Real time audio playback from mic. c#

Question

I am looking to create an application that will allow me to record from my mic and playback the recording through other pc's. At this point however I would just like it to play back on my own computer so I can get it working.

I have been looking at NAudio for the past few hours and it seems like it may be able to help me achieve this goal.

I am just wondering if anyone else has had any experience with this and if it is at all possible?

Thanks, Stuart

Answer 1

There is an example project on codeproject doing this:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/Streaming_wave_audio.aspx
I don't know how low the latency is.

As a codec I'd recommend Speex(at least for speech). It's free, open source and offers low latency and low bandwidth.

Answer 2

Bass Audio Library is another solid option worth looking into.

Answer 3

It is possible to do, but you are unlikely to get low latency with WaveIn/WaveOut (possibly better results with WASAPI). You could use the BufferedWaveProvider (in the latest source code) to store up the audio being recorded from the microphone and supplying the output to soundcard.

Answer 4

NAudio is great as a starting point for audio capture and playback but as Mark pointed out the latency might be an issue.

If you take the next step and want to sent the audio data across the network you will need a codec to compress the data as PCM or WAV are uncompressed and for voice you only need a small part of the bandwidth needed for WAV. As you are working with C# there is a C# port of Speex available, called NSpeex, which might be worth having a look at..