Consider the following case: STR: 1- Open https://jyavenard.github.io/htmltests/tests/webaudio/decodeAudioData.html 2- Select half-a-second-48000.mp3 at the bottom of the list 3- Click on play Safari will show 26496 frames 0.552s. This file is exactly .5s long and made of 24000 frames. It contains a XIPH header that provides the encoder delay and padding information. Chrome and Firefox properly parse those MP3 which results in a continuous audio stream when looping. On Safari you can here the incorrectly generated blank frames. The ability the produce frame-exact content is important for web audio applications. WebKit uses ExtAudioFileRead to demux and decode this file and it returns too many frames.
<rdar://problem/80998793>
this got fixed on macOS Monterey.