Android - Play audio from earpiece

Question

I'd like to play audio from a file into the phone's earpiece (or headset of that is connected) using the android MediaPlayer. I tried using the MODE_IN_CALL hack as suggested in this thread - Android - Getting audio to play through earpiece but that did not help. The app also has the android.permission.MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS permission, but any call to m_amAudioManager.setSpeakerphoneOn(false); is ignored.

private AudioManager m_amAudioManager;   m_amAudioManager = (AudioManager)getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE);   m_amAudioManager.setMode(AudioManager.MODE_IN_CALL);  m_amAudioManager.setSpeakerphoneOn(false);  

A call to setMode(AudioManager.STREAM_VOICE_CALL); on the MediaPlayer did not help either.

mediaPlayer.reset(); mediaPlayer.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_VOICE_CALL); mediaPlayer.setDataSource(path); mediaPlayer.prepare(); 

Has something changed since android 2.3 to break this code ? I tried the code on Android ICS without any success. Can someone point me in the right direction ? The audio always plays from the speaker phone so far.

Answer 1

It turns out the right way to do this is through the following code.

Play through the ear piece

mediaPlayer.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_VOICE_CALL); 

Play through the speaker phone

mediaPlayer.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC); 

That is it. Any other solution (Including the one posted here -> Android - Getting audio to play through earpiece) does not work consistently across devices. In fact using MODE_IN_CALL ensures that your audio will never play on certain devices.

Note: You will need to re-prepare the media player to change streams.