Play Background Sound and Sound Effect in Windows Phone 8

Question

I have researched a lot on playing sounds for Windows Phone 8 devices and found multiple solutions but they don\'t quite match my case.

What I need : I\'m writing an

Answer 1

The issue you are seeing with your MediaElement is that you are defining it to be part of the application page and it stops playing as soon as it disappears off of the Visual Tree (i.e. after OnNavigatedFrom).

If you define a MediaElement to be "visible" as part of the application frame, audio will keep playing while your app is active (you will need to handle deactivation events, naturally).

If you do this MediaElement should work for your "background audio".

Be aware you can only have one single active MediaElement playing media in your app, however you should be able to use SoundEffect for your sound effects.

Update:

To put your MediaElement in a frame, you will need to create a custom PhoneApplicationFrame class/XAML, add the MediaElement to that XAML, and refer to your custom frame in App.xaml.cs.

// Do not add any additional code to this method
private void InitializePhoneApplication()
{
    if (phoneApplicationInitialized)
        return;

    // Create the frame but don't set it as RootVisual yet; this allows the splash
    // screen to remain active until the application is ready to render.
    RootFrame = new MyCustomPhoneApplicationFrame();
    RootFrame.Navigated += CompleteInitializePhoneApplication;

See this Dzone article for more about Frame/Page in Windows Phone.