Streaming sounds

We have learned how to play short audio samples, and now we are ready to organize sound streaming. This recipe explains how to organize a buffer queue to allow on-the-fly sound generation and streaming.

Getting ready

We suppose that the reader is already familiar with our AudioSource and iWaveDataProvider classes described in the previous recipe.

How to do it…

1. First, we enrich iWaveDataProvider with the additional methods IsStreaming(), which indicates that the data from this provider should be read in small chunks, and StreamWaveData(), which actually reads a single chunk:

   class iWaveDataProvider: public iObject
     …
     virtual bool IsStreaming() const { return false; }
     virtual int  StreamWaveData( int Size ) { return 0; }
     …
   };

2. Next we write a derived class, which contains an intermediate buffer for decoded or generated sound data. It does not implement StreamWaveData(), but implements the GetWaveData() and GetWaveDataSize() methods:

   class StreamingWaveDataProvider...