I've created a few sounds for use in my game. I can play them at certain events without issue:
// create sounds
CFBundleRef mainBundle;
mainBundle = CFBundleGetMainBundle();
_soundFileShake = CFBundleCopyResourceURL(mainBundle, CFSTR("shake"), CFSTR("wav"), NULL);
AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID(_soundFileShake, &_soundIdShake);
// later...
AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(_soundIdShake);
The game has a mechanism which allows you to shake the device to activate some functionality. I've got the shaking code done so I get get a "shaking started" and "shaking ended" message to my game. What I need to have happen is start playing "shave.wav" when shaking starts and loop it until it stops. Is there a way to do this with AudioToolbox/AudioServices? How could I do this if not?
Keep track of the "is shaking" state and register a callback for system sound completion with AudioServicesAddSystemSoundCompletion. Then just start the system sound again whenever it completes AND the device is still being shaken. If the sound is short enough, this will create the desired effect. If you need to ensure the sound stops immediately when the shaking stops, you'll need to use one of the sound APIs that provides more granular control over playback (e.g., Audio Queue Services or AVAudioPlayer).
Related
I have an audio app that is having some problems with the way iOS 5 has changed audio behaviors. When my app's audio is playing (AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback), and a Clock.app alarm or timer is fired from the OS, the UIAlertView notification pops up, but without the audio alert. My application sound ducks fine to get out of the way of the audio alert, but the alarm app's audio alert does not sound.
Naturally, tons of support requests poured in over the iOS 5 change. I have solved this temporarily by setting kAudioSessionProperty_OverrideCategoryMixWithOthers which lets the alarm audio come through, but there are a few very undesirable side-effects when doing this:
Other app's audio can play with/over mine.
The remote control events are not routed to my app, but to iPod.app.
None of the above drawbacks are acceptable for my app's requirements. I have been hacking away at this for some time now but haven't been able to crack it. How can I setup my audio such that:
My app's audio still uses the AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback category for background audio.
The Clock.app alarms still have their audio alerts make sound
The app still responds to remote control notifications
After writing this question I went to file a bug report on this. I created a small sample project that I thought would replicate the issue, but I could not replicate it! This caused me to dig in deep once again and try to figure out what was up here…
I fired up an iOS alarm, then I placed a break point in audioPlayerBeginInterruption: and traced through my code line by line in the debugger. I noticed that before my code ran (while I was paused in the debugger), the iOS 5 alarm was sounding! Luckily it still sounded even as I was stepping through my app, so I was able to figure out which pieces of code specifically caused it to stop sounding.
Part of my interruptionHandler is to (obviously) stop the internal audio of my app to let the interruption come through. I never thought to inspect this method before, but turns out the problem existed in there. My stop method would call prepareToPlay immediately after stopping to make resuming faster the next time.
[self.player stop];
[self.player prepareToPlay]; // <- iOS 5 alarm sound stopped here.
The docs state the prepareToPlay method
preloads buffers and acquires the audio hardware needed for playback, which minimizes the lag between calling the play method and the start of sound output.
Sounds reasonable, and this worked for lesser iOS versions. My hypothesis is that must have made a change to the Clock.app alarm system such that the new alarm sounds use the hardware, whereas before it used the software. This is what I think is causing the iOS 5 alarms to be silent in some apps.
Removing the prepareToPlay lines caused the alarm to sound without using kAudioSessionProperty_OverrideCategoryMixWithOthers, thus solving all my issues laid out in this question.
TL;DR
Remove the prepareToPlay calls from your stop sound code logic. It will take a microsecond longer to start later, but will allow interruptions to sound.
Im implementing a fake call app.Im using a NSTimer for checking the time and it is working fine.The problem is when we press the sleep button,only vibration is working but ring tone is not playing.I tried this code but still ring tone is not playing.
AudioSessionSetActive(true);
// Set up audio session, to prevent iPhone from deep sleeping, while playing sounds
UInt32 sessionCategory = kAudioSessionCategory_MediaPlayback;
AudioSessionSetProperty (
kAudioSessionProperty_AudioCategory,
sizeof (sessionCategory),
&sessionCategory
);
How can i solve this issue.please help.Thanks in advance
I am sorry but I think You can not show calling screen while device locked (deep sleep). The only way is to fire local notification to wake up your application manually by user. Something like : You have fake call now. Do you want to receive ? So when user press Yes and it will open your application and you will need to handle to show calling screen in appDelegate background methods.
I played with other Fake Call apps and they are doing same. We are not allowed to do any UI Changes in background. So this is the only way to achieve your goal to display calling screen.
Hope this help.
Edit:
I am not sure why vibrate is working. Did you set below property in your info.plist file ? Just to give it try. Not sure that will solve your problem. Just give it a try once. See attache picture. Set Required Background modes to App Plays Audio.
I have set up an AVAudioPlayer object in viewDidLoad, as per the Apple guidelines, calling prepareToPlay as the last line in viewDidLoad (i have tried in awakeFromNib also).
When i press my play button, there is a pause, as it would appear to load the file, then it plays.
In audioPlayerDidFinishPlaying, i reload the player with a different sound, and when clicking play for a second time, the file plays instantly.
What would cause the player to lag on the first play?
Thanks.
The delay is due to AVAudioPlayer being initialised. Please see this answer.
The audio system runs on several asynchronous software processes (audio units, OS drivers, etc.) and hardware systems (DMA, DACs, audio amp power supplies, etc.) that never really all completely finish initialization until some sound is actually played all the way out the speakers or earphones.
Here's one method to do that: Create a sound file containing a half second of silence. On app start up, while your app and view controller are still loading, use AVAudioPlayer to play this file of silence. Now when your view finishes loading, AVAudioPlayer should be ready to play subsequent non-silent sounds much faster, since some audio (silence) has already already gone all the way out to the speakers.
What kind of sound are you playing? Alerts, something longer? If alerts, I did go this way and it's much better with lags ...
create system sound with AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID
play system sound with AudioServicesPlaySystemSound
dispose system sound with AudioServicesDisposeSystemSoundID
... you only need to store SystemSoundID for each sound you would like to play.
How can I play two or three vibrates in a row? Or different patterns of vibrate?
Repeating AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(kSystemSoundID_Vibrate) does not work. Only does a single vibrate.
Tried using callback
OSStatus AudioServicesAddSystemSoundCompletion (
SystemSoundID kSystemSoundID_Vibrate,
CFRunLoopRef inRunLoop,
CFStringRef inRunLoopMode,
AudioServicesSystemSoundCompletionProc vibrationDone,
void *inClientData
);
but it does not trigger vibrationDone.
Try registering a callback using AudioServicesAddSystemSoundCompletion to be notified when the vibrate "sound" has ended before attempting to play it another time. From the docs:
Because a system sound may play for several seconds, you might want to know when it has finished playing. For example, you may want to wait until a system sound has finished playing before you play another sound.
NB: I haven't tried if this actually works.
I'm using AVAudioPlayer to play sounds on a game. When the user locks the device, I pause the game (and send it to a resume view) and want all the sounds to stop playing.
However, since the resume view is the same I use when loading a saved game, that view triggers a sound using an AVAudioPlayer. When it does so with the screen locked, the sound is audible, even though I'm setting the audio session to kAudioSessionCategory_SoloAmbientSound.
Does anyone know how to stop all sounds even if AVAudioPlayer play is called?
I tried calling this method:
AudioSessionSetActive(false)
but it didn't help.
Update: I'm currently setting the volume to 0.0 when the device is locked, however, I wanted to know if there was a built-in way via AudioSessions, etc.
Thank you
The best way I could find is to set the volume to 0 on lock events, and restore it when the device gets unlocked.