[android-developers] Guru Meditation@ AudioTrack(51): *** SERIOUS WARNING *** obtainBuffer() timed out

Hello,

I am using MediaPlayer to play background music and SoundPool to play
sound effects. All Audio data is stored in .ogg file format.
Sometimes it happens that the MediaPlayer playback is interrupted for
a fraction of a second if SoundPool.play() is called. Whenever this
happens, the following two warnings are printed to logcat:

11-04 01:49:05.113: WARN/AudioTrack(51): obtainBuffer timed out (is
the CPU pegged?) 0x2b6e8 user=000cc520, server=000cb710
11-04 01:49:05.113: WARN/AudioTrack(51): *** SERIOUS WARNING ***
obtainBuffer() timed out but didn't need to be locked. We recovered,
but this shouldn't happen (user=000cc520, server=000cb710)

Do you have any ideas what could cause the warning messages and/or how
to avoid them? I.e. how to prevent SoundPool.play() from interrupting
MediaPlayer playback?

An other warning that's sometimes appearing is:
11-04 01:55:49.793: WARN/AudioFlinger(51): write blocked for 89 msecs
There seems to be no connection to the above messages, but do you have
any ideas what causes this message and/or how to avoid it?

Here's some more detailed background information, maybe they are
useful:
My OpenGL powered game is split into three threads: One for rendering,
one to take care about the game logic and the main thread to process
user input.
All Audio data is accessed through a central AudioManager class, which
is only used in the game logic thread. (So this does not seem like a
threading issue. Needless to say that synchronizing all methods has
not solved the problem).
The game runs smoothly at ~60 frames per second. According to DDMS the
game causes ~33% system load (~10% in kernel space and ~23% in user
space) on a G1. Even the idle task gets ~24% CPU time assigned while
the game is running and input happens through the touch screen! (So it
does not look like a performance problem)
The MediaPlayer playback interruption always happens if SoundPool.play
() is called in response of a touch screen input. Although touch
screen input and SoundPool.play() happen in different threads. I've
tried suspending the UI thread for various different delays between 8
and 32 msec after a MotionEvent has been processed, but again, without
success...

I've spent days optimizing the game and finding the cause of the
interrupted MediaPlayer playback, but without success. Now I've run
out of ideas. So any advice that could help solving the problem is
highly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Mike.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Android Developers" group.
To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
android-developers+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en