Question

I have an app where I have some prerecorded text to speech (As there is no default support for text to speech) then I want to play them like this

var mediaElement = new MediaElement();
mediaElement.Source = new Uri("sound.mp3", UriKind.Relative);
mediaElement.Position = new TimeSpan(0);
mediaElement.Play();

But nothing happens, do I HAVE to create a “real” control in my UI? I just want to play this sound when an event happens, I get no errors or nothing, nomatter if the mp3 is in the default folder or not.

Answer 1

The reason it’s not playing is because you haven’t added it to the Visual Tree. When you create a MediaElement programmatically, it needs to be added somewhere in the tree. You’ll have to create a ‘real control’ in your UI, but it doesn’t have to be seen.

var mediaElement = new MediaElement();
mediaElement.Source = new Uri("sound.mp3", UriKind.Relative);
mediaElement.Position = new TimeSpan(0);
LayoutRoot.Children.Add(mediaElement); //Add to visual tree
mediaElement.Play();