Develop Reference

android code acting differently on device than emulator

hi i developed a simple app that should play a sound if a boolean is true and then another sound when it completes or just play the second sound if the boolean is false and it all works perfectly on the avd but when run on device it doesint let the first sound complete before jumping to the second
this is in the onCreate
setContentView(screen);//pl
if(msg==true) {//boolean set from other activity
playInfo();
}else if(msg==false){
playSound();
}
}
this is the play info method which starts to play but after a second it jumps to playsound method on the phone but works perfectly on avd
private void playInfo(){
mp = MediaPlayer.create(this, R.raw.msg);
mp.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
mp.start();
mp.setOnCompletionListener(new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
#Override
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
msg = false;
playSound();
}
});
}
this is the playsound method
private void playSound() {
mp = MediaPlayer.create(this, song);
mp.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
mp.start();
mp.setOnCompletionListener(new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
#Override
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
playSound();//loop the sound
}
});
}
again this works perfect on emulator but not on a device why would they act differently and any ideas on how it would be resolved?

The activity was set to landscape mode on the device this caused the activity to be redrawn very quickly after launching so it started got destroyed and started again with the boolean set to false however on the emulator this does not happen it just draws the activity once in landscape mode solved the problem by using 2 different mediaplayers and just play the first short sound over the other rather than rework the code.

Android MediaPlayer.start does not start

I have yet to find an answer to this.
I have a local file (R.raw.Bob); and I am trying to use MediaPlayer to play the file.
Sometimes it plays, sometimes it does not. I have another file which plays seemingly fine every time.
My activity flow is like this: In onCreate I do the following:
MediaPlayer mBackground = MediaPlayer.create(MainAct.this, R.raw.background);
mBackground.start(); // Works as expected.
Now in a different part of the activity I have the following:
MediaPlayer mBob= MediaPlayer.create(MainActivity.this, R.raw.Bob);
mBob.start();
And nothing occurs. I have used Log.i() and the execution goes through the relevant code but the file does not start.
Why does MediaPlayer sometimes work and sometimes does not, and is there a more reliable way of playing sound files?

Try this to start:
MediaPlayer mBob = MediaPlayer.create(MainActivity.this, R.raw.Bob);
mBob.setOnPreparedListener(new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() {
#Override
public void onPrepared(final MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.start();
}
});
and this to stop:
mBob.setOnCompletionListener(new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
#Override
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.stop();
}
});

MediaPlayer error 100 & 38 while using two MediaPlayer objects

I'm trying to build a game which plays some sounds effects on click & at the same time music in the background.
I tried implementing this with two MediaPlayer objects.
The first one, which served for the effects on click works great.
The second one however sometimes logs error 100, sometimes error 38. No sound at all.
Variables
private MediaPlayer mEffects;
private MediaPlayer mpSoundBackground;
Implementation of the sound media player:
mpSoundBackground = MediaPlayer.create(MainActivity.this, R.raw.soundbackground1small);
mpSoundBackground.setOnPreparedListener(new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() {
#Override
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) {
Logger.d("prepared");
musicPrepared = true;
}
});
mpSoundBackground.setOnErrorListener(new MediaPlayer.OnErrorListener() {
#Override
public boolean onError(MediaPlayer mp, int what, int extra) {
Logger.d("error "+what);
return false;
}
});
if (musicPrepared) {
mpSoundBackground.start();
Logger.d("music is prepared");
} else {
Logger.d("music is not prepared");
}
Implementation of the effects Media Player:
stopPlaying();
mEffects= MediaPlayer.create(MainActivity.this, R.raw.soundhit);
mEffects.start();
private void stopPlaying() {
if (mEffects!= null) {
mEffects.stop();
mEffects.release();
mEffects= null;
}
}
Update
To add to the confusion: It does seem to work in emulator
(Genymotion), but does not work on my OnePlus One, running Lollipop

You need to use the setOnPreparedListener method for both players. also if you want to play a sound on clicks consider using SoundPool.
Also in the public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) method, you can use mp.start there is no need for that flag, since you can not know for sure that it is prepared once you reach that prepared flag

I couldn't make the errors go away, until I reconverted my soundfile to MP3.
Now it plays both on device & simulator without any problems.
Moral of this story: if you are running into errors, try a few encodings of the same file (possibly a few file sizes too!), it might be the solution.

Android: Playing two sounds one after the other

I am trying to play two sound items, one after the other
MediaPlayer mp = null;
protected void produceErrorSound(int index) {
if (mp != null) {
mp.reset();
mp.release();
}
mp = MediaPlayer.create(this, index);
mp.start();
}
public void correctAnswerAndNext(){
produceErrorSound(R.raw.right1) ;
produceErrorSound(R.raw.right1) ;
}
but only second sound is produced.
is there any alternative approach?

I can't see any wait mechanism in your code.
You can use an onCompletionListener to receive a callback when your first MediaPlayer has finished playback. At that point you can start the second MediaPlayer.
An alternative way in Jellybean (and later versions) is to use the audio chaining functionality (i.e. setNextMediaPlayer) to automatically start another MediaPlayer as soon as the current one has finished playing. Something like this (I've omitted the calls to setDataSource etc for brevity):
mediaPlayer1.prepare();
mediaPlayer2.prepare();
mediaPlayer1.start();
mediaPlayer1.setNextMediaPlayer(mediaPlayer2);

Mediaplayer error (-19,0) after repeated plays

I have a game in which a sound plays when a level is completed. Everything works fine to start with but after repeating a level 10 or 20 times the logcat suddenly reports:
"MediaPlayer error (-19,0)" and/or "MediaPlayer start called in state 0" and the sounds are no longer made.
I originally had the all sounds in mp3 format but, after reading that ogg may be more reliable, I converted them all to ogg, but the errors appeared just the same.
Any idea how I can fix this problem?

I was getting the same problem, I solved it by adding the following code to release the player:
mp1 = MediaPlayer.create(sound.this, R.raw.pan1);
mp1.start();
mp1.setOnCompletionListener(new OnCompletionListener() {
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.release();
};
});

I think you are not releasing the mediaplayers you are using to play the sound..
You need to release() the media players otherwise the resources are not released , and you soon get out of memory (since you allocate them again next time). so,I think you can play twice or even thrice... but not many times without releasing the resources

MediaPlayer is not a good option when you are playing small sound effects as the user can click on multiple buttons very soon and you will have to create a MP object for all of them which doesnt happen synchronously. That is why you are not hearing sounds for every click. Go for the SoundPool Class which allows you to keep smaller sounds loaded in memory and you can play them any time you want without any lag which you would feel in a mediaplayer. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/SoundPool.html Here is a nice tutorial : http://www.anddev.org/using_soundpool_instead_of_mediaplayer-t3115.html

I solved both the errors (-19,0) and (-38,0) , by creating a new object of MediaPlayer every time before playing and releasing it after that.
Before :
void play(int resourceID) {
if (getActivity() != null) {
//Using the same object - Problem persists
player = MediaPlayer.create(getActivity(), resourceID);
player.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
player.setOnCompletionListener(new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
#Override
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
player.release();
}
});
player.setOnPreparedListener(new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() {
#Override
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.start();
}
});
}
}
After:
void play(int resourceID) {
if (getActivity() != null) {
//Problem Solved
//Creating new MediaPlayer object every time and releasing it after completion
final MediaPlayer player = MediaPlayer.create(getActivity(), resourceID);
player.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
player.setOnCompletionListener(new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
#Override
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
player.release();
}
});
player.setOnPreparedListener(new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() {
#Override
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.start();
}
});
}
}

This is a very old question, But this came up first in my search results So other people with the same issue will probably come upon this page eventually.
Unlike what some others have said, you can in fact use MediaPlayer for small sounds without using a lot of memory. I'll put in a little modified snippit from my soundboard app to show you what I'm getting at.
private MediaPlayer mp;
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.your_layout);
mp = new MediaPlayer();
}
private void playSound(int soundID){
mp.reset();
AssetFileDescriptor sound = getResources().openRawResourceFd(soundID);
try {
mp.setDataSource(sound.getFileDescriptor(),sound.getStartOffset(),sound.getLength());
mp.prepare();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
mp.start();
}
with the way I set it up, you create on MediaPlayer object that you reuse everytime you play a sound so that you don't use up too much space.
You call .reset() instead of .release() because .release() is only used if you are disposing of an object, however you want to keep your MediaPlayer Object.
You use an assetfiledescriptor to set a new soundfile for your mediaplayer to play instead of setting a new object to your mediaplayer address because that way you are creating new objects within the method that aren't being handled properly and you will eventually run into the same error as you described.
This is only one of many ways to use MediaPlayer but I personally think it is the most efficient if you are only using it for small sound applications. The only issue with it is that it is relatively restrictive in what you can accomplish, but that shouldn't be much of an issue if you are indeed using it for small sound applications.

i try delete emulator and new create emulator for remove error of (-19,0) media player.