Android: AudioRecord Class Problem: Callback is never called

Question

My Android Java Application needs to record audio data into the RAM and process it. This is why I use the class "AudioRecord" and not the "MediaRecorder" (records only to file).

Till now, I used a busy loop polling with "read()" for the audio data. this has been working so far, but it peggs the CPU too much. Between two polls, I put the thread to sleep to avoid 100% CPU usage. However, this is not really a clean solution, since the time of the sleep is not guaranteed and you must subtract a security time in order not to loose audio snippets. This is not CPU optimal. I need as many free CPU cycles as possible for a parallel running thread.

Now I implemented the recording using the "OnRecordPositionUpdateListener". This looks very promising and the right way to do it according the SDK Docs. Everything seems to work (opening the audio device, read()ing the data etc.) but the Listner is never called.

Does anybody know why?

Info: I am working with a real Device, not under the Emulator. The Recording using a Busy Loop basically works (however not satifiying). Only the Callback Listener is never called.

Here is a snippet from my Sourcecode:

public class myApplication extends Activity {

  /* audio recording */
  private static final int AUDIO_SAMPLE_FREQ = 16000;
  private static final int AUDIO_BUFFER_BYTESIZE = AUDIO_SAMPLE_FREQ * 2 * 3; // = 3000ms
  private static final int AUDIO_BUFFER_SAMPLEREAD_SIZE = AUDIO_SAMPLE_FREQ  / 10 * 2; // = 200ms

  private short[] mAudioBuffer = null; // audio buffer
  private int mSamplesRead; // how many samples are recently read
  private AudioRecord mAudioRecorder; // Audio Recorder

  ...

  private OnRecordPositionUpdateListener mRecordListener = new OnRecordPositionUpdateListener() {

    public void onPeriodicNotification(AudioRecord recorder) {
      mSamplesRead = recorder.read(mAudioBuffer, 0, AUDIO_BUFFER_SAMPLEREAD_SIZE);
      if (mSamplesRead > 0) {

        // do something here...

      }
    }

    public void onMarkerReached(AudioRecord recorder) {
      Error("What? Hu!? Where am I?");
    }
  };

  ...

  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

  try {
      mAudioRecorder = new AudioRecord(
          android.media.MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC, 
          AUDIO_SAMPLE_FREQ,
          AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO,
          AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,  
          AUDIO_BUFFER_BYTESIZE);
    } catch (Exception e) {
      Error("Unable to init audio recording!");
    }

    mAudioBuffer = new short[AUDIO_BUFFER_SAMPLEREAD_SIZE];
    mAudioRecorder.setPositionNotificationPeriod(AUDIO_BUFFER_SAMPLEREAD_SIZE);
    mAudioRecorder.setRecordPositionUpdateListener(mRecordListener);
    mAudioRecorder.startRecording();

    /* test if I can read anything at all... (and yes, this here works!) */
    mSamplesRead = mAudioRecorder.read(mAudioBuffer, 0, AUDIO_BUFFER_SAMPLEREAD_SIZE);

  }
}

Answer 1

I believe the problem is that you still need to do the read loop. If you setup callbacks, they will fire when you've read the number of frames that you specify for the callbacks. But you still need to do the reads. I've tried this and the callbacks get called just fine. Setting up a marker causes a callback when that number of frames has been read since the start of recording. In other words, you could set the marker far into the future, after many of your reads, and it will fire then. You can set the period to some bigger number of frames and that callback will fire every time that number of frames has been read. I think they do this so you can do low-level processing of the raw data in a tight loop, then every so often your callback can do summary-level processing. You could use the marker to make it easier to decide when to stop recording (instead of counting in the read loop).