, so giving the browser nothing else it and go and give its attention to can help.
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Benchmarking your current device:

  • Go to app.syrinscape.com and test your device with the “Rise of the Herald” SoundSet

  • If your device will run “Confronting the high priest” then it should run ALL content in Syrinscape with no probs (once we have finished hunting down the remaining ‘problematic’ Moods referred to above).

  • If your device can’t get that one going, but WILL run “Confronting the high priest (lite)” then it will still work well for you, but you may have to chose the “(lite)” option for a few of the Moods Syrinscape offers.

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Wow, Ben. Super helpful post. I’ll be doing some testing myself this weekend!

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Just to be clear you mean no browser extensions, right? Coming from Fantasy Grounds Unity, extensions means somethine completely different to me… lol.

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Oo! Yes. No Browser extensions running in the browser that the Syrinscape Web Player is running in.

(I’ll go back and edit my post, which will make your question look a bit silly now, but will make it clear to everybody). :smiley:

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I’m sure it was clear to most and it was pretty clear to me, just 100% confirming. I plan to run some tests this weekend on cpu load, etc… Thanks!

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Thanks indeed for the extremely helpful explanation!

Adding on to the above; my main point of ‘complaint’ is that if I wish to change mood (custom, not pre-made), sometimes the browser does not seem to respond. The current mood keeps playing and there is no visual cue (the playback circles around the elements) that anything is changing. The only way to then change mood is by closing the web player and reopening it. I’m not sure whether the problem lies in browser-web player communication or if it is in the browser something is going wrong.
This problem seems to be worse the longer I don’t change the mood/use the syrinscape browser.
I tried the new app version in browser, but once it plays more than 4 elements my laptop starts to be unable to handle it (think forest leaves, wind, rain, and music).

I recently actually downloaded the Fantasy player to bring the moods offline to see if this would negate the issue.

Not sure if this is at all helpful, but figured I would add on the feedback. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for getting back on this Ben. I’ll Try out the suggested mood and work on my soundsets to adjust them to fit within the limitations.

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Just curious. Is there a list of soundsets that have a regular and lite versions?

Disregard. I just typed in search “lite” and was able to get my list. Thanks!

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Brilliant, you beat me to it! That list will continue to grow as we work our way through them

Will it grow or shrink? Meaning, I thought the robust moods/music were being redone so there wouldn’t need to be a lite version. Just trying to understand where this stands currently.

For now I can definitely say that my laptop (pretty good machine) struggles with cutouts and clipping for those soundsets that have a lite version (when I used the “std” version of the sound).

However, I do seem to be able to run the lite versions pretty well. Thanks for all the effort here!

That’s great to hear (pun intended) :smiley:

Us creating a (lite) version will be very rare… just when there is something that REALLY CAN benefit from being a bit stupid busy.

Usually performance is being fixed by just healing a troublesome element OR removing just a couple of things that were inaudible anyway (very soft wind and an occasional dog in a LOUD battle mood).

IMPORTANT: since YOUR device seems to be just on the same threshold of strength as our test device, DO let us know ASAP when you find a SoundSet with MOODS that won’t play smoothly… then we can fix that one straightaway… otherwise we will keep working our way down the list. I’ve made an algorithm that is trying to guess the potentially hardest to play content so I am looking at that first.

Either way… GAME ON! :slight_smile: :crossed_swords:

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