Develop Reference

Regulate Android AudioTrack playback speed

I'm currently trying to playback audio using AudioTrack. Audio is received over the network and application continuously read data and add to an internal buffer. A separate thread is consuming data and using AudioTrack to playback.
Problems:
Audio playback fluctuate (feels like audio drop at a regular interval) continuously making it unclear.
Playback speed is too high or too low making them unrealistic.
In order to avoid the network latency and other factors I made the application to wait till it read enough data and playback at the end.
This makes the audio to play really fast. Here is a basic sample of logic I use.
sampleRate = AudioTrack.getNativeOutputSampleRate(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
audioTrack = new AudioTrack(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, sampleRate,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_STEREO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,
AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize(sampleRate, AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_STEREO, AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT),
AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM);
audioTrack.play();
short shortBuffer[] = new short[AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize(sampleRate, AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_STEREO, AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT)];
while (!stopRequested){
readData(shortBuffer);
audioTrack.write(shortBuffer, 0, shortBuffer.length, AudioTrack.WRITE_BLOCKING);
}
Is it correct to say that Android AudiTrack class doesn't have in built functionality to control the audio playback based on environment conditions? If so, are there better libraries available with a simplified way for audio playback?

The first issue that I see, it is an arbitrary sampling rate.
AudioTrack.getNativeOutputSampleRate will return the sampling rate that used by the sound system. It may be 44100, 48000, 96000, 192000 or whatever. But looks like you have audio data from some independent source, which produces the data on the very exact sampling rate.
Let's say audio data from the source is sampled at 44100 samples per second. If you start playing it at 96000 it will be speeded up and higher pitched.
So, use the sampling rate setting, along with the number of channels, sample format etc, as it given by the source, not relying on system defaults.
The second: are you sure the readData procedure always will be fast enough to successfully fill the buffer, whatever small the buffer is, and return back faster than the buffer is played?
You have created AudioTrack with AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize passed as bufferSizeInBytes parameter.
The getMinBufferSize function returns a minimum possible size of the buffer that can be used at this parameter. Let's say it returned the size corresponding to a buffer of 10ms length.
That means the new data should be prepared within this time interval. I.e. The time interval between previous write returned control and new write is performed should be less than the time size of the buffer.
So, if the readData function may delay for some reason longer than that time interval, the playback will be paused for that time, you'll hear small gaps in the playback.
The reasons why readData may delay could be various: if it's reading data from the file, then it may delay waiting for IO operations; if it allocates java objects, it may be bumped into garbage collector's delay; if it uses some kind of decoder of another kind of audio source which uses it's own buffering, it may periodically delay refilling the buffer.
But anyway, if you're not creating some kind of real-time synthesizer which should react as soon as possible to the user input, always use the buffer size reasonably high, but not less than getMinBufferSize returned. I.e.:
sampleRate = 44100;// sampling rate of the source
int bufSize = sampleRate * 4; // 1 second length; 4 - is the frame size: 2 chanels * 2 bytes per each sample
bufSize = max(bufSize, AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize(sampleRate, AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_STEREO, AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT)); // Not less than getMinBufferSize returns
audioTrack = new AudioTrack(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, sampleRate,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_STEREO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,
bufSize,
AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM);

Like user #pskink said,
Most likely your sampleRate (or any other parameter passed to the
AudioTrack constructor) is invalid.
So I would start by checking what value you are actually setting the sample rate.
For reference, you can also set the speed of AudioTrack by calling the setPlayBackParams method:
public void setPlaybackParams (PlaybackParams params)
If you check the AudioTrack docs, you can see the PlaybackParams docs and can set the speed and pitch of the output audio. This object can then be passed to set the playback parameters within your AudioTrack object.
However, it is unlikely that you will need to use this if your only issue is the original constructor sampleRate (since we cannot see where the variable sampleRate comes from).

audio latency issues

In the application which I want to create, I face some technical obstacles. I have two music tracks in the application. For example, a user imports the music background as a first track. The second path is a voice recorded by the user to the rhythm of the first track played by the speaker device (or headphones). At this moment we face latency. After recording and playing back in the app, the user hears the loss of synchronisation between tracks, which occurs because of the microphone and speaker latencies.
Firstly, I try to detect the delay by filtering the input sound. I use android’s AudioRecord class, and the method read(). This method fills my short array with audio data.
I found that the initial values of this array are zeros so I decided to cut them out before I will start to write them into the output stream.
So I consider those zeros as a „warmup” latency of the microphone. Is this approach correct? This operation gives some results, but it doesn’t resolve the problem, and at this stage, I’m far away from that.
But the worse case is with the delay between starting the speakers and playing the music. This delay I cannot filter or detect. I tried to create some calibration feature which counts the delay. I play a „beep” sound through the speakers, and when I start to play it, I also begin to measure time. Then, I start recording and listen for this sound being detected by the microphone. When I recognise this sound in the app, I stop measuring time. I repeat this process several times, and the final value is the average from those results. That is how I try to measure the latency of the device. Now, when I have this value, I can simply shift the second track backwards to achieve synchronisation of both records (I will lose some initial milliseconds of the recording, but I skip this case, for now, there are some possibilities to fix it).
I thought that this approach would resolve the problem, but it turned out this is not as simple as I thought. I found two issues here:
1. Delay while playing two tracks simultaneously
2. Random in device audio latency.
The first: I play two tracks using AudioTrack class and I run method play() like this:
val firstTrack = //creating a track
val secondTrack = //creating a track
firstTrack.play()
secondTrack.play()
This code causes delays at the stage of playing tracks. Now, I don’t even have to think about latency while recording; I cannot play two tracks simultaneously without delays. I tested this with some external audio file (not recorded in my app) - I’m starting the same audio file using the code above, and I can see a delay. I also tried it with MediaPlayer class, and I have the same results. In this case, I even try to play tracks when callback OnPreparedListener invoke:
val firstTrack = //AudioPlayer
val secondTrack = //AudioPlayer
second.setOnPreparedListener {
first.start()
second.start()
}
And it doesn’t help.
I know that there is one more class provided by Android called SoundPool. According to the documentation, it can be better with playing tracks simultaneously, but I can’t use it because it supports only small audio files and that can't limit me.
How can I resolve this problem? How can I start playing two tracks precisely at the same time?
The second: Audio latency is not deterministic - sometimes it is smaller, and sometimes it’s huge, and it’s out of my hands. So measuring device latency can help but again - it cannot resolve the problem.
To sum up: is there any solution, which can give me exact latency per device (or app session?) or other triggers which detect actual delay, to provide the best synchronisation while playback two tracks at the same time?
Thank you in advance!

Synchronising audio for karaoke apps is tough. The main issue you seem to be facing is variable latency in the output stream.
This is almost certainly caused by "warm up" latency: the time it takes from hitting "play" on your backing track to the first frame of audio data being rendered by the audio device (e.g. headphones). This can have large variance and is difficult to measure.
The first (and easiest) thing to try is to use MODE_STREAM when constructing your AudioTrack and prime it with bufferSizeInBytes of data prior to calling play (more here). This should result in lower, more consistent "warm up" latency.
A better way is to use the Android NDK to have a continuously running audio stream which is just outputting silence until the moment you hit play, then start sending audio frames immediately. The only latency you have here is the continuous output latency.
If you decide to go down this route I recommend taking a look at the Oboe library (full disclosure: I am one of the authors).
To answer one of your specific questions...
Is there a way to calculate the latency of the audio output stream programatically?
Yes. The easiest way to explain this is with a code sample (this is C++ for the AAudio API but the principle is the same using Java AudioTrack):
// Get the index and time that a known audio frame was presented for playing
int64_t existingFrameIndex;
int64_t existingFramePresentationTime;
AAudioStream_getTimestamp(stream, CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &existingFrameIndex, &existingFramePresentationTime);
// Get the write index for the next audio frame
int64_t writeIndex = AAudioStream_getFramesWritten(stream);
// Calculate the number of frames between our known frame and the write index
int64_t frameIndexDelta = writeIndex - existingFrameIndex;
// Calculate the time which the next frame will be presented
int64_t frameTimeDelta = (frameIndexDelta * NANOS_PER_SECOND) / sampleRate_;
int64_t nextFramePresentationTime = existingFramePresentationTime + frameTimeDelta;
// Assume that the next frame will be written into the stream at the current time
int64_t nextFrameWriteTime = get_time_nanoseconds(CLOCK_MONOTONIC);
// Calculate the latency
*latencyMillis = (double) (nextFramePresentationTime - nextFrameWriteTime) / NANOS_PER_MILLISECOND;
A caveat: This method relies on accurate timestamps being reported by the audio hardware. I know this works on Google Pixel devices but have heard reports that it isn't so accurate on other devices so YMMV.

Following the answer of donturner, here's a Java version (that also uses other methods depending on the SDK version)
/** The audio latency has not been estimated yet */
private static long AUDIO_LATENCY_NOT_ESTIMATED = Long.MIN_VALUE+1;
/** The audio latency default value if we cannot estimate it */
private static long DEFAULT_AUDIO_LATENCY = 100L * 1000L * 1000L; // 100ms
/**
* Estimate the audio latency
*
* Not accurate at all, depends on SDK version, etc. But that's the best
* we can do.
*/
private static void estimateAudioLatency(AudioTrack track, long audioFramesWritten) {
long estimatedAudioLatency = AUDIO_LATENCY_NOT_ESTIMATED;
// First method. SDK >= 19.
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 19 && track != null) {
AudioTimestamp audioTimestamp = new AudioTimestamp();
if (track.getTimestamp(audioTimestamp)) {
// Calculate the number of frames between our known frame and the write index
long frameIndexDelta = audioFramesWritten - audioTimestamp.framePosition;
// Calculate the time which the next frame will be presented
long frameTimeDelta = _framesToNanoSeconds(frameIndexDelta);
long nextFramePresentationTime = audioTimestamp.nanoTime + frameTimeDelta;
// Assume that the next frame will be written at the current time
long nextFrameWriteTime = System.nanoTime();
// Calculate the latency
estimatedAudioLatency = nextFramePresentationTime - nextFrameWriteTime;
}
}
// Second method. SDK >= 18.
if (estimatedAudioLatency == AUDIO_LATENCY_NOT_ESTIMATED && Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 18) {
Method getLatencyMethod;
try {
getLatencyMethod = AudioTrack.class.getMethod("getLatency", (Class<?>[]) null);
estimatedAudioLatency = (Integer) getLatencyMethod.invoke(track, (Object[]) null) * 1000000L;
} catch (Exception ignored) {}
}
// If no method has successfully gave us a value, let's try a third method
if (estimatedAudioLatency == AUDIO_LATENCY_NOT_ESTIMATED) {
AudioManager audioManager = (AudioManager) CRT.getInstance().getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE);
try {
Method getOutputLatencyMethod = audioManager.getClass().getMethod("getOutputLatency", int.class);
estimatedAudioLatency = (Integer) getOutputLatencyMethod.invoke(audioManager, AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC) * 1000000L;
} catch (Exception ignored) {}
}
// No method gave us a value. Let's use a default value. Better than nothing.
if (estimatedAudioLatency == AUDIO_LATENCY_NOT_ESTIMATED) {
estimatedAudioLatency = DEFAULT_AUDIO_LATENCY;
}
return estimatedAudioLatency
}
private static long _framesToNanoSeconds(long frames) {
return frames * 1000000000L / SAMPLE_RATE;
}

The android MediaPlayer class is notoriously slow to begin audio playback, I experienced an issue in an app I was creating where there was a greater than one second delay to begin playing an audio clip. I resolved it by switching to ExoPlayer which resulted in the playback starting within 100ms. I've also read that ffmpeg has even faster start audio startup time than ExoPlayer but I haven't used it so I can't make any promises.

need to understad how AudioRecord and AudioTrack work for raw PCM capture and playback

I use the following code in a Thread to capture raw audio samples from the microphone and play it back through the speaker.
public void run(){
short[] lin = new short[SIZE_OF_RECORD_ARRAY];
int num = 0;
// am = (AudioManager) this.getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE); // -> MOVED THESE TO init()
// am.setMode(AudioManager.MODE_IN_COMMUNICATION);
record.startRecording();
track.play();
while (passThroughMode) {
// while (!isInterrupted()) {
num = record.read(lin, 0, SIZE_OF_RECORD_ARRAY);
for(i=0;i<lin.length;i++)
lin[i] *= WAV_SAMPLE_MULTIPLICATION_FACTOR;
track.write(lin, 0, num);
}
// /*
record.stop();
track.stop();
record.release();
track.release();
// */
}
where record is an AudioRecord and track is an Audiotrack. I need to know in detail (and in a simplified way if possible) how the AudioRecord stores PCM data and AudioTrack plays PCM data. This is how I have understood it so far:
As the while() loop is continuously running, record obtains SIZE_OF_RECORD_ARRAY number of samples (which is 1024 for now) as shown in the figure. The samples get saved contiguously in the lin[] array of shorts (16 bit shorts, as I am using 16 bit PCM encoding). This is done by record.read(). Then track.write() places these samples in the speaker which is played by the hardware. Is this correct or am I missing something here?

As for how the samples are laid out in memory; they're just arrays of linear approximations to a sound wave, taken at discrete times (like your figure shows). In the case of stereo, the samples will be interleaved (LRLRLRLR...).
When it comes to the path the audio takes, you're essentially right, although there are a few more steps involved:
Writing data to your Java AudioTrack causes it to make a JNI (Java Native Interface) call to a native helper class, which in turn calls the native AudioTrack class.
The AudioTracks are owned by the AudioFlinger, which periodically takes data from all the AudioTracks on a given output thread (which have been mixed by the AudioMixer) and writes it to the audio HAL output stream class.
From there the data goes to the user-space ALSA library, and through a couple of intermediate steps to the kernel-space PCM driver. Then further on from there; typically going through some kind of DSP that applies various acoustic compensation filters, and eventually making it's way to the hardware codec, which controls the speaker DAC and amplifiers.
When recording from the internal microphone(s) you'd have more or less the same steps, except that they'd be done in the opposite order.
Note that some of these steps (essentially everything from the audio HAL and below) are platform-specific, and therefore might differ between platforms from different vendors (and even different platforms from the same vendor).

AudioRecord and AudioTrack latency

I'm trying to develop an aplication like iRig for android, so the first step is to capture the mic input and play it at the same time.
I have it, but the problem is that i get some latency that makes this unusable, and if I start processing the buffer i'm afraid it will get totally unusable.
I use audiorecord and audiotrack like this:
new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
while(mRunning){
mRecorder.read(mBuffer, 0, mBufferSize);
//Todo: Apply filters here into the buffer and then play it modified
mPlayer.write(mBuffer, 0, mBufferSize);
//Log.v("MY AMP","ARA");
}
And the inicialization this way:
// ==================== INITIALIZE ========================= //
public void initialize(){
mBufferSize = AudioRecord.getMinBufferSize(mHz,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT);
mBufferSize2 = AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize(mHz,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT);
mBuffer = new byte[mBufferSize];
Log.v("MY AMP","Buffer size:" + mBufferSize);
mRecorder = new AudioRecord(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC,
mHz,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,
mBufferSize);
mPlayer = new AudioTrack(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC,
mHz,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,
mBufferSize2,
AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM);
}
do you know how to get a faster response?
Thanks!

Android's AudioTrack\AudioRecord classes have high latency due to minimum buffer sizes.
The reason for those buffer sizes is to minimize drops when GC's occur according to Google (which is a wrong decision in my opinion, you can optimize your own memory management).
What you want to do is use OpenSL, which is available from 2.3. It contains native APIs for streaming audio.
Here's some docs:
http://mobilepearls.com/labs/native-android-api/opensles/index.html

Just a thought, but shouldn't you be reading < mBufferSize

As mSparks pointed out, streaming should be made using smaller read size: you don't need to read the full buffer to stream data!
int read = mRecorder.read(mBuffer, 0, 256); /* Or any other magic number */
if (read>0) {
mPlayer.write(mBuffer, 0, read);
}
This will reduce drastically your latency. If mHz is 44100 and your are in MONO configuration with 256 your latency will be no less then 1000 * 256/44100 milliseconds = ~5.8 ms.
256/44100 is the conversion from samples to seconds, so multiplying by 1000 gives you milliseconds.
The problems is internal implementation of the player. You don't have control about that from java. Hope this helps someone :)

My first instict was to suggest initting AudioTrack into static mode rather than streaming mode, since static mode has notably smaller latency. However, Static Mode is more appropriate for short sounds that fit entirely in memory rather than a sound you are capturing from elsewhere. But just as a wild guess, what if you set AudioTrack to static mode and feed it discrete chunks of your input audio?
If you want tighter control over audio, I'd recommend taking a look at OpenSL ES for Android. The learning curve will be a bit steeper, but you get much more fine-grained control and lower latency.

AudioTrack: Playing sound coming in over WiFi

I've got an AudioTrack in my application, which is set to Stream mode. I want to write audio which I receive over a wireless connection. The AudioTrack is declared like this:
mPlayer = new AudioTrack(STREAM_TYPE,
FREQUENCY,
CHANNEL_CONFIG_OUT,
AUDIO_ENCODING,
PLAYER_CAPACITY,
PLAY_MODE);
Where the parameters are defined like:
private static final int FREQUENCY = 8000,
CHANNEL_CONFIG_OUT = AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_MONO,
AUDIO_ENCODING = AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,
PLAYER_CAPACITY = 2048,
STREAM_TYPE = AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC,
PLAY_MODE = AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM;
However, when I write data to the AudioTrack with write(), it will play choppy... The call
byte[] audio = packet.getData();
mPlayer.write(audio, 0, audio.length);
is made whenever a packet is received over the network connection. Does anybody have an idea on why it sounds choppy? Maybe it has something to do with the WiFi connection itself? I don't think so, as the sound doesn't sound horrible the other way around, when I send data from the Android phone to another source over UDP. The sound then sounds complete and not choppy at all... So does anybody have an idea on why this is happening?

Do you know how many bytes per second you are recieving, the average time between packets compares, and the maximum time between packets? If not, can you add code to calculate it?
You need to be averaging 8000 samples/second * 2 bytes/sample = 16,000 bytes per second in order to keep the stream filled.
A gap of more than 2048 bytes / (16000 bytes/second) = 128 milliseconds between incoming packets will cause your stream to run dry and the audio to stutter.
One way to prevent it is to increase the buffer size (PLAYER_CAPACITY). A larger buffer will be more able to handle variation in the incoming packet size and rate. The cost of the extra stability is a larger delay in starting playback while you wait for the buffer to initially fill.

I have partially solved it by placing the mPlayer.write(audio, 0, audio.length); in it's own Thread. This does take away some of the choppy-ness (due to the fact that write is a blocking call), but it still sounds choppy after a good second or 2. It still has a significant delay of 2-3 seconds.
new Thread(){
public void run(){
byte[] audio = packet.getData();
mPlayer.write(audio, 0, audio.length);
}
}.start();
Just a little anonymous Thread that does the writing now...
Anybody have an idea on how to solve this issue?
Edit:
After some further checking and debugging, I've noticed that this is an issue with obtainBuffer.
I've looked at the java code of the AudioTrack and the C++ code of AudioTrack And I've noticed that it only can appear in the C++ code.
if (__builtin_expect(result!=NO_ERROR, false)) {
LOGW( "obtainBuffer timed out (is the CPU pegged?) "
"user=%08x, server=%08x", u, s);
mAudioTrack->start(); // FIXME: Wake up audioflinger
timeout = 1;
}
I've noticed that there is a FIXME in this piece of code. :< But anyway, could anybody explain how this C++ code works? I've had some experience with it, but it was never as complicated as this...
Edit 2:
I've tried somewhat different now, the difference being that I buffer the data I receive, and then when the buffer is filled with some data, it is being written to the player. However, the player keeps up with consuming for a few cycles, then the obtainBuffer timed out (is the CPU pegged?) warning kicks in, and there is no data at all written to the player untill it is kick started back to life... After that, it will continually get data written to it untill the buffer is emptied.
Another slight difference is that I stream a file to the player now. That is, reading it in chunks, the writing those chunks to the buffer. This simulates the packages being received over wifi...
I am beginning to wonder if this is just an OS issue that Android has, and it isn't something I can solve on my own... Anybody got any ideas on that?
Edit 3:
I've done more testing, but this doesn't help me any further. This test shows me that I only get lag when I try to write to the AudioTrack for the first time. This takes somewhat between 1 and 3 seconds to complete. I did this by using the following bit of code:
long beforeTime = Utilities.getCurrentTimeMillis(), afterTime = 0;
mPlayer.write(data, 0, data.length);
afterTime = Utilities.getCurrentTimeMillis();
Log.e("WriteToPlayerThread", "Writing a package took " + (afterTime - beforeTime) + " milliseconds");
However, I get the following results:
Logcat Image http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/3453/logcatimage.png
These show that the lag initially occurs at the beginning, after which the AudioTrack keeps getting data continuously... I really need to get this one fixed...