Soundpool or MediaPlayer ? - Android

Question

I am so confused of those two classes.

I have a problem that I have 1000 of .wav files, it depends on user to load different sounds.

as well as, user can play many sounds in a row, like 4 sounds sequentially.

so which should I use? SoundPool is better for wav files but it is not good that it loads and keep the files loaded.

any recommendation for this situation?

Answer 1

I have done it on my way using MediaPlayer, Thanks for @blipinsk, After i read this answer StackOverFlow suggested by him in the comment above.

My files are a bit larger that SoundPool can tolerate, as well as, I want to play many files sequentially. Which i had to implement it myself using threads in SoundPool. On the contrary, It is ready in MediaPlayer using OnCompletionListener. So that, I used MediaPlayer.

Actually i tried SoundPool with threads, it works but since it does not support large media files, i used Media Player.

I wrote this class which wrap the MediaPlayer to run a playList, you can add to the playlist and the media player will run them one after another. so here is the class:

import android.media.MediaPlayer;
import android.os.Environment;

import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.LinkedBlockingQueue;

/**
 * Created by MBH on 01.08.2015.
 */
public class THSafeListMediaPlayer {
    private static final String TAG_DEBUG = "MBH";
    private String PATH_OF_SOUND_FILES; // I use it because i will put all sound clips in one folder
    // , then i will pass the name of the folder only.
    private LinkedBlockingQueue<String> playList;
    private MediaPlayer mediaPlayer; // The media player to play the sounds, even in background
    private ExecutorService executorService; // For making sure there is only one thread at a time
    // adding to the queue
    private boolean isPaused = false;
    private int pausedPosition = -1;

    /**
     * Constructor will take care of initializing all the important variables
     */
    public THSafeListMediaPlayer() {
        // initializing the variables
        executorService = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
        playList = new LinkedBlockingQueue<>();
        mediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
        PATH_OF_SOUND_FILES = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getPath() + "/mbh/sounds/";
    }

    /**
     * It will only add file to the PlayList
     *
     * @param fileName: The file name
     */
    public void addFile(String fileName) {
        // you may add executorService here for safer threads adding here
        // here i use offer, because it is thread safe
        playList.offer(fileName);
    }

    /**
     * It will add file and play the last add file and continue to the play list
     *
     * @param fileName: the file name, playing the soundtrack will start from this file
     */
    public void addFileAndPlay(final String fileName) {
        // For MultiThreaded
//        executorService.submit(new Runnable() {
//            @Override
//            public void run() {
//                playList.offer(fileName);
//                if (!mediaPlayer.isPlaying())
//                    play(playList.poll());
//            }
//        });
        // For single threaded
        playList.offer(fileName);
        if (!mediaPlayer.isPlaying())
            play(playList.poll());
    }

    /**
     * Start playing the play list if there is files in the playlist
     *
     * @return: True if playing successfully done, otherwise, false;
     */
    public boolean play() {
        if (mediaPlayer != null) {
            if (!mediaPlayer.isPlaying()) {
                if (isPaused) {
                    mediaPlayer.seekTo(pausedPosition);
                    mediaPlayer.start();
                    pausedPosition = -1;
                    isPaused = false;
                    return true;
                } else if (!playList.isEmpty()) {
                    play(playList.poll());
                    return true;
                }
            }
        }
        return false;
    }

    /**
     * Pause the current played track, if there is track playing
     */
    public void pause() {
        if(isPaused)
            return;
        if (mediaPlayer != null) {
            if (mediaPlayer.isPlaying()) {
                mediaPlayer.pause();
                pausedPosition = mediaPlayer.getCurrentPosition();
                isPaused = true;
            }
        }
    }

    /**
     * it will play the given file, when it finishes, or fails, it will play the next from the list
     *
     * @param fileName: the file name to start playing from it
     */
    private void play(String fileName) {
        if (mediaPlayer != null) {
            if (!mediaPlayer.isPlaying()) {
                try {
                    mediaPlayer.reset();
                    mediaPlayer.setDataSource(fileName);
                    mediaPlayer.prepare();
                    mediaPlayer.setOnCompletionListener(new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
                        @Override
                        public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
                            playNextSoundTrack();
                        }
                    });
                    mediaPlayer.start();
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    // TODO: Remove this error checking before publishin

                    // If the current file is not found, play the next track if there is
                    playNextSoundTrack();
                }
            }
        }
    }

    /**
     * this function will be called recursively to play the next track
     */
    private void playNextSoundTrack() {
        if (playList.size() != 0) {
            play(playList.poll());
        }
    }


}

I struggled for a while with it. I hope it will help others.

NOTE: I used LinkedBlockingQueue to keep the playList tracks in it, because it is implemented to be thread safe.

If you want to use this class in threads, i suggest you to use the executorService if u will use it in multithreaded app.