Hi.
I have a quick question: I am loading a mp3 file into a NSData object and then I play it using the AVAudioPlayer in my game. Every second or so, the frame rate drops and you can see a stuttering on the screen. It is not a major slowdown, but clearly noticeable and disrupting to the gameplay. Not playing the music track with the AVAudioPlayer shows no slow down at all.
How can I prevent this from happening?
Thank you.
Florian
The mp3 is an encoded/compressed audio format. You can try either to reduce the sampling rate (for istance, instead of 128 kb/s try 64 kb/s) or switch to a non encoded format such as linear pcm. The cons are: lower audio quality in the former case, higher file size in the latter. But this can help improve the overall performances of your app.
For future reference, here is the solution:
Setting the audio session category to kAudioSessionCategory_AmbientSound (to allow for iPod music to play simultaneously) somehow disables MP3 hardware acceleration. Setting the audio category to kAudioSessionCategory_SoloAmbientSound fixes this, but doesn't allow for iPod playback. I do now set the audio session category depending on whether background music is enabled or disabled to allow for simultaneous iPod playback.