Play multiple sounds using SoundPlayer

Question

I'm making a sampler program where each key from 1 to 9 will make a different sound. Everything works fine, but when I press two (or more) sounds at the same time, the second one "kills" the first one.

I'm playing the sounds from .WAV files, using SoundPlayer. How can I solve this?

Answer 1

You'll need to use DirectX (DirectSound) or some similar API that is designed to allow the playing of multiple sounds at the same time.

Answer 2

There is one simple way to play multiple sounds at once in C# or VB.Net. You will have to call the mciSendString() API Function to play each .wav file. You won't even have to do multi-threading, unless you are loop-playing. Here is a complete working example of a MusicPlayer class created using mciSendString().

// Sound api functions
[DllImport("winmm.dll")]
static extern Int32 mciSendString(string command, StringBuilder buffer, int bufferSize, IntPtr hwndCallback);

In the above function, the key is first parameter command. As long as you call two functions with a separate command name, they will play separately/simultaneously. This is what I did in one of my C# programs:

private void PlayWorker()
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    mciSendString("open \"" + FileName + "\" alias " + this.TrackName, sb, 0, IntPtr.Zero);
    mciSendString("play " + this.TrackName, sb, 0, IntPtr.Zero);
    IsBeingPlayed = true;
}

EDIT: Added link to a working example.

Answer 3

You could do this:

SoundPlayer supports WAV Stream. You could

• MIX samples you play 'by-hand' and,
• Fake (get the WAV header from somewhere, it's not complicated).

And provide such stream as a parameter to the SoundPlayer constructor.

That way you won't have to use somehow complicated DirectSound libraries, and still have mixing (multiple sounds at once).

Answer 4

I'm guessing that in your KeyPress event (or whatever you're using) you're creating a new instance of SoundPlayer using the constructor that takes a path to the WAV file, and then calling its Play method. In theory this shouldn't cause the "mono" effect that you're encountering, since Windows has been capable of playing multiple WAV files simultaneously since Windows 98. What I think you're hearing (based on my own use of this class) is not a cutoff of the first sound when the second starts, but actually a glitch that results from overall playback pausing as the WAV file is loaded from disk.

Instead of loading up a new instance of SoundPlayer on each key press, try creating an array of class-scoped SoundPlayer objects and pre-loading them from disk in your form's Load event. Then just call each SoundPlayer's Play method when the key is pressed. This may fix your problem, although I think you will still get occasional glitches this way.

Answer 5

using System.Windows.Media

Function void Play(string audioPath)
{
MediaPlayer myPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
myPlayer.Open(new System.Uri(audioPath));
myPlayer.Play();
}

Play(Application.StartupPath + "\\Track1.wav");
Play(Application.StartupPath + "\\Track2.wav");

This code could play two audio files simultaneously, the call in second audio track2.wav will not disturb the play of track1.wav .