AudioManager > Various issues in Simulator and Native

[oodavid]

Numerous issues with AudioManager spanning the Simulator, Native and Documentation.

I've knocked up a demo app so you can test these issues against it. Feel free to pack it up and use it in the documentation.

The MusicTest Repo (click me!)

Simulator

• Can Instantiate - path, background, volume and loop properties appear to be obeyed
  • #9
  • See my notes below about "Get File Extension"
• Can play music (background) and effects
  • #51, #56, #61
• Can add new sounds
  • #70 then #65
• Can Set Volume, Get Volume, Mute, Unmute and Get Mute status
  • #91, #94, #99, #103, #107, #111, #115, #119, #122, #126, #130
• CANNOT pause then unpause
  • #51 then #74 then #51
  • Appears to "stop" instead - that is, doesn't resume from same position
  • I think unmute has the same issue
• CANNOT read "is playing" while "is paused" functions OK(ish)
  • #81, #85
  • isPlaying always returns false
  • isPaused appears to work OK, however it's meaning is lost when you consider stop and pause
  • Possible alternative method getState() which returns 'playing', 'paused', 'stopped'
• CANNOT Set time, Get time or Get duration
  • #136, 139, 143
  • Might be linked with unpause issues
• Can Get File Extension
  • #147
  • NOTE - the Creating Audio Assets Guide is inconsistent, a the top it says MP3 and OGG are the only supported formats, but further down that there are no restrictions, and then that MP3 is no good for looping sounds and to avoid it.
  • In our case we thought AAC would be ideal as it's compact, widely supported and loops well, however we were unable to load any .m4a files as there's no way to define a preferred extension
• CANNOT get paths for individual sounds
  • #151, #152
  • Always returns the base path, I expected to see two different values for those two lines
• Not sure about setPath...
  • #157
  • I expected setPath to modify all sounds (switching to an alternative set), however that was not the case.
  • It did affect addSound - if you change the path before adding sounds, the newly loaded sound uses the new path, but pre-existing sounds are not changed as expected.
  • this is a use-case that I don't need, nor can I think of a situation where it would be needed, mileage may vary I guess

Nota Bene - @collingreen said that volume doesn't work on android and that passing "time" doesn't work on iOS...

iOS

• pause doesn't resume
• unmute doesn't resume (but rather, restart)
• setVolume doesn't work
• getVolume always returns 0
• getPath & setPath > same bugs as simulator

  Android

• pause doesn't resume
• unmute doesn't resume (but rather, restart)
• background audio doesn't loop
• getVolume always returns 0
• getPath & setPath > same bugs as simulator
• setTime doesn't work

  Addendum

On the subject of units, I think milliseconds would be a sensible choice over seconds. I know setTime requires seconds from reading through the sources, however the documentation doesn't specify units and the methods appear to be inconsistent. Logic: animate, tick, setInterval and setTimeout all use milliseconds. (let's just ignore the weird javascript's date timestamp thing)

[oodavid]

Feature Request: play to have additional "volume" option.

This logically redact this code:

audio.setVolume('sfx', 0.5);
audio.play('sfx', { time: 1000, duration: 500 });

to

audio.play('sfx', { time: 1000, duration: 500, volume: 0.5 });