iOS 15 Safari remote audio minimal/soft at max volume

[TC-bDelRosario1]

• I have verified that the issue occurs with the latest twilio-video.js release and is not marked as a known issue in the CHANGELOG.md.
• I reviewed the Common Issues and open GitHub issues and verified that this report represents a potentially new issue.
• I verified that the Quickstart application works in my environment.
• I am not sharing any Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
  or sensitive account information (API keys, credentials, etc.) when reporting this issue.

Code to reproduce the issue:
Running on twilio video https://github.com/twilio/video-quickstart-js with no code changes

1. Create a room on a laptop/pc (Mac/windows) on a supported browser, I used chrome on mac
2. Join same room on Safari on iPhone running iOS 15
3. Have the user on laptop speak
4. Notice volume of laptop user's voice that is received by iPhone user is very low even at max volume

Expected behavior:
Volume is at the same level as playing a video in the browser and also the same volume that we were receiving on iOS 14 and lower.

Actual behavior:
Volume is at a much lower level as playing a video in the browser and also a much lower volume than we were receiving on iOS 14 and lower.

Software versions:

• Browser(s): Safari 15.0
• Operating System: iOS
• twilio-video.js: 2.14.0 (demo app), also tried on 2.17.1
• Third-party libraries (e.g., Angular, React, etc.): React

[makarandp0]

Hello @TC-bDelRosario1, Thank you for reporting this issue. We are investigate this internally (VIDEO-7086), Will update you once we have more details.

[makarandp0]

We are still looking at this and I see that there is an open Safari Bug for the same issue: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=230902

[tt-mikeolson]

Hi Makarand, yep Les/Brendan and I filed that Safari bug

[anna-vasilko]

Hi all,
We have escalated this issue to Apple directly, as it seems to be an iOS15 Safari regression reproducible across different products.
It is perceived as a "low audio volume issue", when in reality it seems that in iOS15 Safari audio is routed into earpiece audio output by default instead of speaker.

[TC-bDelRosario1]

Update: We tried a suggestion that was offered in this comment: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=230902#c18

It ended up working for us and getting us close to previous functionality, this is a good step but we are still looking forward to a full solution.

[cindyloo]

this related issue also causes static upon createMediaElementSource
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227199

WebAudio createMediaElementSource() audio noise problem. Audio which is made with WebAudio createMediaElementSource() can cause noise. https://takahirox.github.io/ios-webaudio-test/ is the test to check it. I faced this problem on my iPhoneX iOS 14.8 Safari

[supernayan]

I was able to reproduce the issue on Chrome for iOS too.

[anna-vasilko]

Update:
Apple engineering team continues to confirm they are working on this bug fix as a high priority.
Since it is taking longer than anticipated, Twilio engineering team documented a workaround that application developers can implement for now. It is a suboptimal workaround with some side effects, but it's the best option until Apple fixes the bug.
Find the workaround described bellow under "iOS 15: Low audio volume in Safari"
https://github.com/twilio/twilio-video.js/blob/master/COMMON_ISSUES.md#safari-mobile

[thexeos]

Note: devicechange event is not fired for output device changes on Safari/iOS at this time. In fact, enumerateDevices does not return any output devices.

Another thing to note is that iPhone 8 does not exhibit this bug, thus this "hack" should not be applied, otherwise the sound is extremely loud and may damage the phone's speakers.

[charliesantos]

I verified and this appears to be resolved in iOS 15.2 beta 4. I will keep this issue open until we verify on iOS 15.2 stable release.

[edumansky]

I tested this with the newly released 15.2, and the issue is slightly improved but not fixed. It looks like now the audio comes out of both the earpiece speaker at the top of the phone and the main speaker at the bottom, whereas before it only came out of the earpiece. However the audio volume is still very low, so its a bit louder and semi-usable at maximum volume, but far from fixed.

[jonnyf007]

Just test it with my iphone 12 ios 15.2 and looks good for me

[charliesantos]

Verified on iPhone 11 iOS 15.2 stable release and the audio is better. I will keep this ticket open for tracking purposes until Apple fixes it on other devices. See the webkit bug for details.

[charliesantos]

We verified this is fixed on iOS 15.4 beta. We will update again once we verified on a stable release.

[charliesantos]

We verified this is fixed on iOS 15.4. Tested on iPhone 11.