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CoredumpArch

Member

Registered: 2026-09-18

Posts: 1

Firefox streaming vs raw audio quality

Hello,

I'm not sure where to post this type of question.

I'm thinking about writing a music player. The only question I have concerns the audio quality.

I'm thinking about having a frontend (web) and a backend service (all in localhost).

Will I have a better quality by writing the engine that reads the music or by streaming the music to the web browser (ex. Firefox) that will then read the music ? Or doesn't it matter ?

I'm thinking about using the FFMEPG library for reading the music.

Thank you very much in advance for any help

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,491

Re: Firefox streaming vs raw audio quality

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Professional_audio may give you some ideas/tips.

Moderator Note

moving to Programming & Scripting

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dimich

Member

From: Kharkiv, Ukraine

Registered: 2009-11-03

Posts: 820

Re: Firefox streaming vs raw audio quality

Will I have a better quality by writing the engine that reads the music or by streaming the music to the web browser (ex. Firefox) that will then read the music ?

Better than what? What is your metric of "quality"?

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,373

Re: Firefox streaming vs raw audio quality

psycho-acoustic compression will  10:1 up to 20:1 compared to PCM, decoding on the server and sending the PCM stream might run you into latency issues and also the server doesn't know the the client HW/mixer so you might have to convert the frequency on the client.

Are you aware that mpd and a metric shit-ton of clients for it exist?

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DeaD_EyE

Member

Registered: 2022-11-13

Posts: 9

Re: Firefox streaming vs raw audio quality

Will I have a better quality by writing the engine that reads the music or by streaming the music to the web browser (ex. Firefox) that will then read the music.

No

Usually an audio stream is using a lossy compression algorithm like mp3 or ogg. It doesn't matter which decoder is used. All decoders should give you the exactly same output.
If your browser decodes the audio stream, it should be the same, like FFmpeg is decoding the same stream.