Play audio from a stream using C

Question

Is there a way in C  to play audio  for example  MP3  direcly from a System IO Stream that for instance was returend from a WebRequest without saving the data temporarily to the disk     Solution with NAudio  With the help of NAudio 1 3 it is possible to    Load an MP3 file from a URL into a MemoryStream Convert MP3 data into wave data after it was completely loaded Playback the wave data using NAudio s WaveOut class   It would have been nice to be able to even play a half loaded MP3 file  but this seems to be impossible due to the NAudio library design   And this is the function that will do the work       public static void PlayMp3FromUrl string url                using  Stream ms   new MemoryStream                          using  Stream stream   WebRequest Create url                   GetResponse   GetResponseStream                                  byte   buffer   new byte 32768                   int read                  while   read   stream Read buffer  0  buffer Length    gt  0                                        ms Write buffer  0  read                                                ms Position   0              using  WaveStream blockAlignedStream                   new BlockAlignReductionStream                      WaveFormatConversionStream CreatePcmStream                          new Mp3FileReader ms                                   using  WaveOut waveOut   new WaveOut WaveCallbackInfo FunctionCallback                                           waveOut Init blockAlignedStream                       waveOut Play                                                while  waveOut PlaybackState    PlaybackState Playing                                                                         System Threading Thread Sleep 100

User · Answer

The SoundPlayer class can do this   It looks like all you have to do is set its Stream property to the stream  then call Play   edit I don t think it can play MP3 files though  it seems limited to  wav   I m not certain if there s anything in the framework that can play an MP3 file directly   Everything I find about that involves either using a WMP control or interacting with DirectX

User · Answer

I haven t tried it from a WebRequest  but both the Windows Media Player ActiveX and the MediaElement  from WPF  components are capable of playing and buffering MP3 streams   I use it to play data coming from a SHOUTcast stream and it worked great  However   I m not sure if it will work in the scenario you propose

User · Answer

Edit  Answer updated to reflect changes in recent versions of NAudio  It s possible using the NAudio open source  NET audio library I have written  It looks for an ACM codec on your PC to do the conversion  The Mp3FileReader supplied with NAudio currently expects to be able to reposition within the source stream  it builds an index of MP3 frames up front   so it is not appropriate for streaming over the network  However  you can still use the MP3Frame and AcmMp3FrameDecompressor classes in NAudio to decompress streamed MP3 on the fly   I have posted an article on my blog explaining how to play back an MP3 stream using NAudio  Essentially you have one thread downloading MP3 frames  decompressing them and storing them in a BufferedWaveProvider  Another thread then plays back using the BufferedWaveProvider as an input

User · Answer

The SoundPlayer class can do this   It looks like all you have to do is set its Stream property to the stream  then call Play   edit I don t think it can play MP3 files though  it seems limited to  wav   I m not certain if there s anything in the framework that can play an MP3 file directly   Everything I find about that involves either using a WMP control or interacting with DirectX

User · Answer

Bass can do just this  Play from Byte   in memory or a through file delegates where you return the data  so with that you can play as soon as you have enough data to start the playback

User · Answer

I haven t tried it from a WebRequest  but both the Windows Media Player ActiveX and the MediaElement  from WPF  components are capable of playing and buffering MP3 streams   I use it to play data coming from a SHOUTcast stream and it worked great  However   I m not sure if it will work in the scenario you propose

User · Answer

Bass can do just this  Play from Byte   in memory or a through file delegates where you return the data  so with that you can play as soon as you have enough data to start the playback

User · Answer

NAudio wraps the WaveOutXXXX API   I haven t looked at the source  but if NAudio exposes the waveOutWrite   function in a way that doesn t automatically stop playback on each call  then you should be able to do what you really want  which is to start playing the audio stream before you ve received all the data   Using the waveOutWrite   function allows you to  read ahead  and dump smaller chunks of audio into the output queue - Windows will automatically play the chunks seamlessly   Your code would have to take the compressed audio stream and convert it to small chunks of WAV audio on the fly  this part would be really difficult - all the libraries and components I ve ever seen do MP3-to-WAV conversion an entire file at a time   Probably your only realistic chance is to do this using WMA instead of MP3  because you can write simple C  wrappers around the multimedia SDK

User · Answer

I ve tweaked the source posted in the question to allow usage with Google s TTS API in order to answer the question here   bool waiting   false  AutoResetEvent stop   new AutoResetEvent false   public void PlayMp3FromUrl string url  int timeout        using  Stream ms   new MemoryStream                  using  Stream stream   WebRequest Create url               GetResponse   GetResponseStream                          byte   buffer   new byte 32768               int read              while   read   stream Read buffer  0  buffer Length    gt  0                                ms Write buffer  0  read                                   ms Position   0          using  WaveStream blockAlignedStream               new BlockAlignReductionStream                  WaveFormatConversionStream CreatePcmStream                      new Mp3FileReader ms                           using  WaveOut waveOut   new WaveOut WaveCallbackInfo FunctionCallback                                   waveOut Init blockAlignedStream                   waveOut PlaybackStopped     sender  e    gt                                        waveOut Stop                                       waveOut Play                    waiting   true                  stop WaitOne timeout                   waiting   false                                    Invoke with   var playThread   new Thread timeout   gt  PlayMp3FromUrl  http   translate google com translate tts q     HttpUtility UrlEncode relatedLabel Text    int timeout    playThread IsBackground   true  playThread Start 10000     Terminate with   if  waiting      stop Set      Notice that I m using the ParameterizedThreadDelegate in the code above  and the thread is started with playThread Start 10000    The 10000 represents a maximum of 10 seconds of audio to be played so it will need to be tweaked if your stream takes longer than that to play  This is necessary because the current version of NAudio  v1 5 4 0  seems to have a problem determining when the stream is done playing  It may be fixed in a later version or perhaps there is a workaround that I didn t take the time to find

User · Answer

I ve always used FMOD for things like this because it s free for non-commercial use and works well   That said  I d gladly switch to something that s smaller  FMOD is  300k  and open-source  Super bonus points if it s fully managed so that I can compile   merge it with my  exe and not have to take extra care to get portability to other platforms      FMOD does portability too but you d obviously need different binaries for different platforms

User · Answer

Edit  Answer updated to reflect changes in recent versions of NAudio  It s possible using the NAudio open source  NET audio library I have written  It looks for an ACM codec on your PC to do the conversion  The Mp3FileReader supplied with NAudio currently expects to be able to reposition within the source stream  it builds an index of MP3 frames up front   so it is not appropriate for streaming over the network  However  you can still use the MP3Frame and AcmMp3FrameDecompressor classes in NAudio to decompress streamed MP3 on the fly   I have posted an article on my blog explaining how to play back an MP3 stream using NAudio  Essentially you have one thread downloading MP3 frames  decompressing them and storing them in a BufferedWaveProvider  Another thread then plays back using the BufferedWaveProvider as an input

User · Answer

I wrapped the MP3 decoder library and made it available for  NET developers as mpg123 net   Included are the samples to convert MP3 files to PCM  and read ID3 tags

User · Answer

I haven t tried it from a WebRequest  but both the Windows Media Player ActiveX and the MediaElement  from WPF  components are capable of playing and buffering MP3 streams   I use it to play data coming from a SHOUTcast stream and it worked great  However   I m not sure if it will work in the scenario you propose

User · Answer

I slightly modified the topic starter source  so it can now play a not-fully-loaded file  Here it is  note  that it is just a sample and is a point to start from  you need to do some exception and error handling here    private Stream ms   new MemoryStream    public void PlayMp3FromUrl string url        new Thread delegate object o                var response   WebRequest Create url  GetResponse            using  var stream   response GetResponseStream                          byte   buffer   new byte 65536      64KB chunks             int read              while   read   stream Read buffer  0  buffer Length    gt  0                                var pos   ms Position                  ms Position   ms Length                  ms Write buffer  0  read                   ms Position   pos                                 Start            Pre-buffering some data to allow NAudio to start playing     while  ms Length  lt  65536 10          Thread Sleep 1000        ms Position   0      using  WaveStream blockAlignedStream   new BlockAlignReductionStream WaveFormatConversionStream CreatePcmStream new Mp3FileReader ms                   using  WaveOut waveOut   new WaveOut WaveCallbackInfo FunctionCallback                           waveOut Init blockAlignedStream               waveOut Play                while  waveOut PlaybackState    PlaybackState Playing                                System Threading Thread Sleep 100

User · Answer

The SoundPlayer class can do this   It looks like all you have to do is set its Stream property to the stream  then call Play   edit I don t think it can play MP3 files though  it seems limited to  wav   I m not certain if there s anything in the framework that can play an MP3 file directly   Everything I find about that involves either using a WMP control or interacting with DirectX

User · Answer

Edit  Answer updated to reflect changes in recent versions of NAudio  It s possible using the NAudio open source  NET audio library I have written  It looks for an ACM codec on your PC to do the conversion  The Mp3FileReader supplied with NAudio currently expects to be able to reposition within the source stream  it builds an index of MP3 frames up front   so it is not appropriate for streaming over the network  However  you can still use the MP3Frame and AcmMp3FrameDecompressor classes in NAudio to decompress streamed MP3 on the fly   I have posted an article on my blog explaining how to play back an MP3 stream using NAudio  Essentially you have one thread downloading MP3 frames  decompressing them and storing them in a BufferedWaveProvider  Another thread then plays back using the BufferedWaveProvider as an input

User · Answer

I haven t tried it from a WebRequest  but both the Windows Media Player ActiveX and the MediaElement  from WPF  components are capable of playing and buffering MP3 streams   I use it to play data coming from a SHOUTcast stream and it worked great  However   I m not sure if it will work in the scenario you propose

User · Answer

Bass can do just this  Play from Byte   in memory or a through file delegates where you return the data  so with that you can play as soon as you have enough data to start the playback

User · Answer

I slightly modified the topic starter source  so it can now play a not-fully-loaded file  Here it is  note  that it is just a sample and is a point to start from  you need to do some exception and error handling here    private Stream ms   new MemoryStream    public void PlayMp3FromUrl string url        new Thread delegate object o                var response   WebRequest Create url  GetResponse            using  var stream   response GetResponseStream                          byte   buffer   new byte 65536      64KB chunks             int read              while   read   stream Read buffer  0  buffer Length    gt  0                                var pos   ms Position                  ms Position   ms Length                  ms Write buffer  0  read                   ms Position   pos                                 Start            Pre-buffering some data to allow NAudio to start playing     while  ms Length  lt  65536 10          Thread Sleep 1000        ms Position   0      using  WaveStream blockAlignedStream   new BlockAlignReductionStream WaveFormatConversionStream CreatePcmStream new Mp3FileReader ms                   using  WaveOut waveOut   new WaveOut WaveCallbackInfo FunctionCallback                           waveOut Init blockAlignedStream               waveOut Play                while  waveOut PlaybackState    PlaybackState Playing                                System Threading Thread Sleep 100

User · Answer

Bass can do just this  Play from Byte   in memory or a through file delegates where you return the data  so with that you can play as soon as you have enough data to start the playback

User · Answer

NAudio wraps the WaveOutXXXX API   I haven t looked at the source  but if NAudio exposes the waveOutWrite   function in a way that doesn t automatically stop playback on each call  then you should be able to do what you really want  which is to start playing the audio stream before you ve received all the data   Using the waveOutWrite   function allows you to  read ahead  and dump smaller chunks of audio into the output queue - Windows will automatically play the chunks seamlessly   Your code would have to take the compressed audio stream and convert it to small chunks of WAV audio on the fly  this part would be really difficult - all the libraries and components I ve ever seen do MP3-to-WAV conversion an entire file at a time   Probably your only realistic chance is to do this using WMA instead of MP3  because you can write simple C  wrappers around the multimedia SDK

User · Answer

Edit  Answer updated to reflect changes in recent versions of NAudio  It s possible using the NAudio open source  NET audio library I have written  It looks for an ACM codec on your PC to do the conversion  The Mp3FileReader supplied with NAudio currently expects to be able to reposition within the source stream  it builds an index of MP3 frames up front   so it is not appropriate for streaming over the network  However  you can still use the MP3Frame and AcmMp3FrameDecompressor classes in NAudio to decompress streamed MP3 on the fly   I have posted an article on my blog explaining how to play back an MP3 stream using NAudio  Essentially you have one thread downloading MP3 frames  decompressing them and storing them in a BufferedWaveProvider  Another thread then plays back using the BufferedWaveProvider as an input

User · Answer

I ve always used FMOD for things like this because it s free for non-commercial use and works well   That said  I d gladly switch to something that s smaller  FMOD is  300k  and open-source  Super bonus points if it s fully managed so that I can compile   merge it with my  exe and not have to take extra care to get portability to other platforms      FMOD does portability too but you d obviously need different binaries for different platforms

User · Answer

I wrapped the MP3 decoder library and made it available for  NET developers as mpg123 net   Included are the samples to convert MP3 files to PCM  and read ID3 tags

User · Answer

NAudio wraps the WaveOutXXXX API   I haven t looked at the source  but if NAudio exposes the waveOutWrite   function in a way that doesn t automatically stop playback on each call  then you should be able to do what you really want  which is to start playing the audio stream before you ve received all the data   Using the waveOutWrite   function allows you to  read ahead  and dump smaller chunks of audio into the output queue - Windows will automatically play the chunks seamlessly   Your code would have to take the compressed audio stream and convert it to small chunks of WAV audio on the fly  this part would be really difficult - all the libraries and components I ve ever seen do MP3-to-WAV conversion an entire file at a time   Probably your only realistic chance is to do this using WMA instead of MP3  because you can write simple C  wrappers around the multimedia SDK

User · Answer

NAudio wraps the WaveOutXXXX API   I haven t looked at the source  but if NAudio exposes the waveOutWrite   function in a way that doesn t automatically stop playback on each call  then you should be able to do what you really want  which is to start playing the audio stream before you ve received all the data   Using the waveOutWrite   function allows you to  read ahead  and dump smaller chunks of audio into the output queue - Windows will automatically play the chunks seamlessly   Your code would have to take the compressed audio stream and convert it to small chunks of WAV audio on the fly  this part would be really difficult - all the libraries and components I ve ever seen do MP3-to-WAV conversion an entire file at a time   Probably your only realistic chance is to do this using WMA instead of MP3  because you can write simple C  wrappers around the multimedia SDK

User · Answer

I ve tweaked the source posted in the question to allow usage with Google s TTS API in order to answer the question here   bool waiting   false  AutoResetEvent stop   new AutoResetEvent false   public void PlayMp3FromUrl string url  int timeout        using  Stream ms   new MemoryStream                  using  Stream stream   WebRequest Create url               GetResponse   GetResponseStream                          byte   buffer   new byte 32768               int read              while   read   stream Read buffer  0  buffer Length    gt  0                                ms Write buffer  0  read                                   ms Position   0          using  WaveStream blockAlignedStream               new BlockAlignReductionStream                  WaveFormatConversionStream CreatePcmStream                      new Mp3FileReader ms                           using  WaveOut waveOut   new WaveOut WaveCallbackInfo FunctionCallback                                   waveOut Init blockAlignedStream                   waveOut PlaybackStopped     sender  e    gt                                        waveOut Stop                                       waveOut Play                    waiting   true                  stop WaitOne timeout                   waiting   false                                    Invoke with   var playThread   new Thread timeout   gt  PlayMp3FromUrl  http   translate google com translate tts q     HttpUtility UrlEncode relatedLabel Text    int timeout    playThread IsBackground   true  playThread Start 10000     Terminate with   if  waiting      stop Set      Notice that I m using the ParameterizedThreadDelegate in the code above  and the thread is started with playThread Start 10000    The 10000 represents a maximum of 10 seconds of audio to be played so it will need to be tweaked if your stream takes longer than that to play  This is necessary because the current version of NAudio  v1 5 4 0  seems to have a problem determining when the stream is done playing  It may be fixed in a later version or perhaps there is a workaround that I didn t take the time to find

User · Answer

The SoundPlayer class can do this   It looks like all you have to do is set its Stream property to the stream  then call Play   edit I don t think it can play MP3 files though  it seems limited to  wav   I m not certain if there s anything in the framework that can play an MP3 file directly   Everything I find about that involves either using a WMP control or interacting with DirectX

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