Audio test not working

[christine]

Hi! My experiment begins with an audio check, in which I print out the audio (a small mp3 file that’s hosted on PCIbex), play it, and ask the participant to type the numbers they heard. In several cases, the audio keeps on looping visually without having sound, or the audio is muted visually on the printed out portion and is not able to be toggled.

Here is the demo link: https://upenn.pcibex.net/r/rbotXJ/

It’s a little confusing, because I copied and pasted the code from previous experiments, which didn’t have a problem.

Thanks so much!

[Jeremy]

Hi,

Those visual renderings are consistent with the audio file failing to load. I share your confusion, since you’re only fetching two audio files from the farm, so I can’t imagine the server being overloaded. Have you heard of other people experiencing this problem? I’m thinking it could be specific to your testing, if you sent multiple requests for that file across your test runs, maybe the server is being slow to serve it back, or your browser thinks it has a version in cache but fails to find it. I don’t know, really..

Jeremy

[christine]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your response. I had sent out the experiment to my lab to pilot, and several people in the lab experienced this.

Thanks,
Christine

[Jeremy]

Did you happen to upload an earlier version of that mp3 file, and overwrite it with a newer version since then?

Jeremy

[christine]

Oh, I did (though that was a couple weeks ago)! Is there some way to clear the experiment’s cache as to not have the 2 versions competing?

[Jeremy]

You can try deleting the mp3 file from the project altogether, and then uploading it again, and see whether the problem persists

Jeremy

[Author]

Posts