Any way to speed up this code. Streaming audio Android

Question

Making an app and streaming audio from site. I've got a menu and when I click the button to open the radio activity it can take from 8-20 seconds to load and sometimes force closes. Any help would be awesome thanks.

Code:

  public class Radio extends Activity {

private MediaPlayer mp;
private ImageButton pauseicon;

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.player_1);

    pauseicon = (ImageButton) findViewById(R.id.pauseicon);
    getActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);

    /**
     * Play button click event plays a song and changes button to pause
     * image pauses a song and changes button to play image
     * */

    String res = "http://216.235.91.36/play?s=magic24point7&d=LIVE365&r=0&membername=&session=magic24point7:0&AuthType=NORMAL&app_id=live365%3ABROWSER&SaneID=24.79.96.172-13316781890137014897763&tag=live365";

    mp = new MediaPlayer();
    try {
        mp.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
        mp.setDataSource(res);
        mp.prepare();
        mp.start();

    } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IllegalStateException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {

    }



    pauseicon.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

        public void onClick(View v) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            // No need to check if it is pauseicon

            if (mp.isPlaying()) {
                mp.pause();
                ((ImageButton) v).setImageResource(R.drawable.playicon);

            } else {
                mp.start();
                ((ImageButton) v).setImageResource(R.drawable.pauseicon);
            }
        }
    });

}

@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
    case android.R.id.home:
        NavUtils.navigateUpFromSameTask(this);

        if (mp != null)
            if (mp.isPlaying())
                mp.stop();

        mp.release();

        return true;
    default:
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);

    }
}

@Override
public void onBackPressed() {
    if (mp != null) {
        if (mp.isPlaying())
            mp.stop();

        mp.release();
    }

    // there is no reason to call super.finish(); here
    // call super.onBackPressed(); and it will finish that activity for you
    super.onBackPressed();

}

 }

Answer 1

Use prepareAsync() and setOnPreparedListener() instead of prepare(). prepare() blocks the UI thread until it returns and is not recommended for a stream. This may be the cause your crash.

mp = new MediaPlayer();
try {
    mp.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
    mp.setDataSource(res);
    mp.setOnPreparedListener(new OnPreparedListener() {
        @Override
        public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer player) {
            mp.start();
        }
    });
    mp.prepareAsync();
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IllegalStateException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {

}

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaPlayer.html#prepare()

Prepares the player for playback, synchronously. After setting the datasource and the display surface, you need to either call prepare() or prepareAsync(). For files, it is OK to call prepare(), which blocks until MediaPlayer is ready for playback.

Otherwise I think the network is your bottleneck. The fastest way to speed things up is to ensure your server/client communication is quick. There doesn't seem to be anything inherently slow about your code.