Sound channel question...

[MattKapa]

Hey CT... just wondering. Does the iOS runtime only have 2 channels, one for the "audio player" and one for in-game sound effects?
I'm making a platform game, and although there aren't too many sounds being played, it seems like the audio gets bugged up and some samples stop-playing all together until I re-start the app.
Will the sound engine be fixed up at all? Or is there a work-around (like playing different effects on different channels if that's possible)?
Thanks a lot .

[Anders]

In the 'play sound' action you have two options: Play using the iOS device's own audio decoder (limited to one sound at a time I think - or at least quite few - anyone correct me if I'm wrong).
The other option is the runtime to use OpenAL to play sounds. It should be able to play a whole lot of audio at once on different channels.

If you believe it is a bug, can you send an example file our way? Thanks

[MattKapa]

Is the iOS devices audio decoder the "Play with audio player" checkbox? I have been using that for my mp3 music, but unchecking the box for sound effects.
It might not be a bug, but it also might be me having too much different audio playing at once :P. If I clean up my code it might fix it, so I'll try that first. If not, I'll send an example . Thanks Andos!

[DistantJ]

I usually run my music throughout the audio player and sound effects through the normal method, but yes, sometimes sounds interrupt each other.

What I've done, and I'd recommend you do, is that firstly I've looked at the most important sounds and made them uninterruptible, and then I've edited any major sounds in a sound editor to trim off any unnecessary silence or decay from the end (you'd be surprised how many wav files have a trailing silence at the end). My character eats meat as a power up, then burps, all in one sound file, but that sound file had a brief silence at the end, and I'd notice you wouldn't hear his footsteps or jump sounds for a brief moment after eating the meat due to it being an uninterruptible sound. Keeping your sounds as short as possible makes problems like this much less noticeable.