Playing an arbitrary tone with Android

Question

Is there any way to make Android emit a sound of arbitrary frequency (meaning, I don\'t want to have pre-recorded sound files)?

I\'ve looked around and ToneGenerator

Answer 1

    float synth_frequency = 440;
    int minSize = AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize(SAMPLE_RATE,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_MONO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT);
AudioTrack audioTrack = new AudioTrack(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC,
SAMPLE_RATE,
AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_MONO,
AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,
minSize,
AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM);
audioTrack.play();
short[] buffer = new short[minSize];
float angle = 0;
while (true) 
{
    if (play)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < buffer.length; i++)
        {
            float angular_frequency =
            (float)(2*Math.PI) * synth_frequency / SAMPLE_RATE;
            buffer[i] = (short)(Short.MAX_VALUE * ((float) Math.sin(angle)));
            angle += angular_frequency;
    }
        audioTrack.write(buffer, 0, buffer.length);
    } 

// You can add arbitrary value in synth_frequency to get change sound for example you can add random variable to get sound

Answer 2

Do major (16 notes)

 public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

  private double mInterval = 0.125;
  private int mSampleRate = 8000;
  private byte[] generatedSnd;

  private final double mStandardFreq = 440;

  Handler handler = new Handler();
  private AudioTrack audioTrack;


  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
  }

  @Override
  protected void onResume() {
    super.onResume();

    // Use a new tread as this can take a while
    final Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {

            byte[] tempByte = new byte[0];
            for (int i = 0; i < 16 ; i++ ){
                double note = getNoteFrequencies(i);
                byte[] tonByteNote = getTone(mInterval, mSampleRate, note);
                tempByte = concat(tonByteNote, tempByte);
            }
            generatedSnd = tempByte;

            handler.post(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    playTrack(generatedSnd);
                }
            });
        }
    });
    thread.start();
  }

  public byte[] concat(byte[] a, byte[] b) {
    int aLen = a.length;
    int bLen = b.length;
    byte[] c= new byte[aLen+bLen];
    System.arraycopy(a, 0, c, 0, aLen);
    System.arraycopy(b, 0, c, aLen, bLen);
    return c;
  }

  private double getNoteFrequencies(int index){
    return mStandardFreq * Math.pow(2, (double) index/12.0d);
  }

  private byte[] getTone(double duration, int rate, double frequencies){

    int maxLength = (int)(duration * rate);
    byte generatedTone[] = new byte[2 * maxLength];

    double[] sample = new double[maxLength];
    int idx = 0;

    for (int x = 0; x < maxLength; x++){
        sample[x] = sine(x, frequencies / rate);
    }


    for (final double dVal : sample) {

        final short val = (short) ((dVal * 32767));

        // in 16 bit wav PCM, first byte is the low order byte
        generatedTone[idx++] = (byte) (val & 0x00ff);
        generatedTone[idx++] = (byte) ((val & 0xff00) >>> 8);

    }

    return generatedTone;
}

  private AudioTrack getAudioTrack(int length){

    if (audioTrack == null)
        audioTrack = new AudioTrack(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC,
                mSampleRate, AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_MONO,
                AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT, length,
                AudioTrack.MODE_STATIC);

    return audioTrack;
  }

  private double sine(int x, double frequencies){
    return Math.sin(  2*Math.PI * x * frequencies);
  }

  void playTrack(byte[] generatedSnd){
    getAudioTrack(generatedSnd.length)
            .write(generatedSnd, 0, generatedSnd.length);
    audioTrack.play();
  }

}

Answer 3

I wrapped the above wonderful solutions into a neat little package that's more useable out of the box as a simple configurable buzzer. It runs it in a background thread and has stop and play methods and a handful of options you can set.

It's up on JCenter so you can add it to your dependencies list like this

compile 'net.mabboud:android-tone-player:0.2'

and you use it like this for a continuous buzzer

ContinuousBuzzer tonePlayer = new ContinuousBuzzer();
tonePlayer.play();

// just an example don't actually use Thread.sleep in your app
Thread.sleep(1000); 
tonePlayer.stop();

or a buzzer played only once and you can set frequency and volume like this

OneTimeBuzzer buzzer = new OneTimeBuzzer();
buzzer.setDuration(5);

// volume values are from 0-100
buzzer.setVolume(50);
buzzer.setToneFreqInHz(110);

Extended blog post here about it here GitHub here

Answer 4

Here's another blog demoing a simple synth plus some UI

http://audioprograming.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/a-simple-synth-in-android-step-by-step-guide-using-the-java-sdk/

You might also be interested in csound or pdlib (pure data lib) for android.