Asynchronous Audio on Windows?

Wed Jan 16 01:23:05 EST 2013

Even if the player option could work, there's the issue of latency.  It
takes a noticeable amount of time to load an external sound in the player
and play it.  This is one of the benefits of using embedded sounds --
speedier playback (the tradeoff being only one sound played at a time).  I
suppose I could have multiple players all preloaded with the sounds I
need, but what a chore.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, UX Design

On 1/15/13 12:55 PM, "Chris Sheffield" <cmsheffield at icloud.com> wrote:

>Hmm, interesting. I'm trying to remember how we did it. It's been some
>time ago.
>
>I just reviewed my code from nearly three years ago. Yikes! :-) So it
>looks like originally we checked the QTVersion to determine if QT was
>installed or not. This worked fine on a Mac, since QT was always
>installed. But in April of 2010, I commented out the code that does the
>QT check. Turns out it caused more problems, and actually caused the
>engine to attempt to load QT even though it wasn't installed. As a
>result, audio playback was erratic. So basically, if QT turns out to be
>installed, great. The engine will make use of QT for playing back audio
>files through a player object. If QT is *not* installed, that should be
>fine too, as some version of WMP was usually always installed, and the
>engine would make use of that in that case. I do believe this still
>causes the player object to lose it's playback controls, so you can't
>really let the user control playback in that case, but our app didn't
>require that anyway.
>
>So, I'm not sure if you have a machine available without QT installed,
>but if so, give it a try. Maybe you could set up a VM to try it in? I
>think it should work okay for you.
>
>Good luck.
>
>On Jan 15, 2013, at 1:17 PM, Scott Rossi <scott at tactilemedia.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Chris:
>> 
>> Over here, when I set the dontUseQT to true, the player (which has the
>> file path of a WAV assigned) displays with no controller and scripting
>> "start player 1" results in "could not open video player", whereas this
>> works when QT is normally enabled.  Maybe the result is different on a
>> system that truly has no QT.
>> 
>> I might be wrong, but I don't think this has worked for a long time, if
>> ever.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Scott Rossi
>> Creative Director
>> Tactile Media, UX Design
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 1/15/13 11:36 AM, "Chris Sheffield" <cmsheffield at icloud.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Unless something has changed in the last couple years, external audio
>>> should work just fine using a player object, even if QT is not
>>>installed.
>>> Read Naturally has a desktop application (it's kind of old and outdated
>>> now) but it supported Windows and Mac. We recommended QT on Windows,
>>>but
>>> it wasn't required. Having it installed made things a bit easier (seems
>>> like there were some limitations if it wasn't), but audio playback
>>>worked
>>> regardless. So it might be worth a try.
>>> 
>>> On Jan 15, 2013, at 11:41 AM, Scott Rossi <scott at tactilemedia.com>
>>>wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Chris:
>>>> 
>>>> I'm pretty sure the only way to use external files is if QT is
>>>> installed,
>>>> which I'd rather not have to force on users, but it may come to that.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm just kind of shocked.  It's 2013 and LiveCode is still in the
>>>> dinosaur
>>>> age when it comes to audio.  :-/
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks & Regards,
>>>> 
>>>> Scott Rossi
>>>> Creative Director
>>>> Tactile Media, UX Design
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 1/15/13 10:17 AM, "Chris Sheffield" <cmsheffield at icloud.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I want to say using the "play" command with imported files is
>>>>>blocking
>>>>> on
>>>>> one of the platforms (Windows?) and always has been, but I could be
>>>>> wrong
>>>>> about that. Can you try using a player with external files instead,
>>>>>or
>>>>> do
>>>>> you have to use imported files?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Chris
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Chris Sheffield
>>>>> Read Naturally, Inc.
>>>>> www.readnaturally.com
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 15, 2013, at 11:04 AM, Scott Rossi <scott at tactilemedia.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Does anybody know if there's some trick or secret to getting sounds
>>>>>>to
>>>>>> play
>>>>>> asynchronously along with events on Windows?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I have a stack that supplements user interaction with audio
>>>>>>feedback:
>>>>>> clicks, chimes, etc.  I'm finding that all events are delayed by the
>>>>>> use of
>>>>>> sound, in that the events don't trigger until the sound has finished
>>>>>> playing.  The sounds are imported WAV files of the correct sample
>>>>>> rate/bits
>>>>>> (they play fine).  If I disable sound playback, all UI events
>>>>>>respond
>>>>>> as
>>>>>> expected.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It's been a while since I built anything with audio on Windows --
>>>>>> maybe
>>>>>> I
>>>>>> just never ran into this ‹ but the app is unusable when audio is
>>>>>> enabled.
>>>>>> On OS X, everything works fine without delays, so I don't believe
>>>>>> there's
>>>>>> any problem with the stack.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Am I missing something?  Is audio feedback just not doable on
>>>>>>Windows
>>>>>> without resorting to an external?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks for any suggestions.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Scott Rossi
>>>>>> Creative Director
>>>>>> Tactile Media, UX Design
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
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