Dive into the technical aspects of audio on your device, including codecs, format support, and customization options.

Audio Documentation

Posts under Audio subtopic

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How to synchronize the clock sources of two audio devices
I created a virtual audio device to capture system audio with a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. After capturing the audio, I forward it to the hardware sound card using AVAudioEngine, also with a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. However, due to the clock sources being unsynchronized, problems occur after a period of playback. How can I retrieve the clock source of the hardware device and set it for the virtual device?
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May ’25
AirPlay v1 is broken in iOS 18.4?
After upgrading to iOS 18.4, I'm no longer able to establish an AirPlay v1 connection to an audio system. The symptom is that the AirPlay route picker just spins when trying to connect to an audio system. It eventually gives up. I tested this on an iPhone 14, connecting to a HomePod, AirPort express, AppleTV and a Wiim Pro. If I try connecting with AirPlay v2, ex: using Apple Music, the connection succeeds and audio can be played. I'm the developer of an app that plays audio over AirPlay while also recording. My app has to use AirPlay v1 because AvAudioSession doesn't allow the policy .longFormAudio when the category is .playAndRecord. This issue is a real pain as it means my app is suddenly broken for many thousands of users. Is anyone else seeing this issue? Any suggestions for a workaround?
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Jun ’25
Airplay selection not working
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.
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Jun ’25
storing AVAsset in SwiftData
Hi, I am creating an app that can include videos or images in it's data. While @Attribute(.externalStorage) helps with images, with AVAssets I actually would like access to the URL behind that data. (as it would be stupid to load and then save the data again just to have a URL) One key component is to keep all of this clean enough so that I can use (private) CloudKit syncing with the resulting model. All the best Christoph
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555
Jun ’25
tvOS AVQueuePlayer Now Playing Info in Control Center?
I have a music app I'm developing and having a weird issue where I can see now playing info for every other platform than tvOS. As far as I can tell I have correctly configured the MPNowPlayingInfoCenter MPNowPlayingInfoCenter.default().nowPlayingInfo = nowPlayingInfo MPNowPlayingInfoCenter.default().playbackState = .playing Are there any extra requirements to get my app's now-playing info showing in control center on tvOS? Another strange issue that might be related is I can use the apple TV remote to pause audio but not resume playback, so I feel like there's something I'm missing about registering audio playback on tvOS specifically.
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Jun ’25
ShazamKit Background Operation Broken on iOS 18 - SHManagedSession Stops Working After ~20 Seconds
Your draft looks great! Here's a refined version with the iOS 17 comparison emphasized and slightly better flow: Hi Apple Engineers and fellow developers, I'm experiencing a critical regression with ShazamKit's background operation on iOS 18. ShazamKit's SHManagedSession stops identifying songs in the background after approximately 20 seconds on iOS 18, while the exact same code works perfectly on iOS 17. The behavior is consistent: the app works perfectly in the foreground, but when backgrounded or device is locked, it initially works for about 20 seconds then stops identifying new songs. The microphone indicator remains active suggesting audio access is maintained, but ShazamKit doesn't send identified songs in the background until you open the app again. Detection immediately resumes when bringing the app to foreground. My technical setup uses SHManagedSession for continuous matching with background modes properly configured in Info.plist including audio mode, and Background App Refresh enabled. I've tested this on physical devices running iOS 18.0 through 18.5 with the same results across all versions. The exact same code running on iOS 17 devices works flawlessly in the background. To reproduce: initialize SHManagedSession and start matching, begin song identification in foreground, background the app or lock device, play different songs which are initially detected for about 20 seconds, then after the timeout period new songs are no longer identified until you bring the app to foreground. This regression has impacted my production app as users who rely on continuous background music identification are experiencing a broken feature. I submitted this as Feedback ID FB15255903 last September with no solution so far. I've created a minimal demo project that reproduces this issue: https://github.com/tfmart/ShazamKitBackground Has anyone else experienced this ShazamKit background regression on iOS 18? Are there any known workarounds or alternative approaches? Given the time this issue has persisted, could we please get acknowledgment of this regression, expected timeline for a fix, or any recommended workarounds? Testing environment is Xcode 16.0+ on iOS 18.0-18.5 across multiple physical device models. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
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Jun ’25
AVAssetWriterInput Crash on appendSampleBuffer Converting PCM
Overview We are producing audio in real time from an editing application and are trying to put that on an HLS stream. We attempt to submit PCM samples through an audio writer but are getting a crash after a select number of samples have been appended. Depending on the number of audio frames in the PCM buffer, we might get more iterations before the crash but it always has the same traceback (see below). Code The setup is rather simple. We took inspiration from a few sources around the web. NSMutableDictionary *audio = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init]; [audio setObject:@(kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC) forKey:AVFormatIDKey]; [audio setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:config.audioSampleRate] // 48000 forKey:AVSampleRateKey]; [audio setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:config.audioChannels] // 2 forKey:AVNumberOfChannelsKey]; [audio setObject:@160000 forKey:AVEncoderBitRateKey]; m_audioConfig = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithDictionary:audio]; m_audio = [[AVAssetWriterInput alloc] initWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeAudio outputSettings:m_audioConfig]; AVAudioFrameCount audioFrames = BUFFER_SAMPLES * bCount; AVAudioPCMBuffer *pcmBuffer = [[AVAudioPCMBuffer alloc] initWithPCMFormat:m_full.pcmFormat frameCapacity:audioFrames]; pcmBuffer.frameLength = pcmBuffer.frameCapacity; AudioChannelLayout layout; memset(&layout, 0, sizeof(layout)); layout.mChannelLayoutTag = kAudioChannelLayoutTag_Stereo; CMFormatDescriptionRef format; OSStatus stats = CMAudioFormatDescriptionCreate( kCFAllocatorDefault, pcmBuffer.format.streamDescription, sizeof(layout), &layout, 0, nil, nil, &format ); for (int i = 0; i < bCount; i++) { AudioPCM pcm; audioCallback->callback(pcm); memcpy(*(pcmBuffer.int16ChannelData) + (bufferSize * i), pcm.data, bufferSize); } size_t samplesConsumed = BUFFER_SAMPLES * bCount; CMSampleBufferRef sampleBuffer; CMSampleTimingInfo timing; timing.duration = CMTimeMake(1, config.audioSampleRate); timing.presentationTimeStamp = presentationTime; timing.decodeTimeStamp = kCMTimeInvalid; OSStatus ostatus = CMSampleBufferCreate( kCFAllocatorDefault, nil, false, nil, nil, format, (CMItemCount)pcmBuffer.frameLength, 1, &timing, 0, nil, &sampleBuffer ); //// ostatus = CMSampleBufferSetDataBufferFromAudioBufferList( sampleBuffer, kCFAllocatorDefault, kCFAllocatorDefault, kCMSampleBufferFlag_AudioBufferList_Assure16ByteAlignment, pcmBuffer.audioBufferList ); if (ostatus != noErr) { NSLog(@"fill audio sample from buffer list failed: %s", logAudioError(ostatus)); return; } ostatus = CMSampleBufferSetDataReady(sampleBuffer); if (ostatus != noErr) { NSLog(@"set sample buffer ready failed: %s", logAudioError(ostatus)); return; } // Finally we can attach it, then shove the presentation time forward [m_audio appendSampleBuffer:sampleBuffer]; The Crash The crash points towards some level of deallocation when the conversion tooling is done or has enough samples to process an output packet? It's had to say. 0 caulk 0x1a1e9532c caulk::alloc::tiered_allocator<caulk::alloc::size_range_tier<0ul, 1008ul, caulk::alloc::tree_allocator<caulk::alloc::chunk_allocator<caulk::alloc::page_allocator, caulk::alloc::bitmap_allocator, caulk::alloc::embed_block_memory, 16384ul, 16ul, 6ul>>>, caulk::alloc::size_range_tier<1009ul, 256000ul, caulk::alloc::guarded_edges_allocator<caulk::alloc::consolidating_free_map<caulk::alloc::page_allocator, 10485760ul>, 4ul>>, caulk::alloc::tracking_allocator<caulk::alloc::page_allocator>>::deallocate(caulk::alloc::block, unsigned long) + 636 1 AudioToolboxCore 0x1993fbfe4 ExtendedAudioBufferList_Destroy + 112 2 AudioToolboxCore 0x1993d5fe0 std::__1::__optional_destruct_base<ACCodecOutputBuffer, false>::~__optional_destruct_base[abi:ne180100]() + 68 3 AudioToolboxCore 0x1993d5f48 acv2::CodecConverter::~CodecConverter() + 196 4 AudioToolboxCore 0x1993d5e5c acv2::CodecConverter::~CodecConverter() + 16 5 AudioToolboxCore 0x1992574d8 std::__1::vector<std::__1::unique_ptr<acv2::AudioConverterBase, std::__1::default_delete<acv2::AudioConverterBase>>, std::__1::allocator<std::__1::unique_ptr<acv2::AudioConverterBase, std::__1::default_delete<acv2::AudioConverterBase>>>>::__clear[abi:ne180100]() + 84 6 AudioToolboxCore 0x199259acc acv2::AudioConverterChain::RebuildConverterChain(acv2::ChainBuildSettings const&) + 116 7 AudioToolboxCore 0x1992596ec acv2::AudioConverterChain::SetProperty(unsigned int, unsigned int, void const*) + 1808 8 AudioToolboxCore 0x199324acc acv2::AudioConverterV2::setProperty(unsigned int, unsigned int, void const*) + 84 9 AudioToolboxCore 0x199327f08 with_resolved(OpaqueAudioConverter*, caulk::function_ref<int (AudioConverterAPI*)>) + 60 10 AudioToolboxCore 0x1993281e4 AudioConverterSetProperty + 72 11 MediaToolbox 0x1a7566c2c FigSampleBufferProcessorCreateWithAudioCompression + 2296 12 MediaToolbox 0x1a754db08 0x1a70b5000 + 4819720 13 MediaToolbox 0x1a754dab4 FigMediaProcessorCreateForAudioCompressionWithFormatWriter + 100 14 MediaToolbox 0x1a77ebb98 0x1a70b5000 + 7564184 15 MediaToolbox 0x1a7804158 0x1a70b5000 + 7663960 16 MediaToolbox 0x1a7801da0 0x1a70b5000 + 7654816 17 AVFCore 0x1ada530c4 -[AVFigAssetWriterTrack addSampleBuffer:error:] + 192 18 AVFCore 0x1ada55164 -[AVFigAssetWriterAudioTrack _flushPendingSampleBuffersReturningError:] + 500 19 AVFCore 0x1ada55354 -[AVFigAssetWriterAudioTrack addSampleBuffer:error:] + 472 20 AVFCore 0x1ada4ebf0 -[AVAssetWriterInputWritingHelper appendSampleBuffer:error:] + 128 21 AVFCore 0x1ada4c354 -[AVAssetWriterInput appendSampleBuffer:] + 168 22 lib_devapple_hls.dylib 0x115d2c7cc detail::AppleHLSImplementation::audioRuntime() + 1052 23 lib_devapple_hls.dylib 0x115d2d094 void* std::__1::__thread_proxy[abi:ne180100]<std::__1::tuple<std::__1::unique_ptr<std::__1::__thread_struct, std::__1::default_delete<std::__1::__thread_struct>>, void (detail::AppleHLSImplementation::*)(), detail::AppleHLSImplementation*>>(void*) + 72 24 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x196e5b2e4 _pthread_start + 136 Any insight would be welcome!
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Jun ’25
Essentials of macOS to read and write mp3 and mp4 audio files
Hi, On macOS I used to open MP3 and MP4 files with ExtAudioFile. For a few years it doesn't work anymore. So I decided to try different macOS API using the AudioFileID of AudioToolbox framework. I decided to write a test: https://gist.github.com/joelkraehemann/7f5b241b52ca38c3a765c138fb647588 It fails right here: AudioFileOpenWithCallbacks() By telling OSStatus error 1954115647, which means kAudioFileUnsupportedFileTypeError. The filename was set to an MP4 file: ~/Music/test.mp4 Howto fix this? regards, Joël
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Jun ’25
ShazamKit supported for iOS apps that can run on Mac silicon?
I am having issues deploying my iOS app, that uses ShazamKit, to get working on a Mac with Apple silicon. When uploading the archive to App Store Connect I do get ITMS-90863: Macs with Apple silicon support issue - The app links with libraries that aren’t present in macOS: /usr/lib/swift/libswiftShazamKit.dylib Is ShazamKit not supported for iOS apps that can run on Macs with Apple silicon? Or is there something I should fix in my setup / deployment?
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1k
Jun ’25
AVSpeechSynthesisVoices available on device
Hello there! Is there any list of voices that are always available on iOS/iPadOS devices? It seems that AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(identifier: "com.apple.voice.compact.en-US.Samantha") is always available on all devices. I thought that AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(identifier: "com.apple.ttsbundle.siri_Nicky_en-US_compact") and AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(identifier: "com.apple.ttsbundle.siri_Aaron_en-US_compact") were available by default on certain newer devices. Is this true? I also noticed that on the same iPad where I was using those 2 voices (Nicky and Aaron) - when I updated to the iPadOS 26 beta, those voices were no longer available. Any information you can share about which voices should be reliably available on which devices would be extremely helpful for our development. Thanks so much!
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Jun ’25
AudioUnit may experience silent capture issues on iPadOS 18.4.1 or 18.5.
Among the millions of users of our online product, we have identified through data metrics that the silent audio data capture rate on iPadOS 18.4.1 or 18.5 has increased abnormally. However, we are unable to reproduce the issue. Has anyone encountered a similar issue? The parameters we used are as follows: AudioSession: category:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayAndRecord mode:AVAudioSessionModeDefault option:77 preferredSampleRate:48000.000000 preferredIOBufferDuration:0.010000 AudioUnit format.mFormatID = kAudioFormatLinearPCM; format.mSampleRate = 48000.0; format.mChannelsPerFrame = 2; format.mBitsPerChannel = 16; format.mFramesPerPacket = 1; format.mBytesPerFrame = format.mChannelsPerFrame * 16 / 8; format.mBytesPerPacket = format.mBytesPerFrame * format.mFramesPerPacket; format.mFormatFlags = kAudioFormatFlagsNativeEndian | kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsPacked | kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsSignedInteger; component.componentType = kAudioUnitType_Output; component.componentSubType = kAudioUnitSubType_RemoteIO; component.componentManufacturer = kAudioUnitManufacturer_Apple; component.componentFlags = 0; component.componentFlagsMask = 0;
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125
Jun ’25
Is there a way to get lossless music playback on macOS?
I noticed that while playing back the same tracks via MusicKit on different OSes I get different results regarding the audio files being streamed. Playing back a lossless file with 24Bit 48kHz and watching the Console for RemotePlayerService I get: on iPadOS: Lossless; groupID: audio-alac-stereo-48000-24; bitDepth: 24-bit; sampleRate: 48khz; codec: alac; channels: 2; layout: Stereo; on macOS: Creating AudioQueue with format:'paac', framesPerPacket:1024, sampleRate:44100 While the iPad looks perfect, the Mac does not. Is there a way to fix this issue on macOS. BTW: I switched the Audio-Midi Settings before, after and while the macOS App was lunched. I also switched to different output devices. I wasn't able to change the bad audio-output on the mac. I tested this under Sequoia 15.5 and Tahoe beta 1, Xcode 16.4 and 26 beta 1. The AudioVariants of the Album/Tracks are .dolbyAtmos, .lossless, .lossyStereo Apple Music displays Lossless 24 Bit/48 kHz ALAC when clicking on the playercontroll icon on macOS I hope there are only some missing or misconfigured properties to get macOS up to par. Thanks :-)
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Jun ’25
Issue using Siphon Tap on input AudioQueue
Hi all, I've developed an audio DSP application in C++ using AudioToolbox and CoreAudio on MacOS 14.4.1 with Xcode 15. I use an AudioQueue for input and another for output. This works great. I'm now adding real-time audio analysis eg spectral analysis. I want this to run independently of my audio processing so it can not interfere with audio playback. Taps on AudioQueues seem to be a good way of doing this... Since the analytics won't modify the audio data, I am using a Siphon Tap by setting the AudioQueueProcessingTapFlags to kAudioQueueProcessingTap_PreEffects | kAudioQueueProcessingTap_Siphon; This works fine on my output queue. However, on my input queue the Tap callback is called once and then a EXC_BAD_ACCESS occurs - screen shot below. NB: I believe that a callback should only call AudioQueueProcessingTapGetSourceAudio when not using a Siphon, so I don't call it. Relevant code: AudioQueueProcessingTapCallback tap_callback) { // Makes an audio tap for a queue void * tap_data_ptr = NULL; AudioQueueProcessingTapFlags tap_flags = kAudioQueueProcessingTap_PostEffects | kAudioQueueProcessingTap_Siphon; uint32_t max_frames = 0; AudioStreamBasicDescription asbd; AudioQueueProcessingTapRef tap_ref; OSStatus status = AudioQueueProcessingTapNew(queue_ref, tap_callback, tap_data_ptr, tap_flags, &max_frames, &asbd, &tap_ref); if (status != noErr) printf("Error while making Tap\n"); else printf("Successfully made tap\n"); } void tapper(void * tap_data, AudioQueueProcessingTapRef tap_ref, uint32_t number_of_frames_in, AudioTimeStamp * ts_ptr, AudioQueueProcessingTapFlags * tap_flags_ptr, uint32_t * number_of_frames_out_ptr, AudioBufferList * buf_list) { // Callback function for audio queue tap printf("Tap callback"); }``` Image of exception stack provided by Xcode: ![]("https://developer.apple.com/forums/content/attachment/27479e8d-a118-459b-aa2d-7e30528910e3" "title=Screenshot 2025-06-14 at 1.29.14 PM.png;width=932;height=562") What have I missed? Appreciate any help you learned folks may be able to provide. Best, Geoff.
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Jun ’25