I've made a simple app, where I have a list of songs. The user taps a list entry and the song begins playing.
I've lifted the SoundEffect class from Apple's sample projects (e.g. Metronome, BubbleLevel). It seems to work fine with the following code:
// declare in the .h file
SoundEffect *audio;
// setup - when controller loads
audio = [SoundEffect alloc];
// play when user taps entry
NSBundle *mainBundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
[audio initWithContentsOfFile:[mainBundle pathForResource:#"entry1" ofType:#"mp3"]];
[audio play];
However, if the 'audio' object is already playing, I'd like to stop it before it starts playing the sound again. SoundEffect class does not have a stop method or I am simply missing something.
How do i stop the audio before playing it again?
Why don’t you simply use AVAudioPlayer?
The SoundEffect class is a wrapper around the C-based System Sounds API (see the .m file from the Bubble Level project), which is a simple "fire and forget" style API that doesn't provide a "stop" function. More info in the System Sounds Services Reference.
I also agree with (and have voted up) zoul's suggestion to use AVAudioPlayer. System Sounds are wholly inappropriate for long, encoded audio files like songs in MP3 files.
Related
I am making a music game and when the user presses a note it will produce a sound. The sound naturally needs to play immediately when the user presses, so they can tell whether they are in time with the music. However, it feels as if the sound is lagging, especially when note presses become quicker.
My background .m4a music file is played with AVAudioPlayer. I chose to use this over Cocos Denshion as I have access to the currentTime property. I may be wrong, but I dont think I can access this with CocosDenshion.
I made a .wav file which is extremely short (less than a second). I preload my sound effect on init:
[[SimpleAudioEngine sharedEngine] preloadEffect:#"Assist.wav"];
Then to play the sound effect, in CCTouchesBegan I call:
[[SimpleAudioEngine sharedEngine] playEffect:#"Assist.wav"];
After that it calls my code to determine the users timing and awards points. Any idea why it might be lagging, or a better way to play sound effects in time with music?
EDIT: Ive tried a few things recently with no results. First I tried playing the sounds automatically as they came up to the appropriate time in the song. Still had the lag, so I dont think it is touch events being slow. I also tried 3 different sound libraries.
However, when I ran in the simulator, it seemed to not be laggy. Does anyone have an idea? Im clueless and its a major feature I cant really take out...
you should avoid this code:- [[SimpleAudioEngine sharedEngine] preloadEffect:#"Assist.wav"];
with the start of app you should load your framework SimpleAudioEngine by writing this code :-
//SimpleAudioEngine *palySound; made object in .h file.
palySound=[SimpleAudioEngine sharedEngine];
and whenever you want to play sound you can write: [palySound playEffect:#"Assist.wav"];
I am not sure what you're doing in your SoundEngine, but in my own experience, the best way to not get lag to play a sound is to assign an AVAudioPlayer for each sound file (unless you want to start messing around with AudioQueues).
Here it is an example:
Let's assume that you have an AVAudioPlayer *assistPlayer; in your current view controller.
In your viewDidLoad initialize it with your sound:
NSURL *wavURL = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:#"Assist" withExtension:#"wav"];
assistPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:wavURL error:nil];
Then, in your IBAction where you want to play the file, just do:
[assistPlayer play];
You shouldn't get any lag.
Did you try Finch? It claims to play sounds with low latency, and it is also just a wrapper around OpenAL.
Other than that, I'm really not experienced with OpenAL, but can think of two possible reasons for your lag:
The main thread is too busy - Try to offload work from it to other
threads.
Perhaps OpenAL is defined with too large of a buffer, so the pipeline loads the entire sound into the buffer (or a big chunk of it), and only afterwards the playback starts.
In order to load a sound file, I have the following code in my application :
- (id) init:(NSString*)a_filename ext:(NSString*)a_ext
{
...
NSString *t_soundFilePath = [CFileLoader getPathForResource:filename WithExtension:ext];
NSURL *t_fileURL = [[[NSURL alloc] initFileURLWithPath: t_soundFilePath] autorelease];
player = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL: t_fileURL error: nil];
[player prepareToPlay];
...
}
All the sounds that I load are in my bundle, so I would like to know if the method "initwithcontentsofurl" stream the sound file or if all the file is cached.
I have a lot of sprites in my app so I want to minimize memory space used for sounds.
thx for your help
I used AVPlayer (not AVAudioPlayer) to stream background audio.
Sounds that are played using the AVAudioPlayer are streamed real time from storage. The drawback being that you can occasionally notice a small lag when it is due to start up. If you use OpenAL the sounds are loaded entirely into memory.
There's a good discussion of this sort of thing in the ObjectAL documentation - a library that is meant to simplify the playing of sounds and effects on the iPhone.
If you want to stream audio in your app you can use the following player instead of using AVAudioPlayer
https://github.com/mattgallagher/AudioStreamer
For this player you don't need to put sound files in your bundle, you can put them at server and use url to stream audio.
Hope, this wil help you.
" The AVAudioPlayer class does not provide support for streaming audio
based on HTTP URL's. The URL used with initWithContentsOfURL: must be
a File URL (file://). That is, a local path".
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/qa/qa1634/_index.html
But you can work around - for example write asynchronously to local file, and init AVAudioPlayer with this file URL, it will work.
I need to play some audio streaming contents on iPhone, but there are some options and problems I can't solve:
1. http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/06/revisiting-old-post-streaming-and.html
It is a library provided by Matt Gallagher, but I saw the Limited scope, and I would play
a single song, not a radio station.
2. Suggestion from zonble
NSURL *URL = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://zonble.net/MIDI/orz.mp3"];
NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:URL];
AVAudioPlayer *player = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithData:data error:nil];
But I need streaming for each "single song".
3. Using MPMoviePlayerController to wrapper.
Since the Class update new method, and
#interface MyAudioStreamer : UIViewController {
MPMoviePlayerController *mp ;
}
instead of [self addSubview:mp.view] I use my own xib file to implement play and
stop methods, but in this case, I have no idea to implement seekForward or seekBackward.
Is there any good idea to do AudioStreamer?
==== Update ====
after google 'AVPlayer' ,i used 3. Using MPMoviePlayerController to wrapper. to implement a auidoStreamer-like player ,there is something to share :
1.'playbackDidFinished' state
there're 2 conditions : a song did finished and play next song or a song interrupt by user press stop or exception, i used enum to filter my state.
2 multi-task playing your song in background
reference from https:// devforums.apple.com/message/264397
and if iOS SDK update, the solution might be changed because method would be diplicated. so i suggest to read library provided by Matt Gallagher.
anyone who konws when the library have no codec match download item (for example, my item encode by .AAC 128-bit and the library not support or at most .AAC 64-bit), what happen would the player be ?
You can either parse the icy meta data yourself, or if you're using iOS 4.0 you can playback using an AVPlayer and observe the timed metadata to discover the song boundaries and titles.
Is there a way to programmatically invoke the keypad "click" sound? My app has a custom keypad (built out of UIButtons) and I'd like to provide some audio feedback when the user taps on the keys. I tried creating my own sounds in Garageband, but wasn't happy with any of my creations. If there isn't a standard way to invoke the key click, can anyone point me to a library of sounds that might have such a gem?
There is a really fast solution to play the default keyboard sound:
Add AudioToolbox.framework
Add the following line wherever you want the sound to play:
AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(0x450);
As of iOS 4.2, adopt the UIInputViewAudioFeedback protocol on a custom subclass of UIView. Make this view your "inputView" and then call "playInputClick" at the appropriate time.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIInputViewAudioFeedback_ProtocolReference/Reference/Reference.html
Just to save some people time. Put this in your custom view:
- (BOOL) enableInputClicksWhenVisible {
return YES;
}
To make the click do this:
[[UIDevice currentDevice] playInputClick];
No need to copy the file into your own app - you should be able to get it directly from the UIKit framework:
CFURLRef soundFileURLRef = CFBundleCopyResourceURL(
CFBundleGetBundleWithIdentifier(CFSTR("com.apple.UIKit")),
CFSTR ("Tock"),CFSTR ("aiff"),NULL);
This is what I made out of it aSquared's comment:
NSString *path = [[NSBundle bundleWithIdentifier:#"com.apple.UIKit"] pathForResource:#"Tock" ofType:#"aiff"];
SystemSoundID soundID;
AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID((CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path], &soundID);
AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(soundID);
AudioServicesDisposeSystemSoundID(soundID);
The simplest way I've found is to extract Tock.aiff (the keyboard sound) from the iPhone Simulator and package it with your app, then play it using AudioServicesPlaySystemSound() at the appropriate time. On my machine, simply typing Tock.aiff into Spotlight turns up the file, but if you have to go looking for it, it's in the simulator version of UIKit.framework.
Using 0x450 as the SystemSoundID works for me (and at the correct volume - just playing the built-in Tock.aiff was too loud). No idea how portable that is - this is on an iPod Touch 3rd gen.
Still doesn't respect the preference for tick on/off.
Here's what I did:
Locate 'Tock.aiff' in: /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator4.2.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.framework
Drag it into your Resources folder in xCode, ticking 'Copy items into destination group's folder'
Import AVFoundation.framework into the Frameworks folder in xCode
Import AVFoundation at the top of your class:
#import <AVFoundation/AVAudioPlayer.h>
Use the following function:
- (void)PlayClick {
NSURL* musicFile = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:[[NSBundle mainBundle]
pathForResource:#"Tock"
ofType:#"aiff"]];
AVAudioPlayer *click = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:musicFile error:nil];
[click setVolume:0.15f];
[click play];
}
That's it!
From what I can tell, the click sound isn't available to apps. I haven't seen anything in audio session services that is relevant. AudioServicesPlaySystemSound() looks promising, but there doesn't appear to be any system sound ID for the click sound (a closer look at the headers may turn up something). You could always loop over a call to AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(i) and see if anything plays. The iPhone software restore images probably have the sound, but it's probably not licensed for general use. Jailbreaking an iPhone to get at the tasty click sound doesn't need to be mentioned.
For (creative commons) sounds, check out the Freesound Project.
For the future, perhaps request that Apple expose system sounds other than the alert sound for use with AudioServicesPlaySystemSound().
Maybe a bit late ...
But in MrMage last post, if you do AudioServicesDisposeSystemSoundID(soundID); straight after AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(soundID);
then you won't hear a thing as you're discarding the system sound right after creating it.
You have to let it finish playing first.. Only call AudioServicesDisposeSystemSoundID to cancel the sound before it finishes
You do not have to dispose of the sound object right away.
Keep a pointer to that sound object in a property, and dispose of it only when you are about to play another sound before re-creating it.
And of course finally dispose of the SystemSoundID object in dealloc.
I've gotten to play a single sound in the iPhone app I've started, but I now desire to play multiple sounds based on a button. To create a separate set of .m and .h files for each audio sounds, and then including them all, doesn't seem the most efficient way to tackle this in terms of coding...then again, I'm just starting out with Cocoa and only just completed my first app ever.
Any help is appreciated. The key here is multiple sounds, each triggered by its own button or image. Thanks.
If the files are MP3 or AAC format, then you can only play one at a time. This is a limitation of core audio on the iPhone.
In terms of playing multiple sounds at once, that's easy, just create a new player instance for every one that you want to play (and remember to release them when you're done)
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"dream" ofType:#"m4a"];
AVAudioPlayer* theAudio=[[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path] error:NULL];
theAudio.delegate = self;
[theAudio play];
To convert an MP3 into something like IMA4 (which you can play more than one at once) you would run the following (in terminal, in leopard):
/usr/bin/afconvert -f caff -d ima4 sound.mp3 sound.caf
The above code is firmware 2.2 only, but you can do the same with the AudioQueue files if you want to support older firmwares (it's just a lot more complex, so I haven't listed the code here).
If you have access to the iPhone developer network, then there are a bunch of code samples that show you how to play audio.
All you need to do is make one class that has a function called
-(void)Play:(NSString*)sSoundFile {
// play sound file here
}
I don't have any direct experience with iPhone development, but in theory could you create a single large sound file with all your sounds in it? Each sound could be separated by just enough silence to be individually accessed by a time index. Of course, the downside is that you'd have to load the entire file into memory, unless you could figure out a way to load chunks in a random-access fashion...
#rustyshelf - does this work in the simulator? I'm using that code, and using #import but neither audioPlayerDidFinishPlaying nor audioPlayerDecodeErrorDidOccur ever get called. Very annoying to try to debug.
http://www.icodeblog.com/2009/05/04/iphone-game-programming-tutorial-part-4-basic-game-audio/
in this example in ios5 you have to put
CFURLRef soundurl=(__bridge CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:objstring];
in place of
CFURLRef soundurl=(CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:objstring];
Hardik Mamtora