Question

I’m using the Audio Queue Services API to play audio streamed from a server over a TCP socket connection on an iPhone. I can play the buffers that were filled from the socket connection, I just cannot seem to make my AudioQueue call my AudioQueueOutputCallback function, and I’m out of ideas.

High level design

1. Data is passed to the player from the socket connection, and written
   immediately into circular buffers in memory.
2. As AudioQueueBuffers become available, data is copied from the circular buffers into the
   available AudioQueueBuffer, which is immediately re-queued. (Or would be, if my callback happened)

What happens

The buffers are all filled and enqueued successfully, and I hear the audio stream clearly. For testing, I use a large number of buffers (15) and all of them play through seamlessly, but the AudioQueueOutputCallback is never called, so I never re-queue any of those buffers, despite the fact that everything seems to be working perfectly. If I don’t wait for my callback, assuming it will never be called, and instead drive the enqueueing of buffers based on the data as it is written, I can play the audio stream indefinitely, reusing and re-enqueueing buffers as if they had been explicitly returned to me by the callback. It is that fact: that I can play the stream perfectly while reusing buffers as needed, that confuses me the most. Why isn’t the callback being called?

Possibly Relevant Code

The format of the stream is 16 bit linear PCM, 8 kHz, Mono:

_streamDescription.mSampleRate = 8000.0f;
_streamDescription.mFormatID = kAudioFormatLinearPCM;
_streamDescription.mBytesPerPacket = 2;
_streamDescription.mFramesPerPacket = 1;
_streamDescription.mBytesPerFrame = sizeof(AudioSampleType);
_streamDescription.mChannelsPerFrame = 1;
_streamDescription.mBitsPerChannel = 8 * sizeof(AudioSampleType)
_streamDescription.mReserved = 0;
_streamDescription.mFormatFlags = (kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsBigEndian | 
                                   kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsPacked);

My prototype and implementation of the callback are as follows. Nothing fancy, and pretty much identical to every example I’ve seen so far:

// Prototype, declared above the class's @implementation
void AQBufferCallback(void* inUserData, AudioQueueRef inAudioQueue, AudioQueueBufferRef inAudioQueueBuffer);

// Definition at the bottom of the file.
void AQBufferCallback(void* inUserData, AudioQueueRef inAudioQueue, AudioQueueBufferRef inAudioQueueBuffer) {

    printf("callback\n");
    [(MyAudioPlayer *)inUserData audioQueue:inAudioQueue didAquireBufferForReuse:inAudioQueueBuffer];
}

I create the AudioQueue like this:

OSStatus status = 0;
status = AudioQueueNewOutput(&_streamDescription, 
                             AQBufferCallback, // <-- Doesn't work...
                             self, 
                             CFRunLoopGetCurrent(),
                             kCFRunLoopCommonModes, 
                             0,
                             &_audioQueue);
if (status) {

    // This is not called...
    NSLog(@"Error creating new audio output queue: %@", [MyAudioPlayer stringForOSStatus:status]);
    return;
}

And I enqueue buffers like this. At this point, it is known that the local buffer contains the correct amount of data for copying:

memcpy(aqBuffer->mAudioData, localBuffer, kAQBufferSize);
aqBuffer->mAudioDataByteSize = kAQBufferSize;

OSStatus status = AudioQueueEnqueueBuffer(_audioQueue, aqBuffer, 0, NULL);
if (status) {
    // This is also not called.
    NSLog(@"Error enqueueing buffer %@", [MyAudioPlayer stringForOSStatus:status]);
}

Please save me.

Answer 1

Is this executed on the main thread or a background thread? probably not good if CFRunLoopGetCurrent() returns a run loop of a thread that could disappear (thread pool etc) or is a run loop that don’t care about kCFRunLoopCommonModes.

Try to change CFRunLoopGetCurrent() to CFRunLoopGetMain() or make sure AudioQueueNewOutput() and CFRunLoopGetCurrent() is executed on the main thread or a thread that you have control over and has a proper run loop.