Is kAudioFormatFlagIsFloat supported on iPhoneOS?

Question

I am writing an iPhone app that records and plays audio simultaneously using the I/O audio unit as per Apple's recommendations.

I want to apply some sound effects (reverb, etc) on the recorded audio before playing it back. For these effects to work well, I need the samples to be floating point numbers, rather than integers. It seems this should be possible, by creating an AudioStreamBasicDescription with kAudioFormatFlagIsFloat set on mFormatFlags. This is what my code looks like:

AudioStreamBasicDescription streamDescription;

streamDescription.mSampleRate = 44100.0;
streamDescription.mFormatID = kAudioFormatLinearPCM;
streamDescription.mFormatFlags = kAudioFormatFlagIsFloat;
streamDescription.mBitsPerChannel = 32;
streamDescription.mBytesPerFrame = 4;
streamDescription.mBytesPerPacket = 4;
streamDescription.mChannelsPerFrame = 1;
streamDescription.mFramesPerPacket = 1;
streamDescription.mReserved = 0;

OSStatus status;

status = AudioUnitSetProperty(audioUnit, kAudioUnitProperty_StreamFormat, kAudioUnitScope_Input, 0, &streamDescription, sizeof(streamDescription));
if (status != noErr)
  fprintf(stderr, "AudioUnitSetProperty (kAudioUnitProperty_StreamFormat, kAudioUnitScope_Input) returned status %ld\n", status);

status = AudioUnitSetProperty(audioUnit, kAudioUnitProperty_StreamFormat, kAudioUnitScope_Output, 1, &streamDescription, sizeof(streamDescription));
if (status != noErr)
  fprintf(stderr, "AudioUnitSetProperty (kAudioUnitProperty_StreamFormat, kAudioUnitScope_Output) returned status %ld\n", status);

However, when I run this (on an iPhone 3GS running iPhoneOS 3.1.3), I get this:

AudioUnitSetProperty (kAudioUnitProperty_StreamFormat, kAudioUnitScope_Input) returned error -10868
AudioUnitSetProperty (kAudioUnitProperty_StreamFormat, kAudioUnitScope_Output) returned error -10868

(-10868 is the value of kAudioUnitErr_FormatNotSupported)

I didn't find anything of value in Apple's documentation, apart from a recommendation to stick to 16 bit little-endian integers. However, the aurioTouch example project contains at least some support code related to kAudioFormatFlagIsFloat.

So, is my stream description incorrect, or is kAudioFormatFlagIsFloat simply not supported on iPhoneOS?

Answer 1

It's not supported, as far as I know. You can pretty easily convert to floats, though using AudioConverter. I do this conversion (both ways) in real time to use the Accelerate framework with iOS audio. (note: this code is copied and pasted from more modular code, so there may be some minor typos)

First, you'll need the AudioStreamBasicDescription from the input. Say

AudioStreamBasicDescription aBasicDescription = {0};
aBasicDescription.mSampleRate       = self.samplerate;
aBasicDescription.mFormatID         = kAudioFormatLinearPCM;
aBasicDescription.mFormatFlags      = kAudioFormatFlagIsSignedInteger |     kAudioFormatFlagIsPacked;
aBasicDescription.mFramesPerPacket          = 1;
aBasicDescription.mChannelsPerFrame     = 1;
aBasicDescription.mBitsPerChannel       = 8 * sizeof(SInt16);
aBasicDescription.mBytesPerPacket       = sizeof(SInt16) * aBasicDescription.mFramesPerPacket;
aBasicDescription.mBytesPerFrame        = sizeof(SInt16) * aBasicDescription.mChannelsPerFrame

Then, generate a corresponding AudioStreamBasicDescription for float.

AudioStreamBasicDescription floatDesc = {0};
floatDesc.mFormatID = kAudioFormatLinearPCM;      
floatDesc.mFormatFlags = kAudioFormatFlagIsFloat | kAudioFormatFlagIsPacked;
floatDesc.mBitsPerChannel = 8 * sizeof(float);
floatDesc.mFramesPerPacket = 1;                                          
floatDesc.mChannelsPerFrame = 1;           
floatDesc.mBytesPerPacket = sizeof(float) * floatDesc.mFramesPerPacket;                                                                            
floatDesc.mBytesPerFrame = sizeof(float) * floatDesc.mChannelsPerFrame;                                                                                   
floatDesc.mSampleRate = [controller samplerate];

Make some buffers.

UInt32 intSize = inNumberFrames * sizeof(SInt16);
UInt32 floatSize = inNumberFrames * sizeof(float);
float *dataBuffer = (float *)calloc(numberOfAudioFramesIn, sizeof(float));

Then convert. (ioData is your AudioBufferList containing the int audio)

AudioConverterRef converter;
OSStatus err = noErr;
err = AudioConverterNew(&aBasicDescription, &floatDesct, &converter);
//check for error here in "real" code
err = AudioConverterConvertBuffer(converter, intSize, ioData->mBuffers[0].mData, &floatSize, dataBuffer);
//check for error here in "real" code
//do stuff to dataBuffer, which now contains floats
//convert the floats back by running the conversion the other way