Streaming AAC audio with Android

Question

As I understand it, Android will only play AAC format audio if it's encoded as MPEG-4 or 3GPP.

I'm able to play AAC audio encoded as M4A when it's local to the app, but it fails when obtaining it from a server.

The following works, as the m4a file is held locally in the res/raw directory.

MediaPlayer mp = MediaPlayer.create(this, R.raw.*file*); mp.start(); 

The following doesn't work. (But does with MP3's).

Uri uri = Uri.parse("http://*example.com*/blah.m4a"); MediaPlayer mp = MediaPlayer.create(this, uri); mp.start(); 

Can anyone shed any light on why it fails when the m4a audio file is not local?

Here's (some of) the error...

ERROR/PlayerDriver(542): Command PLAYER_INIT completed with an error or info UNKNOWN PVMFStatus ERROR/MediaPlayer(769): error (200, -32)   WARN/PlayerDriver(542): PVMFInfoErrorHandlingComplete   DEBUG/MediaPlayer(769): create failed:   DEBUG/MediaPlayer(769): java.io.IOException: Prepare failed.: status=0xC8   DEBUG/MediaPlayer(769):     at android.media.MediaPlayer.prepare(Native Method)   DEBUG/MediaPlayer(769):     at android.media.MediaPlayer.create(MediaPlayer.java:530)   DEBUG/MediaPlayer(769):     at android.media.MediaPlayer.create(MediaPlayer.java:507)    ... 

I'm targeting SDK 1.6.

Answer 1

This work-around allows you to play M4A files from the net (and AAC files in other containers such as MP4 & 3GP). It simply downloads the file and plays from the cache.

private File mediaFile;  private void playAudio(String mediaUrl) {     try {         URLConnection cn = new URL(mediaUrl).openConnection();         InputStream is = cn.getInputStream();          // create file to store audio         mediaFile = new File(this.getCacheDir(),"mediafile");         FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(mediaFile);            byte buf[] = new byte[16 * 1024];         Log.i("FileOutputStream", "Download");          // write to file until complete         do {             int numread = is.read(buf);                if (numread <= 0)                   break;             fos.write(buf, 0, numread);         } while (true);         fos.flush();         fos.close();         Log.i("FileOutputStream", "Saved");         MediaPlayer mp = new MediaPlayer();          // create listener to tidy up after playback complete         MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener listener = new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {             public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {                 // free up media player                 mp.release();                 Log.i("MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener", "MediaPlayer Released");             }         };         mp.setOnCompletionListener(listener);          FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(mediaFile);         // set mediaplayer data source to file descriptor of input stream         mp.setDataSource(fis.getFD());         mp.prepare();         Log.i("MediaPlayer", "Start Player");         mp.start();     } catch (Exception e) {         e.printStackTrace();     } }