SoundEngine loop stream sound

[CreativeMD]

Hey,
I'm having issues to loop a streaming source using the sound engine. I'm currently programming a mod for minecraft. Somehow the sound will not be repeat, but instead end after playing once. I'm not sure if that's an issue from minecraft or a bug of the sound engine. I tried to find out the cause of it, but unfortunately couldn't find anything.
So maybe you can help out?

In Regards
CreativeMD

[Paul]

I can take a look to see if there is a bug.  Is the audio file available somewhere for download?

[CreativeMD]

Here is one example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6ww6niprdfqzfi/light-wind.ogg?dl=1

[Paul]

Thanks, got it.  Which library and codec plugins are you using?

[CreativeMD]

Found it:

Code: [Select]

SoundSystemConfig.addLibrary(LibraryLWJGLOpenAL.class);
SoundSystemConfig.setCodec("ogg", CodecJOrbis.class);

[CreativeMD]

Could find anything out?

[CreativeMD]

Ok, it looks like it's a weird Minecraft issue. Thanks for your help anyway. Wish you all the best.

[Paul]

No problem.  Sorry for the delayed response.  I have been busy with work and didn't get a chance to look into it yet.

On a side note, I have started teaching my son programming, and we are writing a simple Java game.  As a result, I'll probably get back to updating elements of the SoundSystem library that have become outdated.

[CreativeMD]

Sounds great

Unfortunately there are lot of issue with Minecraft's implementation. They use com.google.common.collect.HashBiMap to store all playing sound. Basically those are two HashMap connected together, one for finding the sound for a given source-name and one to get the source-name from a sound (reversed). Theoretically those should be equal, but eventually i found out that those HashMap's are not synchronized directly, but over time. So there are "threading" issues without using threads.

Example: If you play a sound and check if it is playing, it will return false for about 1-2 secs (depends on FPS) until the second hashmap will be updated. No idea who wrote that code ... but that person didn't know what those HashBiMap are used for.

[Paul]

The issue with "playing()" method not returning true immediately, that is code I wrote.  This came as a result of the "command queue" framework which defers commands to a separate thread rather than blocking the current thread.  I believe my thought there was that the source isn't actually playing until the command thread executes the play command.  This gives you the opportunity to potentially poll and determine when the source actually starts playing.

I'm not sure this is the best behavior though.  In your opinion, would you rather this function return "true" immediately after calling one of the play functions?  Maybe a callback would be a better solution for anyone interested in when the play command actually gets executed.  Note that I was new to Java when I wrote the SoundSystem library (there are several things I might have done differently if I were to rewrite it)

[CreativeMD]

No, i was not talking about your sound engine. I mean your engine needs to be thread safe so it's a good idea to use a command queue for that.

It's about the SoundManager class:
Minecraft has an interface (ISound) for all sounds. It contains the location, pitch, volume etc. The SoundManager connects the minecraft way of using sounds with your sound engine. Once a sound will be played, minecraft generates a uuid for it and places it together with the ISound object in a hashmap (Map<String,ISound>). Through this way they can link a given uuid to a sound, but most commonly you would need it the other way round, that's why they are using a reversed hashmap (Map<ISound, string>) a so called HashBiMap (library from google). Those two hashmaps should be equal, but reversed. Sadly this is not the cause, since they will not be synchronized immediately, which causes a tone amount of issues.

I'm currently rewriting my mod AmbientSounds (https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/ambientsounds), which adds some more atmospheric sounds to minecraft. Theoretically it should play a sound, loop it until it will be stopped at some point, but that does not really work since minecraft acts quite strange (stopping sounds for no reason, continues to play the sound from the start every 2 seconds).

So all i have to do know, is to create my own connector to your sound engine and everything should work fine

[CreativeMD]

Hey,

unfortunately there seem to be some more issues with the sound engine itself. Since the minecraft implementation has lot of bugs, i decided to write my own, but as i said before ran into some problems.

There seems to be one big issue and that is to tell whether a sound is playing or not. As you told me already, playing() will not return true immediately, which isn't that big kind of a problem. I could solve it by waiting until playing() is true for the first time.

To my concerns that did not fix it
- sometimes a sound does not event start to play. This occurs randomly (no idea why)
- playing() returns false although the sound is still playing (somehow depends on how many sounds are playing. It's difficult to find a pattern, but sometimes all the sounds return false for 1-4 seconds, eventually the seems to recover from that). I could record a video to demonstrate you what is happening

I also tried to use library directly (get the source), but that does not change anything. I tested it for hours tried to find a solution, but sadly without any success.

Maybe you have an idea? What i would need is a 100% safe method which tells me if a sound is playing or not, everything else works just fine.

[Paul]

Do you have some sample code for the simplest test case you can simulate the behavior?  In particular playing() returning false when the source is actually playing.

Off hand I'm thinking one issue might be the library running out of available channels.  Typically the sum of streaming and normal channels adds up to 32.  By default I think 4 are reserved for streaming channels and the rest for normal channels if I recall correctly.  If you play more sources than the limit, it will stop a playing channel and replace the source that was playing on it with the newest source.  The old one would show playing() false and the new one true.

Sounds like there may be other issues though, since you mentioned playing() returning false for 1-4 seconds, which is much higher than I have experienced.  Maybe something is broken in newer Java versions (the library is quite out dated at this point).

[CreativeMD]

Ok ... it looks like things get a little bit more complicated. It might be a good idea if i tell you exactly what is happening and show you my code.

So AmbientSounds (the mod i'm working on) should play sounds which should fit to the current area the player is. An area has about 3 sounds which play contentiously and a few others which play from time to time.

I recorded two videos, which should show you what is going. I'm trying to bring the system to it's limits by switching the areas rather quickly, through that way more sounds will be played simultaneously. The console (in eclipse) shows which sounds are currently playing.

In this video a random crash of the sound engine occurs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Nfe8RYxeA

Code: [Select]

[17:36:04] [Thread-11/INFO]: [STDERR]: java.lang.NullPointerException
[17:36:04] [Thread-11/INFO]: [STDERR]: at com.jcraft.jogg.StreamState.packetout(StreamState.java:186)
[17:36:04] [Thread-11/INFO]: [STDERR]: at paulscode.sound.codecs.CodecJOrbis.readBytes(CodecJOrbis.java:575)
[17:36:04] [Thread-11/INFO]: [STDERR]: at paulscode.sound.codecs.CodecJOrbis.read(CodecJOrbis.java:354)
[17:36:04] [Thread-11/INFO]: [STDERR]: at paulscode.sound.Source.stream(Source.java:953)
[17:36:04] [Thread-11/INFO]: [STDERR]: at paulscode.sound.StreamThread.run(StreamThread.java:129)
The second video shows the problem i was talking about before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TmNl-es50k at around 0:40 the engine unexpectedly ends some of the sounds.

Code: [Select]

[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ================Playing================
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.bird.bird-jungle-night, 0.023/0.0
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.cricket.cricket-jungle-night, 0.023/0.0
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.cricket.cricket-forest-night, 0.023/0.0
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.cricket.cricket-warm-night, 0.5029971/0.0
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.cricket.cricket, 0.0019999743/0.0
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.wolf.wolf, 0.057999957/0.0 pause: 136
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.seagull.seagull, 0.10300003/0.75 pause: 12
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:animals.seagull.seagull-long, 0.0/0.75 pause: 737
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:water.beach, 0.09900002/0.4
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: ambientsounds:wind.light-wind, 0.09900002/1.0
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: Unexpected ending sound ambientsounds:animals.cricket.cricket af7699ba-c5c7-4bf5-ae2d-298220803624
[17:40:56] [Client thread/INFO]: [STDOUT]: Unexpected ending sound ambientsounds:animals.cricket.cricket-jungle-night 5806f294-3cc4-43ac-8702-73a543136fd1
This seems to persist until those sounds fade out (since i left the area).

The code i'm currently using is a bit chaotic. I tried a lot of things to found out if a sound has stopped or not:
https://github.com/CreativeMD/AmbientSounds/blob/1.11/src/main/java/com/creativemd/ambientsounds/AmbientSoundEngine.java#L92. I hope i could explain my situation, so you can understand it.

Not having enough streaming channels might be the issue here, is there a way to increase it?

[Paul]

Thanks, I''ll look into this when I get a chance.

Yes, you can increase the number of streaming channels using something like:

Code: [Select]

SoundSystemConfig.setNumberStreamingChannels( 11 );
SoundSystemConfig.setNumberNormalChannels( 21 );

Just have the total number add up to 32.  You'll need to do this before you instantiate the SoundSystem.  The logic for streaming channels has to be a bit more responsive than for normal channels, so depending on the speed of your system and what all else you have going on, you might start hearing gaps in the streams if it can't keep up with the number of channels you have set.