Issue with MediaPlayer buffering time when streaming audio

Question

I'm using MediaPlayer to stream a radio over HTTP. On Lollipop my stream takes about a minute to start which is unacceptable. It takes about 20 seconds on Kitkat, which is already a pain but now became unusable.

There is a well known problem with this component related to buffering: the amount of bytes to buffer is harcoded and can't be changed.

My code is really standard

player.reset();
player.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
player.setDataSource(streamUrl);
player.prepareAsync();

And on prepared I do

player.start();

I've heard about alternatives as GStreamer but I couldn't make it work on Windows.

I wonder if anyone has a working solution to stream radio over HTTP with a decent start delay.

EDIT

I tested ExoPlayer but the lower start time I get is 15 seconds. The player is stuck on "preparing" state (not buffering, that's later so far I see).

EDIT

The format of the stream is AAC

EDIT

I tested https://code.google.com/p/aacdecoder-android/ but the only problem this library has is the lack of support to stream pause. It's a requirement of my application to support pause on online stream.

Answer 1

If your use case is compatible with GPL/LGPL licenses, then VLC should be exactly what you need. VLC is able to stream from your URL on a 3G network with only ~1 sec delay.

Step 1: Download VLC source code and compile per the instruction

Step 2: The most important class is org.videolan.vlc.audio.AudioServiceController, which was called from org.videolan.vlc.gui.MRLPanelFragement.processUri() --> org.videolan.vlc.util.Util.openStream(Context, String) --> AudioServiceController.load(String, boolean). You can remove all the unnecessary code other than AudioServiceController and its support classes to slim down the size