Bug 205599 – Closing an AudioContext kills native audio played using an AVAudioPlayer

• Status: NEW
• Component: Web Audio

My hybrid app uses html5 webaudio for sound effects, as well as native audio for background music. I'm closing an AudioContext as part of a hack to get iOS 12 to play audio at the correct sample rate (related to https://stackoverflow.com/a/37057640/2095953). However, when I close the context, it kills any native audio that is already playing using AVAudioPlayer. It's not a hard stop, it's a quick fadeout just like if you press the home button. This is unexpected because I wouldn't expect a webview to be able to affect native audio at all. My current workaround is delaying my native audio from starting until after I've done the context close + a short timeout.

Here's some simplified sample code to show the flow:

// Objective C - runs first
player = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:pathURL error:&err];
[player play];

// JS - play a short sound that's at 48khz, then recreate context to get iOS 12 to play audio at the correct sample rate instead of 44.1khz.
htmlAudioEl.play().then(() => {
    htmlAudioEl.pause();
    this.ctx.close();
    this.ctx = new AudioContext({sampleRate: 48000});
});

// All audio then fades out and never plays again.

Info
----------
Using WkWebView for the webview
Replicated on:
- iPod Touch 6th gen running iOS 12.4.3
- iPad Pro 11inch running iOS 13.2.3

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/58211693>

After further testing, I've discovered more details. There are 2 scenarios that this bug appears to impact:

Scenarios: 
1) Close a javascript AudioContext and create a new one.
  Effects:
    - Triggers a native audio interruption "AVAudioSessionInterruptionTypeBegan".
    - BUT, this interruption never ends, IE, "AVAudioSessionInterruptionTypeEnded" is never triggered. However, calling [player play] on the player will cause audio to resume playing anyways.

2) Do the above while the system is under heavy load. Ways I've tested:
- Force close the app and immediately reopen it.
- Use Safari's remote web inspector to repeatedly refresh the cordova webview.

This *sometimes* causes the following:
    - The newly created javascript context will drop to the "interrupted" state 1 or more times shortly after it's been created. Resuming the context allows it to continue playing.


Needed Fix:
- iOS needs to send an "AVAudioSessionInterruptionTypeEnded" notification after the context is closed, so that the app knows it's ok to play audio again.

Hacky Workaround:
- After closing a js AudioContext, assume all native audio interruptions in the next couple of seconds are caused by the close, and tell AVAudioPlayer to play anyways. This means that if a user causes a real interruption in those few seconds, like receiving a phone call or opening Siri, the app will incorrectly keep playing audio.