I have an Activity that plays a brief OGG "pop" sound effect when
bubbles pop. To keep it fast and to ensure I can play several pops, I
create four MediaPlayer instances. I synchronize access to a pool of
instances, so I can play up to four pops at once. Once a sound
completes, I call seekTo(0) and return the MediaPlayer instance to my
pool.
Here is a rough sketch of the code:
// when the activity resumes...
for (int i=0; i<4; i++) {
MediaPlayer mp = MediaPlayer.create(context, R.raw.pop);
mp.setOnCompletionListener(this);
mp.setVolume(1f, 1f);
players.add(mp); // put into a pool of available players
}
// when a bubble pops...
MediaPlayer mp = ...get player instance from the pool
if (mp != null) {
mp.start(); // works! plays the pop sound
}
// implement the OnCompletionListener interface
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
// seek to the start so I can play the sound fast the next time
mp.seekTo(0);
....return the MediaPlayer to the pool
}
Here is the problem. The pops all work so long as my game is active.
But if I let it sit there for just a few seconds, I see this in the
LogCat console: (on my G1 phone)
AudioHardwareMSM72xx Going to standby
Once this happens, the next several calls to MediaPlayer's start()
method play nothing...but they do cause the audio hardware to wake up
again, so then my sounds eventually (after a few seconds) start
playing again.
My question is, how do I prevent the AudioHardwareMSM72xx from going
to standby mode while my Activity is active?
One hacky idea...I could loop a continuous sound at extremely low
volume level in another MediaPlayer instance to force it to stay
awake. That's not appealing to me.
Ideas?
