Hi,

I'm experiencing consistent audio playback issues on mobile devices, specifically on my Android smartphone. The audio randomly distorts, producing what sounds like digital glitches or CPU overload.

However, playback on desktop or laptop computers is flawless.

My WordPress website is hosted on Hostgator (Baby plan Shared Hosting) with PHP 8.2, and all the MP3 files are encoded at 320 kbps and 44.1kHz, stored in the WordPress media library. The project is not overloaded with content—there are only 12 tracks in total, both in the media library and in the Sonaar playlist, built with Elementor.

The distortion is very similar to what I experience in my DAW when working on a resource-intensive music production session, especially if the buffer size is set too low to avoid latency.

This makes me wonder if the issue could be related to the waveform animation in the sticky player, which might be consuming too many resources on smartphones. However, I'm not entirely sure if that's the cause.

Since the issue only occurs on smartphones, I’ve considered moving the files to AWS S3 with Cloudflare as a CDN, but I’m unsure if this would solve the problem, given that everything works perfectly on desktop.

I've attached a screen recording that demonstrates the audio distortion.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Hi Max,

Thank you for your response.

The issue occurs both with headphones/bluetooth and when playing through the phone’s built-in speakers.

I've temporarily opened the URL https://glocalsound.com/shop/ for testing on your side today.

I first tested on an iPad Pro, and while the sound was generally perfect, I did notice a small audio glitch once when I opened the menu to search for the screen recording app.

I also tested on different smartphones. On my Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite (6GB RAM, Octa-core Max 2.2 GHz), the distortions are consistent across different output methods. On a Samsung Galaxy A12, the distortions initially seemed less frequent, but after further listening, I noticed more digital glitches similar to those on my Xiaomi.

Additionally, I tested the platform on various desktop setups (Windows 11 and macOS 14 and 15) using different browsers, and everything worked perfectly, with no issues using loudspeakers, headphones, or other output methods.

I’ve also ruled out network connectivity as the cause, since the distortions occur both with a 500 Mb/s symmetrical Wi-Fi connection and on 4G data. Furthermore, I've noticed that the tracks take almost 5 seconds to load and start playing on mobile devices, which could point to a possible performance bottleneck.

It seems the issue is isolated to smartphones, and while I can’t pinpoint the exact cause, I suspect the MP3 Pro (Business) plugin's audio playback function might not be fully optimized for mobile devices or those with lower processing capacity than a laptop or desktop PC. However, I’m not entirely sure if this is the case.

Given that I have a platform launch scheduled for early next week, I'm keen to resolve this as soon as possible, but I understand that the root cause might be more complex than it appears. I noticed other users have reported similar issues on smartphones, as seen in https://sonaar.ticksy.com/ticket/2104866/, which suggests this might be a broader problem.

I’m happy to assist in any way I can to help debug or test solutions. I believe solving this issue would benefit not only my project but also other users who might be facing similar challenges.

Please let me know how we can move forward.

Thanks again for your support!

Best regards, Héctor

Hi Max,

Thank you for your suggestions!

I disabled the Animated Audio Spectrum on the sticky player and that has solved the issue. The audio now plays smoothly on smartphones without any distortions.

It seems the Audio Spectrum was the source of the problem. I really appreciate your help in pinpointing this!

Thanks again for your support.

Best regards, Héctor