How do you determine the audio latency (AudioTrack) on Android?

Question

I have an app in which I use an AudioTrack in streaming mode to play dynamically generated audio. The app doesn't have to respond instantaneously to inputs, so the latency issues don't bother me for that side of the program.

The problem is that I have an animation that needs to be as precisely 'in-sync' as possible with the audio and it seems that different devices have different amounts of time between when the AudioTrack stops blocking the write() call and asks for more data, and when that audio is played from the speaker.

My current solution gets me most of the way there -- I count the number of frames I've passed in to the AudioTrack so far, and compare it to getPlaybackHeadPosition(). It looks basically like:

long currentTimeInFrames = 0;
while(playingAudio) {
  currentTimeInFrames += numberOfFramesToWrite;
  long delayInFrames = (currentTimeInFrames - audioTrack.getPlaybackHeadPosition());
  audioTrack.write(frameBuffer,0,sampleSize);
  doAnimationAfterDelay(delayInFrames);
}

However, there's still some latency that getPlaybackHeadPosition() doesn't seem to account for that varies by device.

Is there a way to poll the system for the latency of the AudioTrack?

Answer 1

API level 19 adds a method in AudioTrack called getTimeStamp(). From the documentation:

Poll for a timestamp on demand.

If you need to track timestamps during initial warmup or after a routing or mode change, you should request a new timestamp periodically until the reported timestamps show that the frame position is advancing, or until it becomes clear that timestamps are unavailable for this route.

You specify an AudioTimestamp object as the function's parameter and it will fill in the most recently "presented" frame position along with its "estimated" timestamp in nanoseconds. The nanosecond value corresponds to the millisecond value returned by SystemClock.uptimeMillis().

You can then determine the latency by figuring out when you wrote that particular frame to AudioTrack vs. when getTimestamp() thinks it actually presented. I have found this method to be more accurate than the other methods mentioned above.

You have to be careful though. The documentation says getTimeStamp() is not supported on all platforms or all routes. You can determine if the call was successful by checking the boolean return value. I have found with the devices I have tested that the function returns false until audio begins presenting, and then subsequent calls return true. I have only tested with AudioTrack in STREAM_MUSIC mode. Your mileage may vary.