PlaySound() sequence

[MartinMH]

Hi all

I have my code here :

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
PlaySound("C:\\Users\\Commander\\Desktop\\test.wav", NULL, SND_ASYNC);

        getch();
        return 0;
}

This much works fine.

My question is, how would change the code to play a short sequence of three wav files?

[coder777]

Don't use SND_ASYNC. See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd743680%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Use e.g. SND_FILENAME

[MartinMH]

Perfect!

Thank you. :)

[MartinMH]

OK, I actually have an addition to this.

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
PlaySound("C:\\Users\\Commander\\Desktop\\test1.wav", NULL, SND_FILENAME);
PlaySound("C:\\Users\\Commander\\Desktop\\test2.wav", NULL, SND_FILENAME);
PlaySound("C:\\Users\\Commander\\Desktop\\test3.wav", NULL, SND_FILENAME);

        return 0;
}

I can play all three files just fine, but there is a short delay between that I would rather not be there.

I there a way to have no delay between the files playing?

I know playing the files this way is not what everyone would do, but before I try any of them can anyone tell me if it would be futile. ie Would I always have the 0.5 second gap between the files no matter what method I used?

And needless to say, are there any specific methods anyone would reccomend for this task?

[coder777]

maybe the reson for the pause is the file handling.
Try using SND_MEMORY and load the files into memory before playing

[Chervil]

I was going to suggest loading the file into memory too. But I'm not sure that it truly fixes the problem. Here's my code which loads a wav file into memory, then plays it.

I find there is still a short gap between each sound.

#define _WIN32_WINNT 0x0500
#include <windows.h>
#include <mmsystem.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <conio.h>

class Wave {

public:
    Wave(char * filename);
    ~Wave();
    void play(bool async=true);
    bool isok();

private:
    char * buffer;
    bool ok;
    HINSTANCE HInstance;
};

Wave::Wave(char * filename)
{
    ok = false;
    buffer = 0;
    HInstance = GetModuleHandle(0);

    ifstream infile(filename, ios::binary);

    if (!infile)
    {
         std::cout << "Wave::file error: "<< filename << std::endl;
        return;
    }

    infile.seekg (0, ios::end);   // get length of file
    int length = infile.tellg();
    buffer = new char[length];    // allocate memory
    infile.seekg (0, ios::beg);   // position to start of file
    infile.read (buffer,length);  // read entire file

    infile.close();
    ok = true;
}

Wave::~Wave()
{
    PlaySound(NULL, 0, 0); // STOP ANY PLAYING SOUND
    delete [] buffer;      // before deleting buffer.
}
void Wave::play(bool async)
{
    if (!ok)
        return;

    if (async)
        PlaySound(buffer, HInstance, SND_MEMORY | SND_ASYNC);
    else
        PlaySound(buffer, HInstance, SND_MEMORY);
}

bool Wave::isok()
{
    return ok;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

    std::cout << "Trying to play sound ...\n";

    Wave one("sound1.WAV");
    Wave two("sound2.WAV");
    Wave three("sound3.WAV");

    one.play(0);
    two.play(0);
    three.play(0);

    std::cout << "press key to exit";
    getch();

    return 0;
}

At line 75-77 the sound is played, one after the other. If the parameter is omitted, like this,

    one.play();
    two.play();
    three.play();

then all three sounds will play simultaneously. Perhaps introducing a suitable duration Sleep() between each call will allow the sound to start playing at the required moment.

[MartinMH]

Thanks Chervil. Your code actually played for me with a much shorter pause between the files, although it did it in a weird way.

When I tried your code originally a few hours ago, the pauses were still there, but I tried it again now and it worked near perfectly. Also closed C++ builder and reopened it etc to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

The only thing I think I changed was freeing up some space on my computer from 18GB free to 26Gb free.