I'm using SimpleAudioEngine to play my sounds and I was wondering if there is anyway to check if iPod music is playing when the app is launched. If so, I want it to continue playing. I'm starting to think it may be called the simple engine for a reason as it doesn't allow features like this, where AVAudioEngine does...
Thanks :)
You should check out the official Audio Session Programming Guide and make sure that you are setting the correct session category. You will want to pick the category that allows your audio to mix with the iPod audio.
Related
For example, if I start a song in Pandora and then open Safari to browse the web the Pandora song will keep playing. However, if I start a song in Pandora and then open my app it kills the Pandora song. How do I let Pandora keep playing while my app is running?
You need to tell the iOS system what behavior it should use to integrate the two audio sessions. By default it cancels the background audio when you use audio. But this behavior can be modified as described in the AVAudioSession docs here.
To quote:
Working with Music Players
To play audio from a user’s iPod library along with your own sounds
(as described in iPod Library Access Programming Guide), you must use
a so-called mixable category configuration for your audio session.
There are two, alternative ways to configure an audio session as
mixable:
Use the AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient (or the equivalent
kAudioSessionCategory_AmbientSound) category—which is always mixable.
Use the mixable category override property
kAudioSessionProperty_OverrideCategoryMixWithOthers, as described in
“Fine-Tuning the Category,” to make an otherwise nonmixable playback
category mixable. Having used one of these options, your sounds will
not interrupt a music player—and neither will a music player’s sounds
interrupt yours.
There are two reasons why your app might "kill" the background app:
It starts to play music of its own
You use too much memory for it to keep playing and the OS closes the background app
There is no special option you need to select; you just need to be a "good citizen."
I'm an inexperienced XCode use and programmer in general so keep that in mind. I'm trying to use the microphone on the iPhone while at the same time allowing the user to play audio while using the "iPod music picker", but when the user selects music and plays it the recorder stops working? I have no idea what is going on here? Also, on a side note, how do you implement forward and back iPod buttons?
Thanks so much!
Sounds like this is an Audio Session issue - you're probably in a mode where you can either play or record, but not both at the same time.
Check out the Audio Session Programming Guide which should explain how to configure your session.
AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayAndRecord — Use this category for an application that inputs and outputs audio. The input and output need not occur simultaneously, but can if needed. This is the category to use for audio chat applications.
AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient - This category allows audio from the iPod, Safari, and other built-in applications to play while your application is playing audio. You could, for example, use this category for an application that provides a virtual musical instrument that a user plays along to iPod audio.
Can anybody please tell me how to implement an audio player application in an iPhone? I am pretty new to iPhone development and I am just starting to learn the tricks of the trade.
PS: I need sample code!
If you want to play your own sounds, the AVAudioPlayer class. If you want to play media from the iPod library, see MPMusicPlayerController.
I'm writing an iPhone app that uses OpenAL. When the application starts, the music playing in background stops.
The music actually stops playing when I initialize the OpenAL library.
My question is, is there any way to use OpenAL while letting the background music play?
You need to change the Audio Session Category to kAudioSessionCategory_AmbientSound instead of kAudioSessionCategory_SoloAmbientSound which is the default.
You can find out more about it in the Audio Session Programming Guide. Here's a link to the relevant part of the documentation.
I want to both play sound and record sound at the same time on the iPhone.
All the apps which record sound first disable any music playing. However as music would disrupt their purpose I don't know if they're doing this deliberately or whether the iPhone does it automatically when you record from the microphone.
Does anyone have experience with this?
Refer to this page. Good luck!
I've heard something about this on one episode of the mobile orchard podcast - the one with Michael Tyson, the creator of Loopy. During the discussion, Michael explained that he had to include some code to filter out the sounds that were coming in through the microphone in realtime as other sounds were being played on the speaker.
Based on that discussion, it seems entirely possible to both play and record at the same time, but I'm sure you'll have to do your own filtering to avoid recording the sounds your playing.
You can use either a core audio unit or an audio queue, and
you need to make sure that your audio session category is set to kAudioSessionCategory_PlayAndRecord.
Beware that sound output when you use this session is much quieter
than the normal solo session (observed on 3.0).