does an ANE for sound effects solve the android delay?

boat5

Has anyone had success using an ane for game sound effects to reduce the air on android sound lag?

I see this one, not sure if there are others private or public

https://github.com/DigitalStrawberry/ANE-Sounds

flashisland

That's our ANE and I can confirm that it works great. We've tested it on many types of Android devices and have had no issues with it. Let me know if you have any questions.

caseyryan

What lag are you talking about?

flashisland

Some Android devices exhibit a short delay when playing sound effects in AIR. The best way we found to solve it for all devices is to use an ANE.

caseyryan

Hm, I didn't know that. All devices, I tested so far, had processed sound effects perfectly. Thanks for the info

boat5

caseyryan, usually on android there is a few hundred milliseconds delay when calling play() that does not occur on ios.

thanks flashisland! I learned to just accept the delay over the years, I haven't tried the ANE yet because im still in the mid to early stages of a project, ill implement it later when im nearing the end. Really happy to hear it works! thanks

caseyryan

Isn't it only concerning mp3 files? Since there's a tiny delay in all mp3 files. Have you tested sounds from swc libraries prepared from waves in Flash IDE?

boat5

I have not, but if you can get sound effects to play on android with no delay right out of flash ide with no ane, I will buy you beer in amazement.

flashisland

We've tested pretty much every combination of file type, compression and embedding that we could think of. We were never able to remove the delay for every device. It's not an mp3 problem; sometimes the sounds will "stack" up on each other and you'll get a bunch of them playing all at once. Using our ANE solved all these problems on all devices tested.

We've got plans in the future to build it as a wrapper around the normal AS3 sound class so you'll be able to use it just as you would a regular sound object and not worry that it's actually an ANE doing the heavy lifting.

Hope it helps you guys!

boat5

thats great news!

I also experience the sounds "stacking up" like you said on my gs5 phone

caseyryan

@flashisland so it's actually your ANE that plays sounds instead of native flash?
I think it's a good choice too since flash also has other problem with creating too many SoundChannel objects when, for example, one needs to play a tommygun fire

flashisland

@caseyryan Yep the ANE uses the native Android SoundPool class to play the sounds, so Air is not actually involved at all.

bobrokrol

yes it solves sound delay bug. But could be issues with loading speed.
* it copies files from application dirrectory to local storage. I could take long time due to compresiing issues.
* soundPool itself has vugs with loading performance but it does not reproduced on all versions of android. But you should be ready for situation when loading will be extreamal slow
Anywhay we do not have choise for plaing sounds. It doesn't looks like Adobe will fix sound issues in near feauture

flashisland

it copies files from application dirrectory to local storage

Unfortunately this is required as the Air compiler incorrectly compresses embedded sound files, so the native Android code can't read it unless the file is uncompressed and moved out of the app bundle. If Adobe fixes this in the future we'd be happy to update the ANE.

I could take long time due to compresiing issues.

We've found the transfer time to be very quick. If you are worried about loading speed you should pre-load the sounds you need on a loading screen, just as you would do for image assets.

soundPool itself has vugs with loading performance

We're using this ANE in an app targeting Android 4.1 and higher and haven't had any issues or complaints. It may not be perfect for every situation, but it makes playing sound effects on Android easy.

DanGrey

Hi flashisland,

Your ANE works great to prevent delay on Android. Is it possible to let the sounds play longer than around 12 seconds? Longer sounds stops after that.

2dguy

ok...I converted over my latest app to using the flashisland sound ane. I'm still using normal flash sound object for playing background music, but all sound fx are going through the Flashsland ane. I am still experiencing a very slight delay before the sound fx plays but it is a MAJOR improvement and I'm guessing the typical user won't even notice it. 🙂

Thank you FlashIsland for creating this ANE!

hoangdung

If you want to play background music, let convert your audio track to mono (.ogg)

DanGrey

hoangdung, I've tried with mono .ogg, but it also stops after ca. 12 seconds.

2dguy

@DanGrey - Can't use the standard Flash sound system for your music files?

hoangdung

mono ogg vorbis, sampling rate 1000 Hz or 8000 Hz! it worked well for me with 25 seconds audio track! https://audio.online-convert.com/convert-to-ogg