mixing 2 sounds from ByteArray

Question

I have build a mixer and save all the sequence in an array and then play it again, now I want to save the mix as an MP3, I have looked for any way to save the mix and the answer is to load the sounds as byteArrays (sound.extract) I have acomplish that but I don't really know how to store all the sounds in just one ByteArray in order to save it as MP3, I got this code just for example, loading 2 audio files and store them in separate ByteArrays, and play each sound, does any body know how to store the 2 byteArrays in just one?

var mySound:Sound = new Sound(); 
var sourceSnd:Sound = new Sound(); 
var urlReq:URLRequest = new URLRequest("Track1.mp3"); 
sourceSnd.load(urlReq); 
sourceSnd.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loaded); 
function loaded(event:Event):void 
{ 
    mySound.addEventListener(SampleDataEvent.SAMPLE_DATA, processSound); 
    //mySound.play(); 
} 

var mySound2:Sound = new Sound(); 
var sourceSnd2:Sound = new Sound(); 
var urlReq2:URLRequest = new URLRequest("Track2.mp3"); 
sourceSnd2.load(urlReq2); 
sourceSnd2.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loaded2); 
function loaded2(event:Event):void 
{ 
    mySound2.addEventListener(SampleDataEvent.SAMPLE_DATA, processSound2); 
    mySound2.play(); 
    mySound.play(); 
} 



function processSound(event:SampleDataEvent):void 
{ 
        var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray(); 
        sourceSnd.extract(bytes, 8192); 
    event.data.writeBytes(bytes); 
} 

function processSound2(event:SampleDataEvent):void 
{ 
        var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray(); 
        sourceSnd2.extract(bytes, 8192); 
    event.data.writeBytes(bytes); 
} 

Answer 1

been working on a similar system for a while, I'll do my best to give you some direction:

Your example code is not really mixing the MP3's - it's creating 2 more sounds to playback the loaded MP3's via the SampleDataEvent. What you need to do is create just one "output" Sound file that will hold/playback the resulting mixed sound. You can easily save that data as it happens and subsequently save that file as a new WAV/MP3/what-have-you.

real/psuedo-code (read:lazy) :

output = new Sound();

output.addEventListener( SampleDataEvent.SAMPLE_DATA , mixAudio );

song1 = new Sound / load the first mp3

song2 = new Sound / load the second mp3

// a byteArray for "recording" the output and subsequent file creation
recordedBytes = new ByteArray();

either wait until both mp3's are completely loaded, or run an enter-frame to determine when both Sounds are no longer buffering (Sound.isBuffering )

when the mp3's are ready:

// numbers to store some values

var left1:Number;
var right1:Number;

var left2:Number;
var right2:Number;

// bytearrays for extracting and mixing
var bytes1:ByteArray = new ByteArray( );
var bytes2:ByteArray = new ByteArray( );

// start the show
output.play();


function mixAudio( e:SampleDataEvent ):void{
  //set bytearray positions to 0

  bytes1.position = 0;
  bytes2.position = 0;

  //extract

  song1.extract( bytes1, 8192 );
  song2.extract( bytes2, 8192 );

  // reset bytearray positions to 0 for reading the floats

  bytes1.position = 0;
  bytes2.position = 0;

  // run through all the bytes/floats

  var b:int = 0;

  while( b < 8192 ){

     left1 = bytes1.readFloat();  // gets "left" signal
     right1 = bytes1.readFloat(); // gets "right" signal

     left2 = bytes2.readFloat();
     right2 = bytes2.readFloat();


     // mix!

     var newLeft:Number = ( left1 + left2 ) * .5; 
     var newRight:Number = ( right1 + right2 ) * .5;

     // write the new stuff to the output sound's

     e.data.writeFloat( newLeft );
     e.data.writeFloat( newRight );

     // write numbers to the "recording" byteArray
     recordedBytes.writeFloat( newLeft );
     recordedBytes.writeFloat( newRight );

     b++;

  }
}

Yes - you should really cap the possible output at -1/1. Do it. This is extremely un-optimized!

Ok. so that's the easy part! The tough part is really converting the final byteArray to MP3. The audio exists within Flash as PCM/uncompressed data, MP3 is obviously a compressed format. This "answer" is already way too long and all this info I've gleaned from several very smart folks.

You can easily adapt 'MicRecorder' to be a generic Sound data recorder: http://www.bytearray.org/?p=1858

converting to MP3 will be a bitch: Thibault has another post on ByteArray.org - search for LAME MP3.

Excellent example/resource: http://www.anttikupila.com/flash/soundfx-out-of-the-box-audio-filters-with-actionscript-3/

Look up Andre Michelle's open source 'Tonfall' project on Google code.

Look up Kevin Goldsmith's blog and labs - he's got great example on utilizing Pixel Bender with all this madness.

hope this helps!

PS - taking a cue from Andre, the optimal length of the audio buffer should be 3072. Give it a try on your machine!

Answer 2

If I understand your question properly, you need read the floating point data for each sample, sum them, and write the resulting value into your new audio stream. This would give a stright 50/50 mix.

I don't have access to a machine with a compiler right now, but it should be something like this (assuming bytes1 and bytes2 are two ByteArray objects of equal length):

for (int bcnt = bytes1.size(); bcnt; bcnt--)
    bytes1.setByte(bcnt - 1, bytes2.getByte(bcnt - 1) + bytes1.getByte(bcnt - 1));

Of course, you would probably want to do some sort of overflow check, but that should be enough to put you on the right track.

Answer 3

if you have uncompressed audio, you can just add up the values of individual array elements in your ByteArray's. But you also have to handle capping for max/min values (no overflows). Pretty sure there is nothing equivalent for mixing MP3s - so you might have to decode, mix, and encode to MP3 again.