SoundPool "AudioFlinger could not create track, status: -12"

Question

I have an Android app with single button. When the button is clicked, the app starts playing (looping) sound loaded with SoundPool. When the button is clicked again, the sound is stopped, and then started again.

But the problem is that the sound is played only every other time.

• Click 1st time -> sound starts to play
• Click 2nd time -> sound stops but doesn't start again
• Click 3rd time -> sound starts to play
• Click 4th time -> sound stops but doesn't start to play
• and so on...

When the sound doesn't play, this error appears in the logcat:

E/AudioTrack: AudioFlinger could not create track, status: -12
E/SoundPool: Error creating AudioTrack

When I remove looping (change -1 to 0), everything works completely right!

The sound I'm playing is an MP3-file, size 71.6 KiB.

I have tested this on Sony Xperia U, running Android 4.1.2 (not working). But in my Huawei Honor 6 (Android 6.0) everything works, including looping!

What am I doing wrong?

---

Here is my code:

import android.media.AudioManager;
import android.media.SoundPool;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.Button;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    private int lastStreamId = 0;
    private int soundID;
    private SoundPool soundPool;


    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        soundPool = new SoundPool(1, AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, 0);

        soundID  = soundPool.load(this, R.raw.sound01, 1);


        Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button);
        button.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {
                soundPool.stop(lastStreamId);
                lastStreamId = soundPool.play(soundID, 1, 1, 1, -1, 1);
            }
        });
    }
}

EDIT:

I'm not allowed to upload the original sound here, but here is another sound that does the same thing. Except that now the sound plays only in the first click; all the following clicks just make it silent and spit out the above error.

The sound is here: sound01.mp3

Answer 1

As you can see here, error code 12 stands for Out of memory in Linux environment. Apparently they are some issues concerning memory allocation on Jelly Bean (I suppose for pre-lollipop) devices.

I've downsampled your original file from 177808kbps to 32000kbps, and it started to work as expected on pre-lollipop devices.

So, you have to downsample your audio file for pre-lollipop devices. Better have a raw-v21 for original audio files, and put downsampled into raw. Thus devices starting from API 21 will use the original version.

Here's the downsampled file.