Streaming AAC audio with Android

Question

As I understand it, Android will only play AAC format audio if it\'s encoded as MPEG-4 or 3GPP.

I\'m able to play AAC audio encoded as M4A when it\'s local to the ap

Answer 1

This work-around allows you to play M4A files from the net (and AAC files in other containers such as MP4 & 3GP). It simply downloads the file and plays from the cache.

private File mediaFile;

private void playAudio(String mediaUrl) {
    try {
        URLConnection cn = new URL(mediaUrl).openConnection();
        InputStream is = cn.getInputStream();

        // create file to store audio
        mediaFile = new File(this.getCacheDir(),"mediafile");
        FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(mediaFile);   
        byte buf[] = new byte[16 * 1024];
        Log.i("FileOutputStream", "Download");

        // write to file until complete
        do {
            int numread = is.read(buf);   
            if (numread <= 0)  
                break;
            fos.write(buf, 0, numread);
        } while (true);
        fos.flush();
        fos.close();
        Log.i("FileOutputStream", "Saved");
        MediaPlayer mp = new MediaPlayer();

        // create listener to tidy up after playback complete
        MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener listener = new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
            public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
                // free up media player
                mp.release();
                Log.i("MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener", "MediaPlayer Released");
            }
        };
        mp.setOnCompletionListener(listener);

        FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(mediaFile);
        // set mediaplayer data source to file descriptor of input stream
        mp.setDataSource(fis.getFD());
        mp.prepare();
        Log.i("MediaPlayer", "Start Player");
        mp.start();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}