Would sounddevice have ok latency for a reaction time experiment (PTB isn't working on my Macbook)

Builder
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OS (e.g. Win10): MacOS Monterey Version 12.6.2
PsychoPy version (e.g. 1.84.x): 2022.2.4
Standard Standalone? (y/n) y
What are you trying to achieve?:
I built a reaction time experiment that uses sound stimuli. Everything works perfectly using sounddevice. When I try to use PTB on my 2015 MacBook Pro, even on latency level 1, the sound is extremely distorted. This problem didn’t happen when I ran the experiment on a 2013 desktop Mac in my department’s computer lab, so I imagine the problem is with my computer rather than PsychoPy.

Logistically, it would be much easier to have participants complete the experiment on my MacBook than in the computer lab, but I don’t want to sacrifice too much timing precision. Pilot testing showed that the reaction times are on the order of 300–1000ms.

So my question is, could I safely use sounddevice, or would it introduce too much error into my data?

Alternatively, does anyone know of a solution to the sound distortion when using PTB? Here are audio recordings of what the stimulus should sound like, and what it sounds like using PTB:

What did you try to make it work?:
Closed all other programs
Restarted computer
Newer versions of PsychoPy
Older versions of PsychoPy
Changed computer’s Audio MIDI Setup output format
Specified 44100 sample rate in coder
Changed audio driver preference order

What specifically went wrong when you tried that?:
The sound remains distorted. There are no error messages.

2

Hi Erin, I’ve been working on a psychopy builder audo program on Mac recently and I’ve found that PsychoPy v2022.2.5 was the most stable. I’m using PTB also on my 2019 Macbook Pro running macOS Monterey 12.5.1, but have also ran it on multiple OS versions. Maybe an upgrade to this version might help?

All the best,
Colin

1 Like
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Thank you very much for the suggestion! Unfortunately, using the version you suggested did not fix the problem.