I am using Python Kivy for an Android Game. I want to play a sound on an event
sound = SoundLoader.load("sound.wav")
def onEvent():
sound.play()
, and It works. But now the problem: Of course an event can, and in my case will happen again before the sound is done playing from the last event. And as the sounds are based on a play/pause idea I am getting a problem playing multiple sounds of the same object at once. That can be solved like this for first:
onEvent():
SoundLoader.load("sound.wav").play()
As this creates a new object all the time, and so is able to play it the same time another event plays the sound. But the problem using this method is quite obvious, because the sound must be loaded everytime the event occurs, and so causes a delay until it's played.
Is there a more useful way to do this?
{ if you don't understand what I am talking about, or just don't see the problem, feel free to ask }
You can workaround this by loading multiple instances of the sound.
For instance
sounds = [SoundLoader.load("sound.wav") for _ in range(10)]
index = 0
and then
def play():
sounds[index].play()
index = (index + 1) % len(sounds)
The more sounds you load, the more instances you can have playing at the same time (in this example 10).
I'm writing a simple NDK OpenSL ES audio app that records the users touches on a virtual piano keyboard and then plays them back forever over a set loop. After much experimenting and reading, I've settled on using a separate POSIX loop to achieve this. As you can see in the code it subtracts any processing time taken from the sleep time in order to make the interval of each loop as close to the desired sleep interval as possible (in this case it's 5000000 nanoseconds.
void init_timing_loop() {
pthread_t fade_in;
pthread_create(&fade_in, NULL, timing_loop, (void*)NULL);
}
void* timing_loop(void* args) {
while (1) {
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &timing.start_time_s);
tic_counter(); // simple logic gates that cycle the current tic
play_all_parts(); // for-loops through all parts and plays any notes (From an OpenSL buffer) that fall on the current tic
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &timing.finish_time_s);
timing.diff_time_s.tv_nsec = (5000000 - (timing.finish_time_s.tv_nsec - timing.start_time_s.tv_nsec));
nanosleep(&timing.diff_time_s, NULL);
}
return NULL;
}
The problem is that even using this the results are better, but quite inconsistent. sometimes notes will delay for perhaps even 50ms at a time, which makes for very wonky playback.
Is there a better way of approaching this? To debug I ran the following code:
gettimeofday(&timing.curr_time, &timing.tzp);
__android_log_print(ANDROID_LOG_DEBUG, "timing_loop", "gettimeofday: %d %d",
timing.curr_time.tv_sec, timing.curr_time.tv_usec);
Which gives a fairly consistent readout - that doesn't reflect the playback inaccuracies whatsoever. Are there other forces at work with Android preventing accurate timing? Or is OpenSL ES a potential issue? All the buffer data is loaded into memory - could there be bottlenecks there?
Happy to post more OpenSL code if needed... but at this stage I'm trying figure out if this thread loop is accurate or if there's a better way to do it.
You should consider seconds when using clock_gettime as well, you may get greater timing.start_time_s.tv_nsec than timing.finish_time_s.tv_nsec. tv_nsec starts from zero when tv_sec is increased.
timing.diff_time_s.tv_nsec =
(5000000 - (timing.finish_time_s.tv_nsec - timing.start_time_s.tv_nsec));
try something like
#define NS_IN_SEC 1000000000
(timing.finish_time_s.tv_sec * NS_IN_SEC + timing.finish_time_s.tv_nsec) -
(timing.start_time_s.tv_nsec * NS_IN_SEC + timing.start_time_s.tv_nsec)
I am programming for android 2.2 and am trying to using the
SoundPool class to play several sounds simultaneously but at what feel like random times sound will stop coming out of the speakers.
for each sound that would have been played this is printed in the logcat:
AudioFlinger could not create track. status: -12
Error creating AudioTrack
Audio track delete
No exception is thrown and the program continues to execute without any changes except for the lack of volume. I've had a really hard time tracking down what conditions cause the error or recreating it after it happens. I can't find the error in the documentation anywhere and am pretty much at a loss.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Edit: I forgot to mention that I am loading mp3 files, not ogg.
i had almost this exact same problem with some sounds i was attempting to load and play recently.
i even broke it down to loading a single mp3 that was causing this error.
one thing i noted: when i loaded with a loop of -1, it would fail with the "status 12" error, but when i loaded it to loop 0 times, it would succeed. even attempting to load 1 time failed.
the final solution was to open the mp3 in an audio editor and re-edit it with slightly lesser quality so that the file is now smaller, and doesn't seem to take up quite as many resources in the system.
finally, there is this discussion that encourages performing a release on the objects you are using, because there is indeed a hard limit on the resources that can be used, and it is system-wide, so if you use several of the resources, other apps will not be able to use them.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-platform/tyITQ09vV3s/discussion%5B1-25%5D
For audio, there's a hard limit of 32 active AudioTrack objects per
device (not per app: you need to share those 32 with rest of the system), and AudioTrack is used internally beneath SoundPool,
ToneGenerator, MediaPlayer, native audio based on OpenSL ES, etc. But
the actual AudioTrack limit is < 32; it depends more on soft factors
such as memory, CPU load, etc. Also note that the limiter in the
Android audio mixer does not currently have dynamic range compression,
so it is possible to clip if you have a large number of active sounds
and they're all loud.
For video players the limit is much much lower due to the intense load
that video puts on the device.
I'll use this as an opportunity to remind media developers: please
remember to call release() for media objects when your app is paused.
This frees up the underlying resources that other apps will need.
Don't rely on the media objects being cleaned up in finalize by the
garbage collector, as that has unpredictable timing.
I had a similar issue where the music tracker within my Android game would drop notes and I got the Audioflinger error (although my status was -22). I got it working however so this might help some people.
The problem occurred when a single sample was being output multiple times simultaneously. So in my case it was a single sample being played on two or more tracks. This seemed to occasionally deadlock or something and one of the two notes would be dropped. The solution was to have two copies of the sample (two actual ogg files - identical but both in the assets). Then on each track even although I was playing the same sample, it was coming from a different file. This totally fixed the issue for me.
Not sure why it works as I cache the samples into memory, but even loading the same file into two different sounds didn't fix it. Only when the samples came out of two different files did the errors go away.
I'm sure this won't help everyone and it's not the prettiest fix but it might help someone.
john.k.doe is right. You must reduce the size of your mp3 file. You should keep the size under 100kb per file. I had to reduce my 200kb file to 72kb using a constante bit rate(CBR) of 32kbps instead of the usual 128kbps. That worked for me!
Try
final ToneGenerator tg = new ToneGenerator(AudioManager.STREAM_NOTIFICATION, 50);
tg.startTone(ToneGenerator.TONE_PROP_BEEP, 200);
tg.release();
Releasing should keep your resources.
I was with this problem. In order to solve it i run the method .release() of SoundPool object after finish playing the sound.
Here's my code:
SoundPool pool = new SoundPool(10, AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, 50);
final int teste = pool.load(this.ctx,this.soundS,1);
pool.setOnLoadCompleteListener(new OnLoadCompleteListener(){
#Override
public void onLoadComplete(SoundPool sound,int sampleId,int status){
pool.play(teste, 20,20, 1, 0, 1);
new Thread(new Runnable(){
#Override
public void run(){
try {
Thread.sleep(2000);
pool.release();
} catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
}
}).start();
}
});
Note that in my case my sounds had length 1-2 seconds max, so i put the value of 2000 miliseconds in Thread.sleep(), in order to only release the resources after the player have had finished.
Like said above, there is a problem with looping: when I set repeat to -1 I get this error, but with 0 everything is working properly.
I've noticed that some sounds give this error when I'm trying to play them one by one. For example:
mSoundPool.stop(mStreamID);
mStreamID = mSoundPool.play(mRandID, mVolume, mVolume, 1, -1, 1f);
In such case, first track is played ok, but when I switch sounds, next track gives this error. It seems that using looping, a buffer is somehow overloaded, and mSoundPool.stop cannot release resources immediately.
Solution:
final Handler handler = new Handler();
handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
mStreamID = mSoundPool.play(mRandID, mVolume, mVolume, 1, -1, 1f);
}, 350);
And it's working, but delay is different for different devices.
In my case, reducing the quality and thereby the file sizes of the MP3's to under 100kb wasn't sufficient, as some 51kb files worked while some longer duration 41kb files still did not.
What helped us was reducing the sample rate from 44100 to 22050 or shortening the duration to less than 5 seconds.
I see too many overcomplicated answer. Error -12 means that you did not release the variables.
I had the same problem after I played an OGG audio file 8 times.
This worked for me:
SoundPoolPlayer onBeep; //Global variable
if(onBeep!=null){
onBeep.release();
}
onBeep = SoundPoolPlayer.create(getContext(), R.raw.micon);
onBeep.setOnCompletionListener(
new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
#Override
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) { //mp will be null here
loge("ON Beep! END");
startGoogleASR_API_inner();
}
}
);
onBeep.play();
Releasing the variable right after .play() would mess things up, and it is not possible to release the variable inside onCompletion, so notice how I release the variable before using it(and checking for null to avoid nullpointer exceptions).
It works like charm!
A single soundPool has an internal memory limitation of 1 (one) Mb. You might be hitting this if your sound is very high quality. If you have many sounds and are hitting this limit, just create more soundpools, and distribute your sounds across them.
You may not even be able to reach the hard track limit if you are running out of memory before you get there.
That error not only appears when the stream or track limit has been reached, but also the memory limit. Soundpool will stop playing old and/or de-prioritized sounds in order to play a new sound.
I'm making an Android game-app in which you start as a little fish, and you need to eat smaller fish.
Each time you eat a smaller fish (by swimming against them), a sound plays. This is the code for playing the sound:
mp = MediaPlayer.create(GobbleFishGame.this, R.raw.bite);
if (!mPlaySound) {
return;
}
mp.start();
MPRelease();
This works well for the first few fishes. But after having eaten some fishes (the amount varies, but it's around 8-11 fishes), the game suddenly stops and I get the "Activity GobbleFish (in application GobbleFish) is not responding." error. I think it has something to do with too much resources being allocated to the MediaPlayer, therefore I've created a sub which releases mp's resources, and then creating a new MediaPlayer mp (this sub is called every time a fish is eaten). This is the code for the sub:
private void MPRelease(){
MPReleaseCount += 1;
if(MPReleaseCount==5){
mp.release();
mp = new MediaPlayer();
//mp = MediaPlayer.create(GobbleFishGame.this, R.raw.bite);
//mp.reset();
MPReleaseCount=0;
}
}
When MPReleaseCount is 5, mp gets released and recreated (so after 5 fishes are eaten).
I hoped that this would work, but it doesn't. I still have the problem that after some fishes are eaten (last time was 17 fishes, so MPRelease should have been called 3 times already), I get the "is not responding" error and I have to Force Close or Wait.
Can anyone tell me how I could do this to release the resources? Because I think that's the issue. I can't really tell if that's the issue because I don't get any error message in my LogCat in Eclipse. I did get this error report after Force Closing the app because of a "is not responding" error:
ANR in (my activity)
Reason: keyDispatchingTimedOut
Thanks in advance.
Don't release and create the MediaPlayer everytime you used it. Create it once with your audiosource and call a seekTo(0) in an OnCompletionListener(). Then play it again.
Also have a look at SoundPool http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/SoundPool.html which is made for usecases like yours where you have to play the same audio multiple times. It stores the audio and plays it on demand. You also have a lower audio latency than with MediaPLayer.
In the sample code for RandomMusicPlayer, reset() is called right before release():
// stop and release the Media Player, if it's available
if (releaseMediaPlayer && mPlayer != null) {
mPlayer.reset();
mPlayer.release();
mPlayer = null;
}
Is this really necessary? Shouldn't the release take care of everything that would possibly need reset?
Per the documentation, release() can be executed at any time. It is not necessary to call reset() first, nor is it necessary to set the player to null afterwards (GC should dispose of it in due time).
From the docs:
After release(), the object is no longer available.
That said, I've ran into a few issues with MediaPlayer and its documentation. It's a very complex object to work with and tends to be a little buggy at times especially after throwing an error (with no explanation of the error code anywhere to be found!)
Shouldn't the release take care of everything that would possibly need reset?
Well, the MediaPlayer can be quite tricky. You need to understand the states that a MediaPlayer can be in and the calls that are allowed in those different states. The state diagram and valid/invalid states are here - http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaPlayer.html#StateDiagram
The reason the code sample you provided calls reset() is just a defensive measure to uninitialize the mediaPlayer object to clean everything up properly. Strictly speaking, everything should be fine if you just call release(), but i'm not 100% sure about that.