My current app implements a custom video player, based on a AVSampleBufferRenderSynchronizer synchronising two renderers:
an AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer receiving decoded CVPixelBuffer-based video CMSampleBuffers,
and an AVSampleBufferAudioRenderer receiving decoded lpcm-based audio CMSampleBuffers.
The AVSampleBufferRenderSynchronizer is started when the first image (in presentation order) is decoded and enqueued, using avSynchronizer.setRate(_ rate: Float, time: CMTime), with rate = 1 and time the presentation timestamp of the first decoded image.
Presentation timestamps of video and audio sample buffers are consistent, and on most streams, the audio and video are correctly synchronized.
However on some network streams, on iOS, the audio and video aren't synchronized, with a time difference that seems to increase with time.
On the other hand, with the same player code and network streams on macOS, the synchronization always works fine.
This reminds me of something I've read, about cases where an AVSampleBufferRenderSynchronizer could not synchronize audio and video, causing them to run with independent and potentially drifting clocks, but I cannot find it again.
So, any help / hints on this sync problem will be greatly appreciated! :)
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Hi all,
with my app ScreenFloat, you can record your screen, along with system- and microphone audio.
Those two audio feeds are recorded into separate audio tracks in order to individually remove or edit them later on.
Now, these recordings you create with ScreenFloat can be drag-and-dropped to other apps instantly. So far, so good, but some apps, like Slack, or VLC, or even websites like YouTube, do not play back multiple audio tracks, just one.
So what I'm trying to do is, on dragging the video recording file out of ScreenFloat, instantly baking together the two individual audio tracks into one, and offering that new file as the drag and drop file, so that all audio is played in the target app.
But it's slow. I mean, it's actually quite fast, but for drag and drop, it's slow.
My approach is this:
"Bake together" the two audio tracks into a one-track m4a audio file using AVMutableAudioMix and AVAssetExportSession
Take the video track, add the new audio file as an audio track to it, and render that out using AVAssetExportSession
For a quick benchmark, a 3'40'' movie, step 1 takes ~1.7 seconds, and step two adds another ~1.5 seconds, so we're at ~3.2 seconds. That's an eternity for a drag and drop, where the user might cancel if there's no immediate feedback.
I could also do it in one step, but then I couldn't use the AV*Passthrough preset, and that makes it take around 32 seconds then, because I assume it touches the video data (which is unnecessary in this case, so I think the two-step approach here is the fastest).
So, my question is, is there a faster way?
The best idea I can come up with right now is, when initially recording the screen with system- and microphone audio as separate tracks, to also record both of them into a third, muted, "hidden" track I could use later on, basically eliminating the need for step one and just ripping the two single audio tracks out of the movie and only have the video and the "hidden" track (then unmuted), but I'd still have a ~1.5 second delay there. Also, there's the processing and data overhead (basically doubling the movie's audio data).
All this would be great for an export operation (where one expects it to take a little time), but for a drag-and-drop operation, it's not ideal.
I've discarded the idea of doing a promise file drag, because many apps do not accept those, and I want to keep wide compatibility with all sorts of apps.
I'd appreciate any ideas or pointers.
Thank you kindly,
Matthias
Hello,
We are developing a real-time speech recognition application and are utilizing AVAudioEngine with voice processing enabled on the input node. However, we have observed that enabling this mode interferes with the built-in iOS screen recording feature - specifically, the recorded video does not capture any audio when this mode is active.
Since we want users to be able to record their experience within our app, this issue significantly impacts our functionality. Is there a known workaround or recommended approach to ensure that both voice processing and screen recording can function simultaneously?
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
We have the necessary background recording entitlements, and for many users... do not run into any issues.
However, there is a subset of users that routinely get recordings ending.. we have narrowed this down and believe it to be the work of the watch dog.
First we removed the entire view hierarchy when app is backgrounded. There is just 'Text("Recording")'
This got the CPU usage in profiler down to 0%. We saw massive improvements to recording success rate.
We walked away assuming that was enough. However we are still seeing the same sort of crashes. All in the background. We're using Observation to drive audio state changes to a Live Activity.
Are those Observations causing the problem? Why doesn't apple provide a better API to background audio? The internet is full of weird issues
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76010213/why-is-my-react-native-app-sometimes-terminated-in-the-background-while-tracking
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71656047/why-is-my-react-native-app-terminating-in-the-background-while-recording-ios-r
https://github.com/expo/expo/issues/16807
This is such a terrible user experience. And we have very little visibility into what is happening and why.
No where in apple documentation states that in order for background recording to work, the app can only be 'Text("Recording")'
It does not outline a CPU or memory threshold. It just kills us.
Hi,
I am trying to remove the audio controls for my app on the lock screen. Since I use WKWebView, there are 3 audio tags in my html and I play and pause em via JS. However, if I do not play any sound since app launch, there are no audio controls on the lock screen. But if I play one of those 3 files (they are even less then 3 Sec sound effects e.g. for buttons) the audio controls appears on lock screen.
Note even when the sounds on pause() or not playing they were listed on the lock screen.
What I have tried so far without success
MPNowPlayingInfoCenter.default().nowPlayingInfo = [:]
and
``try audioSession.setCategory(.playback, mode: .default, options: [])
try audioSession.setActive(false, options: .notifyOthersOnDeactivation)``
and
UIApplication.shared.endReceivingRemoteControlEvents()
Another problem is that the app scales with iOS system settings "display zoom". Is there a way to deny it?
It is latest Xcode verion 16.3 and iOS 18.
I have no background mode in my Capabilities.
Nothing worked so far. Has anyone an idea?
Greetings
I'm developing an iOS app that requires continuous audio recording.
Currently, when a phone call comes in, the AVAudioSession is interrupted and recording stops completely during the ringing phase.
While I understand recording should stop if the call is answered, my app needs to continue recording while the phone is merely ringing.
I've observed that Apple's Voice Memos app maintains recording during incoming call rings. This indicates the hardware and iOS are capable of supporting this functionality.
Request
Please advise on any available AVAudioSession configurations or APIs that would allow my app to:
Continue recording during an incoming call ring
Only stop recording if/when the call is actually answered
Impact
This interruption significantly impacts the user experience and core functionality of my app. Workarounds like asking users to enable airplane mode are impractical and create a poor user experience.
Questions
Is there an approved way to maintain microphone access during call rings?
If not currently possible, could this capability be considered for addition to a future iOS SDK?
Are there any interim solutions or best practices Apple recommends for this use case?
Thank you for your help.
SUPPORT INFORMATION
Did someone from Apple ask you to submit a code-level support request?
No
Do you have a focused test project that demonstrates your issue?
Yes, I have a focused test project to submit with my request
What code level support issue are you having?
Problems with an Apple framework API in my app
Issue:
Under certain conditions, using CallKit does not automatically enable the microphone.
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start an outgoing call, then the user manually mutes the audio.
2.Receive a native incoming call, end the current call, then answer the new incoming call.(This order is important.)
3.End the incoming call.
4.Start another outgoing call and observe the microphone; do not manually mute or unmute.
Actual Behavior:
The audio icon indicates that the audio is unmuted, but the microphone remains off, and the small yellow dot in the top status bar (which represents the microphone) does not appear.
Expected Behavior:
The microphone should be on, consistent with the audio icon display, and the small yellow dot should appear in the top status bar.
Device:
iPhone 16 pro & iPhone 15 pro, iOS 18.0+
Can it be reproduced using speakerbox(CallKit Demo)?
YES
Hello,
I have an iOS app that is recording audio that is working fine on iPads/iPhones. It asks for microphone permission and after that recording works.
I installed the same app on my M3 MacBook via TestFlight since iPad apps are supposed to work without a change that way. The app starts fine and everything, but it never asks for Microphone permission, so I can't record.
Do I need to do something to make this happen (this is not macCatalyst, its running the arm64 iPhone binary on macOS)
thanks
Hi,
I am getting into a trap. Please check stack-trace, howto fix this?
regards, Joël
stack-trace with ExtAudioFileWrite
I have some tried-and-tested code that records and plays back audio via AUHAL which breaks on Tahoe on Intel. The same code works fine on Sequioa and also works on Tahoe on Apple Silicon.
To start with something simple, the following code to request access to the Microphone doesn't work as it should:
bool RequestMicrophoneAccess ()
{
__block AVAuthorizationStatus status =
[AVCaptureDevice authorizationStatusForMediaType: AVMediaTypeAudio];
if (status == AVAuthorizationStatusAuthorized)
return true;
__block bool done = false;
[AVCaptureDevice requestAccessForMediaType: AVMediaTypeAudio completionHandler: ^ (BOOL granted)
{
status = (granted) ? AVAuthorizationStatusAuthorized : AVAuthorizationStatusDenied;
done = true;
}];
while (!done)
CFRunLoopRunInMode (kCFRunLoopDefaultMode, 2.0, true);
return status == AVAuthorizationStatusAuthorized;
}
On Tahoe on Intel, the code runs to completion but granted is always returned as NO. Tellingly, the popup to ask the user to grant microphone access is never displayed, even though the app is not present in the Privacy pane and never appears there. On Apple Silicon, everything works fine.
There are some other problems, but I'm hoping they have a common underlying cause and that the Apple guys can figure out what's wrong from the information in this post. I'd be happy to test any potential fix. Thanks.
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Audio
I'm developing the VisionOS app. I want to know how to play spatial audio in addition to RealityKit? If it's iOS or macOS, how to play spatial audio in addition to RealityKit?
I'm using a 4 channel USB Audio interface, with 4 microphones, and want to process them through 4 independent effect chains. However the output from AVAudioInputNode is a single 4 channel bus. How can I split this into 4 mono busses?
The following code splits the input into 4 copies, and routes them through the effects, but each bus contains all four channels. How can I remap the channels to remove the unwanted channels from the bus? I tried using channelMap on the mixer node but that had no effect.
I'm currently using this code primarily on iOS but it should be portable between iOS and MacOS. It would be possible to do this through a Matrix Mixer Node, but that seems completely overkill, for such a basic operation. I'm already using a Matrix Mixer to combine the inputs, and it's not well supported in AVAudioEngine.
AVAudioInputNode *inputNode=[engine inputNode];
[inputNode setVoiceProcessingEnabled:NO error:nil];
NSMutableArray *micDestinations=[NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:trackCount];
for(i=0;i<trackCount;i++)
{
fixMicFormat[i]=[AVAudioMixerNode new];
[engine attachNode:fixMicFormat[i]];
// And create reverb/compressor and eq the same way...
[engine connect:reverb[i] to:matrixMixerNode fromBus:0 toBus:i format:nil];
[engine connect:eq[i] to:reverb[i] fromBus:0 toBus:0 format:nil];
[engine connect:compressor[i] to:eq[i] fromBus:0 toBus:0 format:nil];
[engine connect:fixMicFormat[i] to:compressor[i] fromBus:0 toBus:0 format:nil];
[micDestinations addObject:[[AVAudioConnectionPoint alloc] initWithNode:fixMicFormat[i] bus:0] ];
}
AVAudioFormat *inputFormat = [inputNode outputFormatForBus: 1];
[engine connect:inputNode toConnectionPoints:micDestinations fromBus:1 format:inputFormat];
I'm trying to implement airplay into my app. I can successfully playback sound and trigger the airplay selector sheet. If the target device is a Bluetooth only device I can connect with no problem and stream the audio to the Bluetooth device, but if the audio device is a airplay specific device like a HomePod or an Apple TV when I select it, I get a spinning icon, indicating that it is trying to connect, and eventually it times out and stops without connecting.
I don't believe it is an AirPlay audio issue because if I go to a different app, for example a podcast app and select my HomePods for output, and then switch back to my app. My audio will correctly stream to the HomePod. Not only that, I have it so that my icon will change color to indicate that it is connected via airplay and it is correctly indicating that it is connected via AirPlay. But I cannot then disconnect it using the Airplay selector.
The issue appears to be in the AirPlay selection side, which I have spent several days attempting to troubleshoot mostly using ChatGPT to suggest code different than what I have to maybe work around the issue. Mostly it is focused on the audio player section, but it doesn't seem like that is really the route that is the problem.
I’m experiencing an unusual audio issue with AirPods on macOS Sequoia while developing VoIP applications like Zoom and FaceTime.
When AirPods are connected, the other party’s voice sometimes sounds unnaturally stretched (approximately twice as long).
This problem can be temporarily fixed by switching the sound output settings from AirPods to speakers and then back to AirPods.
From our analysis, the issue appears to be related to the sample rate provided by AudioObjectGetPropertyData.
Here’s what we’ve observed:
When the issue occurs, the AudioStreamBasicDescription.sampleRate for AirPods is reported as 48000.
Under normal conditions, it’s reported as 24000.
It seems like the system is mistakenly returning a sample rate that doesn’t match the AirPods’ actual settings, perhaps defaulting to a system speaker value.
Once the output setting is toggled, the correct sampleRate (24000) is retrieved.
This discrepancy causes our application to transmit the audio stream at 48000, leading to the distorted playback.
Has anyone encountered a similar issue or knows how to resolve it?
I’m currently developing an iOS metronome app using DispatchSourceTimer as the timer. The interval is set very small, around 50 milliseconds, and I’m using CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent to calculate the elapsed time to ensure the beat is played within a ±0.003-second margin.
The problem is that once the app goes to the background, the timing becomes unstable—it slows down noticeably, then recovers after 1–2 seconds.
When coming back to the foreground, it suddenly speeds up, and again, it takes 1–2 seconds to return to normal. It feels like the app is randomly “powering off” and then “overclocking.” It’s super frustrating.
I’ve noticed that some metronome apps in the App Store have similar issues, but there’s one called “Professional Metronome” that’s rock solid with no such problems. What kind of magic are they using? Any experts out there who can help? Thanks in advance!
P.S. I’ve already enabled background audio permissions.
The professional metronome that has no issues: https://link.zhihu.com/?target=https%3A//apps.apple.com/cn/app/pro-metronome-%25E4%25B8%2593%25E4%25B8%259A%25E8%258A%2582%25E6%258B%258D%25E5%2599%25A8/id477960671
I am using an AVAudioPlayer to play a "tick" sound once per second in a SwiftUI app.
When running the app on an iPhone 16 (18.2.1) the tick sounds increase in volume after a few seconds. This does not happen in the simulator nor on an iPhone SE 2020 (18.1.1).
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Audio
Hi all, I have spent a lot of time reading the tech note and watching the WDDC video that introduce the PTTFramework on iOS. I currently have a custom setup where I am using AVAudioEngine to schedule and play buffers that are being streamed through a call.
I am looking to use the PTTFramework to allow a user to trigger this push to talk behavior from the lock screen and the various places with the system UI it provides.
However I am unsure what the correct behavior is regarding the handling of the audio session. Right now I am using .playback when there is no active voice transmission so that devices such as AirPods can be in AD2P mode where applicable, and then transitioning to .playbackAndRecord category only when the mic input should become active. Following this change in my AVAudioEngine manager I am then manually activating and deactivating the audio session manually when the engine is either playing/recording or idle.
In the documentation it states that you should not attempt to activate or deactivate your audio session directly, but allow the framework to handle it.
Does that mean that I need to either call the request to transmit delegate function or set an active participant on the channel manager first, and then wait for the didBecomeActive delegate method to trigger before I actually attempt to play or record any audio? (I am using the fullDuplex mode currently.) I noticed that that delegate method will only trigger if the audio session wasn't active before doing one of the above (setting active participant, requesting transmit).
Lastly, when using the PTTFramework it also mentions that we get support for PTT devices and I notice on the didBeginTransmittingFrom property we have a handsfreeButton case. Is there any documentation or resources for what is actually supported out of the box for this? I am currently working on handling a lot of the push to talk through bluetooth LE, and wanted to make sure there wasn't overlap with what the system provides.
Thank you!
I'm able to get text to speech to audio file using the following code for iOS 12 iPhone 8 to create a car file:
audioFile = try AVAudioFile(
forWriting: saveToURL,
settings: pcmBuffer.format.settings,
commonFormat: .pcmFormatInt16,
interleaved: false)
where pcmBuffer.format.settings is:
[AVAudioFileTypeKey: kAudioFileMP3Type,
AVSampleRateKey: 48000,
AVEncoderBitRateKey: 128000,
AVNumberOfChannelsKey: 2,
AVFormatIDKey: kAudioFormatLinearPCM]
However, this code does not work when I run the app in iOS 18 on iPhone 13 Pro Max. The audio file is created, but it doesn't sound right. It has a lot of static and it seems the speech is very low pitch.
Can anyone give me a hint or an answer?
On macOS Sequoia, I'm having the hardest time getting this basic audio output to work correctly. I'm compiling in XCode using C99, and when I run this, I get audio for a split second, and then nothing, indefinitely.
Any ideas what could be going wrong?
Here's a minimum code example to demonstrate:
#include <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#define RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT 2
#define RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER 128
// mono linear PCM audio data at 48kHz
#define RENDER_SAMPLE_RATE 48000
#define RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT 1
#define RENDER_BUFFER_BYTE_COUNT (RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER * RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT * sizeof(f32))
void RenderAudioSaw(float* outBuffer, uint32_t frameCount, uint32_t channelCount)
{
static bool isInverted = false;
float scalar = isInverted ? -1.f : 1.f;
for (uint32_t frame = 0; frame < frameCount; ++frame)
{
for (uint32_t channel = 0; channel < channelCount; ++channel)
{
// series of ramps, alternating up and down.
outBuffer[frame * channelCount + channel] = 0.1f * scalar * ((float)frame / frameCount);
}
}
isInverted = !isInverted;
}
AudioStreamBasicDescription coreAudioDesc = { 0 };
AudioQueueRef coreAudioQueue = NULL;
AudioQueueBufferRef coreAudioBuffers[RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT] = { NULL };
void coreAudioCallback(void* unused, AudioQueueRef queue, AudioQueueBufferRef buffer)
{
// 0's here indicate no fancy packet magic
AudioQueueEnqueueBuffer(queue, buffer, 0, 0);
}
int main(void)
{
const UInt32 BytesPerSample = sizeof(float);
coreAudioDesc.mSampleRate = RENDER_SAMPLE_RATE;
coreAudioDesc.mFormatID = kAudioFormatLinearPCM;
coreAudioDesc.mFormatFlags = kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsFloat | kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsPacked;
coreAudioDesc.mBytesPerPacket = RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT * BytesPerSample;
coreAudioDesc.mFramesPerPacket = 1;
coreAudioDesc.mBytesPerFrame = RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT * BytesPerSample;
coreAudioDesc.mChannelsPerFrame = RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT;
coreAudioDesc.mBitsPerChannel = BytesPerSample * 8;
coreAudioQueue = NULL;
OSStatus result;
// most of the 0 and NULL params here are for compressed sound formats etc.
result = AudioQueueNewOutput(&coreAudioDesc, &coreAudioCallback, NULL, 0, 0, 0, &coreAudioQueue);
if (result != noErr)
{
assert(false == "AudioQueueNewOutput failed!");
abort();
}
for (int i = 0; i < RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT; ++i)
{
uint32_t bufferSize = coreAudioDesc.mBytesPerFrame * RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER;
result = AudioQueueAllocateBuffer(coreAudioQueue, bufferSize, &(coreAudioBuffers[i]));
if (result != noErr)
{
assert(false == "AudioQueueAllocateBuffer failed!");
abort();
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT; ++i)
{
RenderAudioSaw(coreAudioBuffers[i]->mAudioData, RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER, RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT);
coreAudioBuffers[i]->mAudioDataByteSize = coreAudioBuffers[i]->mAudioDataBytesCapacity;
AudioQueueEnqueueBuffer(coreAudioQueue, coreAudioBuffers[i], 0, 0);
}
AudioQueueStart(coreAudioQueue, NULL);
sleep(10); // some time to hear the audio
AudioQueueStop(coreAudioQueue, true);
AudioQueueDispose(coreAudioQueue, true);
return 0;
}
I have a memory leak, when using AVAudioPlayer. I managed to narrow down the issue into a very simple app, which code I paste in at the end.
The memory leak start immediately when I start playing sound, but only in the emylator. On the real iPhone there is no memory leak.
The memory leak on the Simulator looks like this:
import SwiftUI
import AVFoundation
struct ContentView_Audio: View {
var sound: AVAudioPlayer?
init() {
guard let path = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "cd201", ofType: "mp3") else { return }
let url = URL(fileURLWithPath: path)
do {
try AVAudioSession.sharedInstance().setCategory(.playback, mode: .default, options: [.mixWithOthers])
} catch {
return
}
do {
try AVAudioSession.sharedInstance().setActive(true)
} catch {
return
}
do {
sound = try AVAudioPlayer(contentsOf: url)
} catch {
return
}
}
var body: some View {
HStack {
Button {
playSound()
} label: {
ZStack {
Circle()
.fill(.mint.opacity(0.3))
.frame(width: 44, height: 44)
.shadow(radius: 8)
Image(systemName: "play.fill")
.resizable()
.frame(width: 20, height: 20)
}
}
.padding()
Button {
stopSound()
} label: {
ZStack {
Circle()
.fill(.mint.opacity(0.3))
.frame(width: 44, height: 44)
.shadow(radius: 8)
Image(systemName: "stop.fill")
.resizable()
.frame(width: 20, height: 20)
}
}
.padding()
}
}
private func playSound() {
guard sound != nil else { return }
sound?.volume = 1
// sound?.numberOfLoops = -1
sound?.play()
}
func stopSound() {
sound?.stop()
}
}