I am currently developing a game for iPhone/iPod touch. For short sounds I am using the AudioServicesPlaySystemSound function. I know that I can't control the volume of these sounds programmatically, but on my iPod touch 3rd gen these sounds respect the overall sound volume. On my new iPod touch 4th gen, these sounds are always played at the same volume, no matter to which value the overall volume is set. They even play if the volume is turned down to 0. The AVAudioPlayer on the other hand works as expected. Both devices are upgraded to iOS 4.1.
Has anyone else noticed this? Any suggestions what's happening here?
Just in case someone has the same issue / is interested: If you have an AVAudioPlayer playing at the same time, this problem goes away, that means, the systemsounds behave correctly again. In my case I play an empty mp3 in an infinite loop now. Not the nicest solution but one that works.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Yes, also for AudioServicesPlaySystemSound. It happens on my iPod touch 4G, but not my iPhone 3G. Both also running iOS4.1.
I've no idea what's happening, but I'll offer a bounty try to get some helpful uberguru's attention. If not, 1 infinite loop it is.
Update: apparently the problem also happens with AVAudioPlayer on the iPod 4th Gen - see https://devforums.apple.com/message/333169
It looks like it might be a bug. We'll see...
Related
My initial issue was as described in the title there. When I was recording from the mic, sound effects were playing at the same time even if the device was in mute mode (i.e., had the mute button physically switched on).
I since found this thread, which totally worked. the mute button now works correctly, and no sounds are played in the app while the mic is recording...
Unfortunately, the mic has now stopped recording!
It seems like I can have one or the other, but not both. Can anyone confirm if I can have the device on mute and record from the mic at the same time? And if so, how?
Thank you so much in advance,
Stew
UPDATE : I'm fairly certain that this isn't possible, and I'm basing this on the fact that the mute switch also doesn't work in Garage Band (Another app which requires simultanious playback and recording).
To try it yourself, simply load up Garage Band, play some music, and then note that the mute switch doesn't work.
I'm leaving this open in case anyone does come up with a solution, but I won't be offended if it's closed or deleted.
I need to play sounds (~5 seconds each) throughout my iphone application. When they're triggered, they need to play immediately.
For the moment I'm using AudioServices and (as you probably know) the first time you play a sound it lags, then every time there after it's perfect. Is there some code available that's clever enough to preload an AudioServices sound (by playing it silently maybe?). I've read adjusting the system volume programmatically will get your app rejected, so that's not an option. Seems AudioServices isn't made for volume correction from what I can see.
I've looked into OpenAL and while feasible seems a little over kill. AVAudioPlayer seems like a little bit of a better option, I'm using that for background music at present. Extending my music player to handle a 'sound board' might be my last resort.
On the topic of OpenAL, does anyone know of a place with a decent (app store friendly) OpenAL wrapper for the iPhone?
Thanks in advance
Finch could be perfect for you. It’s a tiny wrapper around OpenAL with very low latency and simple API. See also all SO questions tagged ‘Finch’.
If you use an AVAudioPlayer, you can call prepareToPlay when you initialize the object to reduce the delay between calling play and having the audio start.
I have used:
[UIApplication sharedApplication].idleTimerDisabled = YES;
in a number of Apps developed and running under iPhone OS 2.x and never had any problems with it. They were clock apps so needed to run constantly and ignore the iPhone's idle Timer setting.
However, trying to achieve the same with a new App running OS 3.0 (and which needs to be deployed under 3.0 as it uses some 3.0 APIs) I've found the idle Timer to be either ignored or inconsistent.
My App plays music from the iPod library and when the music is playing it auto-locks regardless of the above setting. But once you unlock it, it then doesn't auto-lock again unless you play music again, in which case it locks again after the iPhone auto-lock time setting.
I'm amazed no-one else has come across this as I imagine it would affect a large number of Apps.
Just to clarify:
1. The above code is in ApplicationDidFinishLaunching
2. I know that the phone won't auto-lock when testing from xCode regardless of settings
If anyone has any thoughts I'd be very grateful...
Our app uses the MPMediaPLayer. We also had the idleTimerDisabled=YES code in the ApplicationFinishedLaunching, which works EXCEPT if untethered, and there is already a current nowPlayingItem which is left playing (or unpaused, if paused at app startup). Obviously this is all with the Settings -> General -> Autolock set to some timed value.
By adding idleTimerDisabled=NO, immedately followed by idleTimerDisabled=YES in one of the other bits of code AFTER we had figured out what bit of music we would get playing seemed to solve the problem. Just setting it to YES was insufficient.. and subsequent queries had always indicated the correct value (YES).. so it appears the Apple code ignores the setting of the value IF there is a current piece of music and that is not changed by your code.. but does notice a change of value.
This is all under iOS 3.0.
Even in 2015, using iOS 8.2, this bug is still alive and kicking.
Here's my solution, using XCode 6.2.
iPhone - phone goes to sleep even if idleTimerDisabled is YES
Basically, even now, in 2015, the only way to safely make sure that the device doesn't go to sleep is to repeatedly call a piece of code to keep the device awake.
-(void)callEveryTwentySeconds
{
// DON'T let the device go to sleep during our sync
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setIdleTimerDisabled:NO];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setIdleTimerDisabled:YES];
}
Sounds like a bug, file with Radar - I am not too surprised this has not been seen much as there are probably not a lot of apps that try to lock the screen open and play music.
Having same issue. It does work when the device is plugged in. You can press lock button on top, and my NSTimer fires later and causes a vibrate. However if the device is not plugged in pressing the lock button puts the device to sleep. Any solution would be greatly appreciated.
iCodeblog posted about the idletimer, I said it didn't work, and the person who develops 'cute clock' was nice enough to reply. You have to do a hack, play a 1 second or longer silent sound every 10 or so seconds with NSTimer. This keeps the device awake even if the user hits the lock button.
I develop Seconds - Interval Timer for iPhone and iPod touch and I've had no end of trouble with this. The idea of my app is that people create timers based on a number of intervals where each interval can have it's own playlist or track played.
In iOS3 I had the problem that I couldn't disable the idle timer by just setting idleTimerDisabled = YES. In the end I came up with the same solution as Neil whereby I would periodically set it to NO, then immediately to YES again. This seemed to work.
I'm now updating the app to iOS4 (I know, iOS5 is just around the corner...) and now I have the opposite problem. If the MPMediaPlayer changes track before the idle timer reaches it's limit it gets reset. I've just tested this by creating an interval in my app that was 55 seconds, my auto-lock was set to a minute. At 50 seconds the screen dimmed as it prepared to lock, but at 55 seconds when the music changed it went back to full brightness and then didn't lock as it should.
Overall, the implementation of this seems flakey at best.
I'm obviously not trying to play full spectrum audio, but is there some way to customize the iPhone/iTouch system alert sounds to play a little melody on the piezo speaker? The functionality is clearly present, so I guess the question is has Apple made it available for developer use...
Thanks,
-S
There are quite a few predefined sounds you can use in the 0-2000 range. For example, the keyboard click can be called like such:
AudioServicesPlayAlertSound(1104);
There is also a way to play a custom melody on the first-generation iPod touch, but it's not pretty.
It isn't. Sorry.
Only thing you can do from an application is this (you can use any SoundID for this, really):
AudioServicesPlayAlertSound(kSystemSoundID_Vibrate);
Discussion
Depending on the particular iPhone OS device, this function plays a short sound and may invoke vibration. Calling this function does the following on various iPhone OS devices:
iPhone—plays the specified sound and, if the user has configured the Settings application for vibration on ring, invokes vibration.
iPod touch, original—plays a short alert melody.
iPod touch, 2nd generation—plays the specified sound.
We have a game that is very close to being released, but we have one extremely annoying problem. One on of our Beta testers phones, he can't hear any of the in game sound effects. He can, however, hear the background music and the title screen music just fine.
The background and title music are both being played via AVAudioPlayer (they are longer, we need looping and volume control, etc). The sound effects are simply being played with AudioServicesPlaySystemSound (they are very short, we don't need precise control or to know when they end, etc). This works on most iPhones, but not on this one. All of this is being played with an audio session of AVAudioSessionCategorySoloAmbient.
So I have two questions:
- First, is this an acceptable implementation? i.e. is there something I missed that says you can't mix these two frameworks, or a reason why its a bad idea to mix them?
- Second, has anyone seen something like this before? If so, did you find a way around it?
Additional background note: I can pretty conclusively say that on his phone, it is the mixing of the two frameworks. He was able to hear sounds until roughly the same build where we added the title screen music. Also, if I change one of the sounds to work through an AVAudioPlayer, he's able to hear it. Unfortunately, I can't simply move the sounds into AVAudioPlayers because it just doesn't perform well at all, and I need better synchronization.
EDIT 2:
I've determined the cause of the error. The two different audio frameworks play on two different volume settings. There is the main volume (that's what shows up once you are in the app, and has no title on it) and the ringer volume (that's what shows up when you're on the home screen without any app loaded). The AVAudioPlayer calls play with the main volume setting. As I have set the category to AVAudioSessionCategorySoloAmbient (see code below), this is the volume control that will be adjusted if you use the volume rocker inside the app. The SystemSounds, however, are played at the Ringer Volume. This will NOT come up inside the app, and as such does not allow the user to adjust their settings during the game.
It's easy to see the possible confusion for the user: Let's say they have their ringer set to low, or even off. They start playing the game. They hear the title screen music (AVAudioPlayer) and are able to turn the volume up or down and it responds normally. Then they start the game and the sound effects play (SystemSounds), and they hear nothing because the ringer volume is low/off. In an effort to hear the sound effects, they bump up the volume and the background music responds accordingly. So from this point of view, it definitely looks like the sound effects just aren't playing.
If you have this similar situation, have your user make sure that their ringer volume is up before playing the game and their mute switch is on (i.e. not muted). You can also verify all of this by doing the test yourself - drop your ringer volume and bump your in-app volume up. Your SystemSounds should drop out of the mix.
Original answer:
In re-digging through all of the docs, I found the answer. I wasn't properly activating the audio session. Previously I only had this code to set the category:
NSError *setCategoryError = nil;
BOOL categoryWasSet = [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance]
setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategorySoloAmbient
error: &setCategoryError];
But I needed to also add the following code to explicitly activate the audio session:
NSError *activationError = nil;
BOOL activationSuccess = [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance]
setActive: YES
error: &activationError];
I've re-tested with this user, and it has completely fixed the issue. Hope that helps anyone who might have a similar problem.
EDIT: This doesn't seem to have resolved the issue after all. I got a false positive from my tester, and when examined more in detail it seems that he didn't actually hear the SystemSound generated sounds.
I have two apps on the app store that mix those two frameworks. AVAudioPlayer for sounds that require start and stop and volume control and AudioServices toolbox for short little beeps and clicks. The only think I can think of, off the top of my head, is that the volume of AVAudioPlayer seems to be controlled separately from the AudioServices sounds. So check to make sure that the tester doesn't have sounds turned off (with the vibrate mode switch) or the volume turned way down.
If this doesn't help, tell me more about your sounds/code and I can add some code to my app to see if I can get the same behavior. Of course, sounds like most your testers don't have this problem, and I probably won't see it either.