It looks like you are loading a sound affect but then trying to play a music track. They are two different things in the sound manager. To play a sound affect you need to use playSoundWithKey rather than playMusicWithKey.

If that is not the problem let me know.

I am going to be posting a new version of the sound manager very soon which also has the memory leaks fixed as well. So keep an eye out for that.

Mike

No my sound manager still isnt working.

On init:
INFO – SoundManager: Loaded sound with key ‘laser’ into buffer ’2416′

On call:
ERROR – SoundManager: The music key ‘laser’ could not be found

Can someone provide a complete implementation with some example code? Would be greatly appreciated.

Also its sooooo leaky!! Has anyone else found this?

Jeff

Yes, I had performance issues with mp3′s in Ambient audio. Only uncompressed caf’s made the game run smoothly.

Benoit – were you using CAF files for background music then? Is that because MP3 was being software decoded causing a performance issue? I’ve been able to use MP3 with no issues with the latest sound manager that Mike posted (although I made some changes as I’m working with C++ and needed the stopSounds functionality).
I also experienced some troubles getting some CAFF samples to play – having to re-record and convert some of them.. couldn’t figure out what was the problem.

BTW, anybody, if the openAL on iPhone supports 32 sources, is that 32 stereo sources? or 32 mono sources?
I’ve been using stereo effects sounds and have been able to use the positioning functionality of openAl without issue.

Mike, finally, I would like to plug my new (and first ever) blog – http://www.2d-cubed.com (it’s a bit basic – unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to make it prettier).
I’m going to be talking about my iPhone game development there, and will be mentioning 71 Squared.com, as I’ve gotten some excellent tips from here – thanks again.
I’m hoping to release a game shortly I’ll also be using my blog to post pictures / videos and info about that in the coming weeks.
I may also be seeking some beta testers for my game, especially anybody who is interested in reciprocal help of that nature from myself and also because I don’t have a 3GS device – so don’t know how it will perform on those.

Thanks,
Paul.

Your change sounds really good in identifying if the iPod is playing or not and setting the sound category as necessary. I will have to look at adding that to my sound class. I’ve JUST started to use background sound that is MP3 and so change the sound category to SoloAmbient to get the performance I need. It does make a difference using a compressed file for the music which is very useful.

Thanks for the feedback benoitr007. That is going to be really useful for people.

Simon, sorry for missing your post. I will be covering something like score on screen as soon as possbile.

Mike

I’ve done some progress. First I have fixed all the problems I had with SoloAmbient sessions by modifying the sound manager class. It creates a SoloAmbient session unless the iPod is playing when the app is launched (in which case it creates an Ambient session and doesn’t play my music). The music resumes just fine after unlocking the phone, and I have absolutely no lag problems. I recommend you this method because it permits the use of compressed MP3 files which are about 500% smaller than uncompressed CAF’s!

Also I discovered that since you updated the sound manager class, Instruments reports “AudioToolBox” leaks on both the device and the simulator… Just wondering!

Thanks,

Benoit

I have been away on business this week and just catching up on the comments. I’ll go through them later in detail and get some responses done.

Cheers

Mike

Also, Mike, my CAF music is HUGE in terms of file size (approximately 15 MB). I’m not sure this is good for my app, if you see what I mean. By chance, do you have any idea how I could make it smaller (maybe decrease the quality a bit, or another format) while keeping it quickly decodable? At the moment I’m stuck between 2 options: make it small and have lag problems or all sorts of sound-related issues, or make it huge.

Thanks!