Disable panner node for Android

[takahirox]

Currently Android seems to have a panner node audio problem. With 10 or many Panner nodes (the number depends on Android OS version or device. The problem seems to happen more easily on older or lower-end devices) the audio can be crackled or broken. See #5057

We already reported it. Until it will be resolved on Android end, I would like to suggest to force to disable it as short-term workaround. The change is small. It may not be a perfect solution but it is a short-term workaround. I hope we can accept.

[netpro2k]

We might try switching to equalpower as a less agressive workaround. I think losing positional audio is a pretty huge loss to the utility of Hubs. If we do end up doing this we should make sure it does not apply to android based VR headsets since I don't think we have had people report issues there, and positional audio is an even bigger loss there.

[netpro2k]

Oops, did not mean to close the PR

[takahirox]

We might try switching to equalpower as a less agressive workaround.

Hm, from the test in #5057, equalpower just slightly mitigates the problem. Perhaps it isn't good enough. But yeah, it should be less problematic. We might be able to try it at first and see if we need other workarounds.

we should make sure it does not apply to android based VR headsets since I don't think we have had people report issues there, and positional audio is an even bigger loss there.

Good point. If we force to disable it, we may be able to start to force only on Android phones.

[brianpeiris]

I agree it's unfortunate we have to completely turn off positional audio for all android devices. I don't expect this to be fixed on Android or Chrome any time soon. Perhaps they will take months to fix it. If the fix ends up being in Android, then it's possible that many existing users with old phones may not receive the update for even longer, if at all.

If possible, perhaps we could disable positional audio on Android if there are more than 15 users in the room. That way users who often use Hubs with a small number of people will not be affected.

[takahirox]

If possible, perhaps we could disable positional audio on Android if there are more than 15 users in the room

At first I thought of that option but I started to feel I want to avoid because

1. The threshold number very depends on device. For example the number should be about 5-10 for my device.
2. The audio quality depends on the number of audio panner nodes so we also need to monitor the number of audio/video objects (any thing else?). The code can be complexed
3. Perhaps the problem will be fixed in months, I don't feel like to insert a complex code for short-term workaround

So I'm thinking of disabling on Android Phone devices regardless of the number of people. I may change my mind if the workaround code which disable positional audio depending on the number of used panner nodes, can be simple.

[takahirox]

I have updated the PR to disable it only for Android Phones.

Some thoughts.

• Probably the problem will be fixed on the Android end sooner or later. I want very simple short-term workaround.
• Not disabling it for VR devices makes sense to me because we haven't heard the problem on VR devices (yet) and no positional audio may be big experience loss on VR devices.
• I'm thinking of introducing equalpower panning mode Consider to use equalpower panning model #5278 as optimization for low-end devices. But not as workaround for the Android panner audio problem because it seems to only slightly mitigate the problem.

[takahirox]

Closing in favor of #5540