Cordova / PhoneGap 3.5+ extension for Native Audio playback, aimed at HTML5 gaming and audio applications which require minimum latency, polyphony and concurrency.

1. Incorporated commits from floatinghotpot#153
2. Incorporated commits from floatinghotpot#139
3. Removing deprecated AVAudioSession.h & AVAudioPlayer.h import for iOS
4. Closed issues

1. Description
2. History
3. Roadmap
4. Integration
5. Supported Platforms
6. Installation
7. Usage
8. API
9. Demo

This Cordova / PhoneGap (3.5+) plugin enables concurrency (multi-channel playback), polyphony (multi-voice playback) and minimized latency (via caching) in audio-based applications, by leveraging native audio APIs. Designed for the use in HTML5-based cross-platform games and mobile/hybrid audio applications.

Community-driven, clean fork of the Low Latency Audio Plugin for Cordova / PhoneGap, initially published by Andrew Trice and then maintained by Raymond Xie and Sidney Bofah.

This project cleans up a lot of legacy code, and adds success, error and completion callbacks. It also features integration in AngularJS projects via ngCordova.

Following the Cordova philosophy, this is a shim for a web audio implementation (on mobile) which is as fast and feature-rich as native mobile APIs. Currently, neither HTML5 Audio or the more recent Web Audio API offer a cross-platform solution which 1) is fast, 2) supports polyphony, 3) concurrency and 4) maintains a low overhead.

It should be replaced by a standardised W3C solution as soon as such an implementation offers comparable performance across (mobile) devices, which is crucial for HTML5-based games.

This plugin is available as an AngularJS service module, facilitating the usage in AngularJS-based Cordova/PhoneGap projects.

It extends the ngCordova project, an effort by the great guys at Drifty, creators of the Ionic Framework. Download it at the ngCordova website or the repository.

• iOS
• Android

Via Cordova CLI:

cordova plugin add https://github.com/wizpanda/cordova-plugin-nativeaudio.git

1. Wait for deviceReady.
2. Preload an audio asset and assign an id - either optimized for single-shot style short clips (preloadSimple()) or looping, ambient background audio (preloadComplex())
3. play() the audio asset via its id.
4. unload() the audio asset via its id.

preloadSimple: function ( id, assetPath, successCallback, errorCallback)

Loads an audio file into memory. Optimized for short clips / single shots (up to five seconds). Cannot be stopped / looped.

Uses lower-level native APIs with small footprint (iOS: AudioToolbox/AudioServices). Fully concurrent and multichannel.

• params
• id - string unique ID for the audio file
• assetPath - the relative path or absolute URL (inluding http://) to the audio asset.
• successCallback - success callback function
• errorCallback - error callback function

preloadComplex: function ( id, assetPath, volume, voices, delay, successCallback, errorCallback)

Loads an audio file into memory. Optimized for background music / ambient sound. Uses highlevel native APIs with a larger footprint. (iOS: AVAudioPlayer). Can be stopped / looped and used with multiple voices. Can be faded in and out using the delay parameter.

The default volume is 1.0, a lower default can be set by using a numerical value from 0.1 to 1.0.

By default, there is 1 vice, that is: one instance that will be stopped & restarted on play(). If there are multiple voices (number greater than 0), it will cycle through voices to play overlapping audio.

Change the float-based delay parameter to increase the fade-in/fade-out timing.

• params
• id - string unique ID for the audio file
• assetPath - the relative path to the audio asset within the www directory
• volume - the volume of the preloaded sound (0.1 to 1.0)
• voices - the number of multichannel voices available
• successCallback - success callback function
• errorCallback - error callback function

play: function (id, successCallback, errorCallback, completeCallback)

Plays an audio asset.

• params:
• id - string unique ID for the audio file
• successCallback - success callback function
• errorCallback - error callback function
• completeCallback - error callback function

loop: function (id, successCallback, errorCallback)

Loops an audio asset infinitely - this only works for assets loaded via preloadComplex.

• params
• ID - string unique ID for the audio file
• successCallback - success callback function
• errorCallback - error callback function

stop: function (id, successCallback, errorCallback)

Stops an audio file. Only works for assets loaded via preloadComplex.

• params:
• ID - string unique ID for the audio file
• successCallback - success callback function
• errorCallback - error callback function

unload: function (id, successCallback, errorCallback)

Unloads an audio file from memory.

• params:
• ID - string unique ID for the audio file
• successCallback - success callback function
• errorCallback - error callback function

setVolumeForComplexAsset: function (id, volume, successCallback, errorCallback)

Changes the volume for preloaded complex assets.

• params:
• ID - string unique ID for the audio file
• volume - the volume of the audio asset (0.1 to 1.0)
• successCallback - success callback function
• errorCallback - error callback function

In this example, the resources reside in a relative path under the Cordova root folder "www/".

if (window.plugins && window.plugins.NativeAudio) {

    // Preload audio resources
    window.plugins.NativeAudio.preloadComplex('music', 'audio/music.mp3', 1, 1, 0, function (msg) {
    }, function (msg) {
        console.log('error: ' + msg);
    });

    window.plugins.NativeAudio.preloadSimple('click', 'audio/click.mp3', function (msg) {
    }, function (msg) {
        console.log('error: ' + msg);
    });


    // Play
    window.plugins.NativeAudio.play('click');
    window.plugins.NativeAudio.loop('music');


    // Stop multichannel clip after 60 seconds
    window.setTimeout(function () {

        window.plugins.NativeAudio.stop('music');

        window.plugins.NativeAudio.unload('music');
        window.plugins.NativeAudio.unload('click');

    }, 1000 * 60);
}

The Drumpad in the examples directory is a first starting point.

[sudo] npm install plugin-verify -g
plugin-verify cordova-plugin-nativeaudio ios
plugin-verify cordova-plugin-nativeaudio android

Or, type the commands step by step:

cordova create drumpad com.example.nativeaudio drumpad
cd drumpad
cordova platform add ios
cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-nativeaudio
rm -r www/*
cp -r plugins/cordova-plugin-nativeaudio/test/* www
cordova build ios
cordova emulate ios