Low sound playing when volume should be turned off on Pavlovia

Online experiments
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URL of experiment: Pavlovia
Github URL: Fionn Byrne / Task · GitLab

Description of the problem:

Hi,

I’m having an issue when I run my experiment on Pavlovia at the moment. A low sound (in terms of volume) is heard during a condition where the volume should be turned off. My experiment has three conditions: a visual, an auditory, and a multisensory condition. During the visual condition, I have inputted a placeholder sound (an “A” tone), and then I turn off the sound by putting the volume at 0. I do this as some trials have audio and some don’t and therefore, it was the easiest way to have trials with both sound and no sound in the same routine.

Here is an example from a excel file where this issue occurs:

Screenshot 2022-02-03 143914
Screenshot 2022-02-03 143914727×80 2 KB

This works properly when I run it on PsychoPy, i.e. there is no sound during the visual condition. However, when I run the task on Pavlovia, there is a very low sound that can be heard. Although, the sound is only heard when the first two images are presented sequentially (to which participants need to discriminate between), but when the third “target image” is presented, which is contained in a separate file, there is no sound.

Here is a picture of the routine to give you a better sense of what I am talking about.

Screenshot 2022-02-03 144233
Screenshot 2022-02-03 1442331397×303 11.3 KB

Can anyone help me with this?

Many thanks,
Fionn

2

I’ve previously had issues with trying to use letters for sounds online. Try changing it to a frequency.

3

Hi There,

Yes this is a bug. Try using wav files instead of inbuilt tones (i.e. “A” or “250”) - that will use a different sound library when run online, and 0 should be silent.

Sorry you encountered this but hopefully this helps,
Becca

4

Thank you, that works perfectly! I replaced all the inbuilt tones with wav files and and now there is no sound during the visual condition of my task.