Firefox Sound Stutters

[garth]

Greetings, For the last 8 months or so, Firefox 3(FF2 did the same) audio begins to stutter and stall after running for about 5 hours or more. The only cure is to kill FF and restart it. I've researched it on Google, but there does not seem to be a cure. I have stopped Java, as that was thought to be the culprit, but it didn't help.

Any ideas?

[pags]

Any Flash animations running in any of the pages open during that time?  Flash can be a pig on resources.  What are you're system specs?

[garth]

Yes, Flash animations are usually going as I recall. I have a  Dell Precision Core 2 Pentium 6600 desktop, 2 GB Ram.

[pags]

I would suggest having top running when this occurs, but I would venture a guess that you will find that firefox/flash is causing other processes (ie your sound daemon) to be starved for resources.  I see it on Windows (in VMs) as well, on a Dell Latitude (laptop):
ntel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU         T5500  @ 1.66GHz
2 Gig RAM also

[garth]

So I'm guessing there is no solution for this?   It's quite an annoyance to be listening to say Pandora and then suddenly the sound stalls and stutters. The only solution has been to kill FF and restart it.

It happened again today, I watched on Ksysguard to see what resources may have been maxed out ..... but none were any different than when the audio doesn't stall. It's a real PITA.  I've been searching google for a solution, but for those who experience it .... it seems there is none. . .  . except to use Konquerer for audio since it's not a Mozilla product.

[pags]

I think (IIRC) that if you have a flash-heavy site in konqueror, it will eventually consume resources as well, if left unchecked.

A better flash (alternative?) is needed.

In the meantime, I suggest that flash heavy tabs/windows be closed periodically, when they are no longer required.

Not sure what else to suggest.  Perhaps someone else will chime-in on this thread?