Audio libraries and presenting sound while screensharing experiment

I learned something recently through trial and error that may be useful to someone.

I wrote an experiment in Builder that I planned to present online to participants using screenshare. This was done because the experimenter needs to control the pacing of stimulus presentation while separately recording the participants’ response through a screen recording (Zoom).

I discovered through much trial and error that while the PTB library has superior audio presentation compared to the other audio libraries, it somehow interferes with audio capabilities of the screensharing app and prevents sound from being shared internally. The only way to share sound using PTB seems to be with the external microphone while you’re screensharing, which sounds terrible of course. We found the same issue for both Zoom and Google Meetings.

Using sounddevice, however, allowed internal sound sharing through the screenshare.

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