kAudioDevicePropertyBufferFrameSize replacement for iOS - ios

I was trying to set up an audio unit to render the music (instead of Audio Queue.. which was too opaque for my purposes).. iOS doesn't have this property kAudioDevicePropertyBufferFrameSize.. any idea how I can derive this value to set up the buffer size of my IO unit?
I found this post interesting.. it asks about the possibility of using a combination of kAudioSessionProperty_CurrentHardwareIOBufferDuration and kAudioSessionProperty_CurrentHardwareOutputLatency audio session properties to determine that value.. but there is no answer.. any ideas?

You can use the kAudioSessionProperty_CurrentHardwareIOBufferDuration property, which represents the buffer size in seconds. Multiply this by the sample rate you get from kAudioSessionProperty_CurrentHardwareSampleRate to get the number of samples you should buffer.
The resulting buffer size should be a multiple of 2. I believe either 512 or 4096 are what you're likely to get, but you should always base it off of the values returned from AudioSessionGetProperty.
Example:
Float64 sampleRate;
UInt32 propSize = sizeof(Float64);
AudioSessionGetProperty(kAudioSessionProperty_CurrentHardwareSampleRate,
&propSize,
&sampleRate);
Float32 bufferDuration;
propSize = sizeof(Float32);
AudioSessionGetProperty(kAudioSessionProperty_CurrentHardwareIOBufferDuration,
&propSize,
&bufferDuration);
UInt32 bufferLengthInFrames = sampleRate * bufferDuration;
The next step is to find out the input stream format of the unit you're sending audio to. Based on your description, I'm assuming that you're programmatically generating audio to send to the speakers. This code assumes unit is an AudioUnit you're sending audio to, whether that's the RemoteIO or something like an effect Audio Unit.
AudioStreamBasicDescription inputASBD;
UInt32 propSize = sizeof(AudioStreamBasicDescription);
AudioUnitGetProperty(unit,
kAudioUnitProperty_StreamFormat,
kAudioUnitScope_Input,
0,
&inputASBD,
&propSize);
After this, inputASBD.mFormatFlags will be a bit field corresponding to the audio stream format that unit is expecting. The two most likely sets of flags are named kAudioFormatFlagsCanonical and kAudioFormatFlagsAudioUnitCanonical. These two have corresponding sample types AudioSampleType and AudioUnitSampleType that you can base your size calculation off of.
As an aside, AudioSampleType typically represents samples coming from the mic or destined for the speakers, whereas AudioUnitSampleType is usually for samples that are intended to be processed (by an audio unit, for example). At the moment on iOS, AudioSampleType is a SInt16 and AudioUnitSampleType is fixed 8.24 number stored in a SInt32 container. Here's a post on the Core Audio mailing list explaining this design choice
The reason I hold back from saying something like "just use Float32, it'll work" is because the actual bit representation of the stream is subject to change if Apple feels like it.

The audio unit itself decides on the actual buffer size, so the app's audio unit callback has to be able to handle any reasonable size given to it. You can suggest and poll the kAudioSessionProperty_CurrentHardwareIOBufferDuration property, but note that this value can while your app is running (especially during screen lock or call interruptions, etc.) outside of what the app can control.

Related

record pcmaudiodata per 10 milisecond without playback

İ need to record pcmaudio per 10 milisecond without playback in swift.
I have tried this code but i can't find how can i stop playback while recording.
RecordAudio Github Repo
and second question: How can i get PCM data from circular buffer for encode-decode process properly. When I convert recorded audio data to signed byte or unsigned byte or anything else the converted data sometimes will corrupt. What is the best practice for this kind of process
In the RecordAudio sample code, the audio format is specified as Float (32-bit floats). When doing a float to integer conversion, you have to make sure your scale and offset results in a value in legal range for the destination type. e.g. check that -1.0 to 1.0 results in 0 to 256 (unsigned byte), and out-of-range values are clipped to legal values. Also pay attention to the number of samples you convert, as an Audio Unit callback can vary the frameCount sent (number of samples returned). You most likely won't get exactly 10 mS in any single RemoteIO callback, but may have to observe a circular buffer filled by multiple callbacks, or a larger buffer that you will have to split.
When RemoteIO is running in play-and-record mode, you can usually silence playback by zeroing the bufferList buffers (after copying, analyzing, or otherwise using the data in the buffers) before returning from the Audio Unit callback.

AUGraph playback of aac->pcm converted audio stream sounds choppy on iPhone7plus but not iPhone6

I have built an AUGraph with an AUMixer and the audio playback sounds awful when playing out the stream through the callback on iPhone7plus. You can hear the audio and what is being said but it is very scratchy. If I build and run on my iPhone6 it sounds fine.
I also have the setup implemented with a singular AudioUnit without the mixer and that sounds fine on both iPhone7 and iPhone6 but I of course lose the required functionality of the mixer. I am using the same AudioStreamBasicDescription for both setups (the graph with mixer, and the singular audiounit)
Ideas on to why it sounds so bad specifically with the graph on my iPhone7 plus?
My current ASBD:
_pcmASBD AudioStreamBasicDescription
mSampleRate Float64 44100
mFormatID AudioFormatID 1819304813
mFormatFlags AudioFormatFlags 12
mBytesPerPacket UInt32 4
mFramesPerPacket UInt32 1
mBytesPerFrame UInt32 4
mChannelsPerFrame UInt32 2
mBitsPerChannel UInt32 16
mReserved UInt32 0
I am doing AAC to PCM conversion and then feeding that data into the AURenderCallback and then finally to the pendingBufferList that is played out by the AudioUnit architecture.
I need to use the Mixer as I want to control volume and such so a singular AudioUnit approach (which doesnt display this error, yet uses the same callback and everything) will not work for me as I prefer not to modulate audio by affecting the raw data stream.
EDIT:
Going to add some more code and thoughts to this to hopefully solve the issue.
I process an incoming stream of AAC using an AudioConverter, this converts to LPCM which I then feed into my AudioBufferList that is being filled during the audiounit graph render proc.
I have noticed that if I go 48Khz (encode then stream) -> 48khz (receive stream, decode, play) it sounds good and my audio render proc shows inNumberFrames of 1024.
If I go 44.1khz -> 48khz it sounds scratchy (my audio unit graph makes is sound the right pitch though because of the sample rate converter I put in) but the audio render proc shows inNumberFrames as 941 or 940
I feel like this might be what hotpaw2 was talking about but when I set my AudioBufferList's size to a multiple of 4*inNumberFrames its still sounds scratchy.
#hotpaw2?
Check the hardware sample rate. On many newer iOS devices, the hardware audio sample rate can default to 48000, not 44100, depending on what's plugged in or previously playing audio. If so, and your desired format is for 44100, the resampler will deliver varying and odd length buffers. An Audio Unit callback expecting a fixed or even length buffer might thus glitch.
The way to fix it might be to check the hardware sample rate. If it's 48000, then set your format to the same so no resampling needs to be done. Also make sure all your audio context callback blocks can handle varying and odd length/frameCounts of AudioBufferList buffers.

Record and send audio data to c++ function

I need to send audio data in real-time in PCM format 8 KHz 16 Bit Mono.
Audio must been sent like array of chars with length
(<#char *data#>, <#int len#>).
Now I'm beginner in Audio processing and cant really understand how to accomplish that. My best try was been to convert to iLBC format and try but it couldn't work. Is there any sample how to record and convert audio to any format. I have already read Learning Core Audio from Chris Adamson and Kevin Avila but I really didn't find solution that works.
Simple what i need:
(record)->(convert?)-> send(char *data, int length);
Couse I need to send data like arrays of chars i cant use player.
EDIT:
I managed to make everything work with recording and with reading buffers. What I can't manage is :
if (ref[i]->mAudioDataByteSize != 0){
char * data = (char*)ref[i]->mAudioData;
sendData(mHandle, data, ref[i]->mAudioDataByteSize);
}
This is not really a beginner task. The solutions are to use either the RemoteIO Audio Unit, the Audio Queue API, or an AVAudioEngine installTapOnBus block. These will give you near real-time (depending on the buffer size) buffers of audio samples (Int16's or Floats, etc.) that you can convert, compress, pack into other data types or arrays, etc. Usually by calling a callback function or block that you provide to do whatever you want with the incoming recorded audio sample buffers.

Accurate timer using AudioUnit

I'm trying to make an accurate timer to analyze an input. I'd like to be able to measure 1% deviation in signals of ~200ms.
My understanding is that using an AudioUnit will be able to get <1ms.
I tried implementing the code from Stefan Popp's example
After updating a few things to get it to work on xcode 6.3, I have the example working, however:
While I do eventually want to capture audio, I thought there should be some way to get a notification, like NSTimer, so I tried an AudioUnitAddRenderNotify, but it does exactly what it says it should - i.e it's tied to the render, not just an arbitrary timer. Is there some way to get a callback triggered without having to record or play?
When I examine mSampleTime, I find that the interval between slices does match the inNumberFrames - 512 - which works out to 11.6ms. I see the same interval for both record and play. I need more resolution than that.
I tried playing with kAudioSessionProperty_PreferredHardwareIOBufferDuration but all the examples I could find use the deprecated AudioSessions, so I tried to convert to AudioUnits:
Float32 preferredBufferSize = .001; // in seconds
status = AudioUnitSetProperty(audioUnit, kAudioSessionProperty_PreferredHardwareIOBufferDuration, kAudioUnitScope_Output, kOutputBus, &preferredBufferSize, sizeof(preferredBufferSize));
But I get OSStatus -10879, kAudioUnitErr_InvalidProperty.
Then I tried kAudioUnitProperty_MaximumFramesPerSlice with values of 128 and 256, but inNumberFrames is always 512.
UInt32 maxFrames = 128;
status = AudioUnitSetProperty(audioUnit, kAudioUnitProperty_MaximumFramesPerSlice, kAudioUnitScope_Global, 0, &maxFrames, sizeof(maxFrames));
[EDIT]
I am trying to compare the timing of an input (user's choice of MIDI or microphone) to when it should be. Specifically, is the instrument being played before or after the beat/metronome and by how much? This is for musicians, not a game, so precision is expected.
[EDIT]
The answers seem re-active to events. i.e. They let me precisely see when something happened, however I don't see how I do something accurately. My fault for not being clear. My app needs to be the metronome as well - synchronize playing a click on the beat and flash a dot on the beat - then I can analyze the user's action to compare timing. But if I can't play the beat accurately, the rest falls apart. Maybe I'm supposed to record audio - even if I don't want it - just to get inTimeStamp from the callback?
[EDIT]
Currently my metronome is:
- (void) setupAudio
{
AVAudioPlayer *audioPlayer;
NSString *path = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/click.mp3", [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath]];
NSURL *soundUrl = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
audioPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:soundUrl error:nil];
[audioPlayer prepareToPlay];
CADisplayLink *syncTimer;
syncTimer = [CADisplayLink displayLinkWithTarget:self selector:#selector(syncFired:)];
syncTimer.frameInterval = 30;
[syncTimer addToRunLoop:[NSRunLoop mainRunLoop] forMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode];
}
-(void)syncFired:(CADisplayLink *)displayLink
{
[audioPlayer play];
}
You should be using a circular buffer, and performing your analysis on the signal in chunks that match your desired frame count on your own timer. To do this you set up a render callback, then feed your circular buffer the input audio in the callback. Then you set up your own timer which will pull from the tail of the buffer and do your analysis. This way you could be feeding the buffer 1024 frames every 0.23 seconds, and your analysis timer could fire maybe every 0.000725 seconds and analyze 32 samples. Here is a related question about circular buffers.
EDIT
To get precision timing using a ring buffer, you could also store the timestamp corresponding to the audio buffer. I use TPCircularBuffer for doing just that. TPCircularBufferPrepareEmptyAudioBufferList, TPCircularBufferProduceAudioBufferList, and TPCircularBufferNextBufferList will copy and retrieve the audio buffer and timestamp to and from a ring buffer. Then when you are doing your analysis, there will be a timestamp corresponding to each buffer, eliminating the need to do all of your work in the render thread, and allowing you to pick and choose your analysis window.
If you are using something like cross-correlation and/or a peak detector to find a matched sample vector within an audio sample buffer (or a ring buffer containing samples), then you should be able to count samples between sharp events to within one sample (1/44100 or 0.0226757 milliseconds at a 44.1k Hz sample rate), plus or minus some time estimation error. For events more than one Audio Unit buffer apart, you can sum and add the number of samples within the intervening buffers to get a more precise time interval than just using (much coarser) buffer timing.
However, note that there is a latency or delay between every sample buffer and speaker audio going out, as well as between microphone sound reception and buffer callbacks. That has to be measured, as in you can measure the round trip time between sending a sample buffer out, and when the input buffer autocorrelation estimation function gets it back. This is how long it takes the hardware to buffer, convert (analog to digital and vice versa) and pass the data. That latency might be around the area of 2 to 6 times 5.8 milliseconds, using appropriate Audio Session settings, but might be different for different iOS devices.
Yes, the most accurate way to measure audio is to capture the audio and look at the data in the actual sampled audio stream.

CoreAudio, iOS: Failed to use mono Input and stereo output with RemoteIO

I was trying to set audio input to mono and output to stereo using two AudioStreamBasicDescriptions for one RemoteIO AudioUnit, which is the only AudioUnit there.
Then I registered two separate callbacks for input (kAudioOutputUnitProperty_SetInputCallback) and output (kAudioUnitProperty_SetRenderCallback), and expect that in my output callback, with AudioBufferList *ioData, ioData->mNumberBuffers should be 2.
But, to my surprise, it is still 1.
Is it that RemoteIO does not support having different channel numbers for input and output?
I seemed to have figured it out:
I was using signed-integer sample format, and with that format,
the input argument AudioBufferList *ioData of the RenderCallback has only one AudioBuffer in it with interleaved audio samples (two output channel buffers concatenated into one), i.e., the AudioBufferList::mNumberBuffers is one. Its only AudioBuffer member in turn has an attribute mNumberChannels which corresponds to the true channel count. In my case, that field is two.
An additional finding to support the above: Signed-integer format cannot be interleaved (tested with Xcode4.6 on OSX Mountain Lion), i.e., the property kAudioFormatFlagIsNonInterleaved cannot be combined with kAudioFormatFlagIsSignedInteger when setting the format flag of the ASBD.
If using float plus non-interleaved sample format, the AudioBufferList *ioData of the RenderCallback has two AudioBuffers in the buffer list, each has the mNumberChannels field as one.

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