Fastest way in C# to read block of bytes from file and converting to float[]

Question

I need a fast way in C# leanguage of converting/casting array of bytes encoding one short (int16) value for 2bytes into float representation, as fast as possible. Performance bottleneck was method:

samples[sample] = (float)binraryReader.readInt16();

(huge ammount of IO calls so i had to convert to block read)

Basically i have file containing block of sound samples (~100-600 mb) of type of short, then, as i can only block read set of bytes, i need to construct short from each pair of bytes and then convert that short to float representation as i need to store samples as floats.

my current code looks somtething like this (about 2x performance improvement over method above, but still to long) :

    float[] samples = new float[_samplesPerSplit];
    byte[] data = new byte[_samplesPerSplit * 2];

    for (int c = 0; c < numberOfChunks; c += 1)
    {
        br.Read(data, 0, _samplesPerSplit * 2);

        fixed (byte* bytePtr = data)
        {
            fixed (float* floatPtr = samples)
            {
                byte* rPos = bytePtr;
                float* fPos = floatPtr;

                byte byte0;
                byte byte1;
                short sampleShort;

                for (int sample = 0; sample < _samplesPerSplit; sample += 1)
                {
                    byte1 = *(rPos++);
                    byte0 = *(rPos++);

                    // I occasionaly get 
                    //          "Negating  the minimum value of a 
                    //          twos complement number is invalid" 
                    // error if i skip this check, but it slows down 
                    // whole process even more
                    if (byte0 == 128 && byte1 == 0)
                    {
                        sampleShort = 32767;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        sampleShort = (short)(((ushort)(byte0)) << 8 | ((ushort)(byte1)));
                    }

                    *(fPos++) = (float)sampleShort;
                }
            }
        }
        ProcessChunk(samples);
    }

Answer 1

you can try this:

    fixed (byte* bytePtr = data)
    {
        fixed (float* floatPtr = samples)
        {
            short* rPos = (short*)bytePtr;
            float* fPos = floatPtr;

            for (int sample = 0; sample < _samplesPerSplit; sample += 1)
            {
                *fPos++ = (float)(*rPos++);
            }

        }
    }