Google meet's audio disturbed by Godot

[creative-brainiac]

Godot version

v4.0.beta17.official [c400205]

System information

Pop OS, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop

Issue description

During a google meeting I experienced a weird noise interference. The speech of the meeting is still kind of recognizable but it sounds like the Godot is trying to access the sound output while it is used by other application. I tested it multiple times and the noise correlates with the occurences when the Godot is running. It disappears a few seconds after the Godot is closed.

Steps to reproduce

Run Godot during google meet session.

Minimal reproduction project

The issue is connected with the application in general. Not with any specific project.

[Calinou]

Are you using Bluetooth audio? Audio quality is expected to decrease if you use both the microphone and audio output using Bluetooth.

[magikmw]

I'm also using Linux (Fedora 36 KDE with pipewire), and while I haven't encountered anything specific (although now that I think about it, maybe random volume drops are related?), I did notice that Godot editor in both 3.5.1 and 4.0.rc1 show up on the task manager as 'playing audio'. It's an icon similiar to those used by Firefox to indicate audio outputing tabs.

From the outside it appears that Godot keeps a connection to the system audio engine open permanently, which perhaps could lead to some form of disruptions or resource limits being hit.

Both our symptoms - Google Meet audio, and my drops (especially after long sessions of keeping the editor open), could be related and indicate some lower level issue with audio (on Linux at least).

Happy to help with testing if anyone technical can look into this.

[Calinou]

did notice that Godot editor in both 3.5.1 and 4.0.rc1 show up on the task manager as 'playing audio'.

This is expected until #63458 is merged, as the Godot editor needs to be able to play audio (for AudioStreamPlayer preview). You could start Godot with the --audio-driver Dummy command line argument to prevent this, but the editor will no longer be able to play audio.¹

Footnotes

1. Note that you have to edit the project directly from the command line, not go through the project manager or the --audio-driver Dummy CLI argument won't be passed to the editor. ↩