[mcbits]

I tried making a simple Morse code trainer using the Web Audio API, which seemed perfectly suited to the task, but I ran into two major problems:

1. Firefox always clicks when starting and stopping each tone. I think that's due to a longstanding Firefox bug and not the Web Audio API. I could mostly elminate the clicks by ramping the gain, but the threshold was different for each computer.

2. This was the deal-breaker. Every mobile device I tested had such terrible timing in JavaScript (off by tens of milliseconds) that it was impossible to produce reasonably correct-sounding Morse code faster than about 5-8 WPM.

I found these implementation problems more frustrating than the API itself. At this point I'm pretty sure the only way to reliably generate Morse code is to record and play audio samples of each character, which wastes bandwidth and can be done more easily without using the Web Audio API at all.

[kobeya]

> Firefox always clicks when starting and stopping each tone. I think that's due to a longstanding Firefox bug and not the Web Audio API. I could mostly elminate the clicks by ramping the gain, but the threshold was different for each computer.

You sure it is not due to the sound files you are using not having a normalized start?

[mcbits]

There were no sound files. I used an oscillator and changed the gain with `setTargetAtTime` to briefly fade in and out. That should prevent any clicking, but in Firefox it required an excessive amount of time.

[kevingadd]

Is that actually a bug? If you start a tone instantly without ramping the volume, the first sample should be relatively loud, which will click. It is reasonable to want and even expect a different behavior, but it might not be what is specced.

[mcbits]

Yes, to clarify, I was using `setTargetAtTime` to ramp the volume, but it was still clicking in Firefox without an extra hack. At the time I found a bug report that appeared to point to the cause (something related to internal audio buffers that Firefox uses), but I'm not finding it at the moment. It could have been fixed.