So,
I've been wondering how fast a an offline STT -> ML Prompt -> TTS roundtrip would be.
Interestingly, for many tests, the SpeechTranscriber (STT) takes the bulk of the time, compared to generating a FoundationModel response and creating the Audio using TTS.
E.g.
InteractionStatistics:
- listeningStarted: 21:24:23 4480 2423
- timeTillFirstAboveNoiseFloor: 01.794
- timeTillLastNoiseAboveFloor: 02.383
- timeTillFirstSpeechDetected: 02.399
- timeTillTranscriptFinalized: 04.510
- timeTillFirstMLModelResponse: 04.938
- timeTillMLModelResponse: 05.379
- timeTillTTSStarted: 04.962
- timeTillTTSFinished: 11.016
- speechLength: 06.054
- timeToResponse: 02.578
- transcript: This is a test.
- mlModelResponse: Sure! I'm ready to help with your test. What do you need help with?
Here, between my audio input ending and the Text-2-Speech starting top play (using AVSpeechUtterance) the total response time was 2.5s.
Of that time, it took the SpeechAnalyzer 2.1s to get the transcript finalized, FoundationModel only took 0.4s to respond (and TTS started playing nearly instantly).
I'm already using reportingOptions: [.volatileResults, .fastResults] so it's probably as fast as possible right now?
I'm just surprised the STT takes so much longer compared to the other parts (all being CoreML based, aren't they?)
Audio
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We have the necessary background recording entitlements, and for many users... do not run into any issues.
However, there is a subset of users that routinely get recordings ending.. we have narrowed this down and believe it to be the work of the watch dog.
First we removed the entire view hierarchy when app is backgrounded. There is just 'Text("Recording")'
This got the CPU usage in profiler down to 0%. We saw massive improvements to recording success rate.
We walked away assuming that was enough. However we are still seeing the same sort of crashes. All in the background. We're using Observation to drive audio state changes to a Live Activity.
Are those Observations causing the problem? Why doesn't apple provide a better API to background audio? The internet is full of weird issues
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76010213/why-is-my-react-native-app-sometimes-terminated-in-the-background-while-tracking
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71656047/why-is-my-react-native-app-terminating-in-the-background-while-recording-ios-r
https://github.com/expo/expo/issues/16807
This is such a terrible user experience. And we have very little visibility into what is happening and why.
No where in apple documentation states that in order for background recording to work, the app can only be 'Text("Recording")'
It does not outline a CPU or memory threshold. It just kills us.
I'm experiencing audio issues while developing for visionOS when playing PCM data through AVAudioPlayerNode.
Issue Description:
Occasionally, the speaker produces loud popping sounds or distorted noise
This occurs during PCM audio playback using AVAudioPlayerNode
The issue is intermittent and doesn't happen every time
Technical Details:
Platform: visionOS
Device: vision pro / simulator
Audio Framework: AVFoundation
Audio Node: AVAudioPlayerNode
Audio Format: PCM
I would appreciate any insights on:
Common causes of audio distortion with AVAudioPlayerNode
Recommended best practices for handling PCM playback in visionOS
Potential configuration issues that might cause this behavior
Has anyone encountered similar issues or found solutions? Any guidance would be greatly helpful.
Thank you in advance!
I have an app under development - demo here - https://youtu.be/VbAfUk_eYl0?si=s6EDBx-4G6P_QbZO - which is sort of an audio player for airdropped files - something useful to musicians who dump work in progress to their phone, make notes, revise and update.
I've been testing my handling of audio session interruption notifications, but seems to be a lot of inconsistency in how, when and why iOS delivers them, and I'm wondering if there is some rhyme or reason to it that I'm just not detecting.
For example, I am playing a song in my app. Switch to Apple Music and start playing a song there. My app gets an interruption began notification - this is consistent.
Switch back to my app, and about half the time, I will get an interruption ended notification (coupled often with a blast of the tail of whatever audio buffer was partially played when the interruption started, even though the engine was stopped - and followed by call to my AVAudioPlayerNodeCompletionCallback - is there some way to avoid this?). Half the time I don't get an interruption ended notification; my app can (as expected) end the interruption by activating the AVAudioSession and playing something.
I have not been able to determine any pattern to this behavior, other than that if my app started playing using AVAudioPlayerNode.scheduleSegment rather than scheduleFile I think the notification will be consistently delivered on app activation rather than when I activate the session programmatically.
I would like my app to behave deterministically, and would appreciate any help in deciphering what causes the inconsistent behavior in notifications from iOS.
Is there a recommended way on macOS 26 Tahoe to take a CoreAudio AudioObjectID and use it to lookup the underlying USB LocationID?
I previously used AudioObjectID to query the corresponding DeviceUID with kAudioDevicePropertyDeviceUID. Then I queried for the IOService matching kIOAudioEngineClassName with property kIOAudioEngineGlobalUniqueIDKey matching DeviceUID, and I loaded kUSBDevicePropertyLocationID from the result.
This fails on macOS 26, because the IO Registry for the device has an entry for usbaudiod rather than AppleUSBAudioEngine, and usbaudiod does not include a kIOAudioEngineGlobalUniqueIDKey property (or any other property to map it to a CoreAudio DeviceUID).
My use-case here is a piece of audio recording software that allows configuring a set of supported audio devices via USB HID prior to recording. I present the user with a list of CoreAudio devices to use, but without a way to lookup the underlying USB LocationID, I cannot guarantee that the configured device matches the selected device (e.g. if the user plugged in two identical microphones).
On macOS Sequoia, I'm having the hardest time getting this basic audio output to work correctly. I'm compiling in XCode using C99, and when I run this, I get audio for a split second, and then nothing, indefinitely.
Any ideas what could be going wrong?
Here's a minimum code example to demonstrate:
#include <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#define RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT 2
#define RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER 128
// mono linear PCM audio data at 48kHz
#define RENDER_SAMPLE_RATE 48000
#define RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT 1
#define RENDER_BUFFER_BYTE_COUNT (RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER * RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT * sizeof(f32))
void RenderAudioSaw(float* outBuffer, uint32_t frameCount, uint32_t channelCount)
{
static bool isInverted = false;
float scalar = isInverted ? -1.f : 1.f;
for (uint32_t frame = 0; frame < frameCount; ++frame)
{
for (uint32_t channel = 0; channel < channelCount; ++channel)
{
// series of ramps, alternating up and down.
outBuffer[frame * channelCount + channel] = 0.1f * scalar * ((float)frame / frameCount);
}
}
isInverted = !isInverted;
}
AudioStreamBasicDescription coreAudioDesc = { 0 };
AudioQueueRef coreAudioQueue = NULL;
AudioQueueBufferRef coreAudioBuffers[RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT] = { NULL };
void coreAudioCallback(void* unused, AudioQueueRef queue, AudioQueueBufferRef buffer)
{
// 0's here indicate no fancy packet magic
AudioQueueEnqueueBuffer(queue, buffer, 0, 0);
}
int main(void)
{
const UInt32 BytesPerSample = sizeof(float);
coreAudioDesc.mSampleRate = RENDER_SAMPLE_RATE;
coreAudioDesc.mFormatID = kAudioFormatLinearPCM;
coreAudioDesc.mFormatFlags = kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsFloat | kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsPacked;
coreAudioDesc.mBytesPerPacket = RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT * BytesPerSample;
coreAudioDesc.mFramesPerPacket = 1;
coreAudioDesc.mBytesPerFrame = RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT * BytesPerSample;
coreAudioDesc.mChannelsPerFrame = RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT;
coreAudioDesc.mBitsPerChannel = BytesPerSample * 8;
coreAudioQueue = NULL;
OSStatus result;
// most of the 0 and NULL params here are for compressed sound formats etc.
result = AudioQueueNewOutput(&coreAudioDesc, &coreAudioCallback, NULL, 0, 0, 0, &coreAudioQueue);
if (result != noErr)
{
assert(false == "AudioQueueNewOutput failed!");
abort();
}
for (int i = 0; i < RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT; ++i)
{
uint32_t bufferSize = coreAudioDesc.mBytesPerFrame * RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER;
result = AudioQueueAllocateBuffer(coreAudioQueue, bufferSize, &(coreAudioBuffers[i]));
if (result != noErr)
{
assert(false == "AudioQueueAllocateBuffer failed!");
abort();
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < RENDER_BUFFER_COUNT; ++i)
{
RenderAudioSaw(coreAudioBuffers[i]->mAudioData, RENDER_FRAMES_PER_BUFFER, RENDER_CHANNEL_COUNT);
coreAudioBuffers[i]->mAudioDataByteSize = coreAudioBuffers[i]->mAudioDataBytesCapacity;
AudioQueueEnqueueBuffer(coreAudioQueue, coreAudioBuffers[i], 0, 0);
}
AudioQueueStart(coreAudioQueue, NULL);
sleep(10); // some time to hear the audio
AudioQueueStop(coreAudioQueue, true);
AudioQueueDispose(coreAudioQueue, true);
return 0;
}
Hi,
our CourAudio server plugin utilizes the SystemConfiguration.framework to store and restore specific shared system wide settings.
While our application can authenticate to utilize the SystemConfiguration.framework to gain write access to the shared configuration settings the CoreAudio server plugin obviously can't have any user interaction and therefor does not authenticate.
Is it possible to authenticate the CoreAudio server plugin to gain write permissions? Are there any entitlements or other means that would allow this?
Thanks!
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Audio
Tags:
System Configuration
Core Audio
Inter-process communication
Service Management
Hello All,
It seems that it's "very easy" (😬) to implement a little Swift code inside the prepared AU using Xcode 16.2 on Sequoia 15.1.1 and a Mac Studio M1 Ultra, but my issue is that I finally don't know... where.
The documentation says that I've to find the AudioUnitViewController.swift file and then modify the render block :
audioUnit.renderBlock = { (numFrames, ioData) in
// Process audio here
}
in the Xcode project automatically generated, but I didn't find such a file...
If somebody can help me in showing where is the file to be modified, I'll be very grateful !
Thank you very much.
J
Hi I'm new to the forum,
I'm planning an app just for Apple watch, I would like to use bluetooth audio in background, how can I do it?
The messages I send via bluetooth stop as soon as the watch display turns off.
Thank you!
Nax
Hi everyone,
I’m working on an iOS MusicKit app that overlays a metronome on top of Apple Music playback. To line the clicks up perfectly I’d like access to low-level audio analysis data—ideally a waveform / spectrogram or beat grid—while the track is playing.
I’ve noticed that several approved DJ apps (e.g. djay, Serato, rekordbox) can already: • Display detailed scrolling waveforms of Apple Music songs • Scratch, loop or time-stretch those tracks in real time
That implies they receive decoded PCM frames or at least high-resolution analysis data from Apple Music under a special entitlement.
My questions: 1. Does MusicKit (or any public framework) expose real-time audio buffers, FFT bins, or beat markers for streaming Apple Music content? 2. If not, is there an Apple program or entitlement that developers can apply for—similar to the “DJ with Apple Music” initiative—to gain that deeper access? 3. Where can I find official documentation or a point of contact for this kind of request?
I’ve searched the docs and forums but only see standard MusicKit playback APIs, which don’t appear to expose raw audio for DRM-protected songs. Any guidance, links or insider tips on the proper application process would be hugely appreciated!
Thanks in advance.
FaceTime’s screen-share audio balance is insanely absurd right now. Whenever I share media, the system audio that gets sent through FaceTime is a tiny whisper even at full volume (or even when connected to my speaker or headphones). The moment anyone on the call makes any noise at all, the shared audio ducks so hard it disappears, while the voice (or rustling or air conditioning noise) spikes to painful levels. It’s impossible to watch or listen to anything together. Also, the feature where FaceTime would shrink to a square during screen-sharing has been completely removed. That was a good feature and I'm really confused why it's gone. Now, the FaceTime window stays as a long rectangle that covers part of the content I'm trying to share (unless I do full screen tile, but then I can't pull up any other windows during the call) and can't be made smaller than about a third of the screen. You can't resize the window or adjust its dimensions, so it ends up blocking the actual media you're trying to watch.
Here are some feature requests/fixes that would greatly improve the FaceTime screen-share experience:
Option to adjust the shared media volume independently of call audio.
Disable/toggle the extreme automatic audio docking while screen-sharing
Reintroduce the minimized “floating square” mode or allow full manual resizing and repositioning of the FaceTime window during screen-share sessions.
Overall, this setup makes FaceTime screen-sharing basically unusable. The audio balance is so inconsistent that it’s easier to switch to Zoom or Google Meet, which both handle shared sound correctly and let you move the call window out of the way. Until these issues are fixed, there’s no practical reason to use FaceTime for shared viewing at all.
How does a third party developer go about supporting the new Enhanced Dialogue option for video apps in tvOS 18?
If an app is using the standard AVPlayerViewController, I had assumed it would be a simple-ish matter of building against the tvOS 18 SDK but apparently not, the options don't appear, not even greyed out.
Hello all! I've been having this issue for a while, on my iPhone 12 Pro.
The volume when listening to music, watching YouTube, TikTok, etc. It will randomly lower, but the actual audio slider won't it will still be at max volume but get very quiet. I've followed other instructions such as turn off audio awareness, and other settings but nothing seems to be working. And phone calls too Has anyone else had this issue and managed to fix it?
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Audio
I am trying to stream audio from local filesystem.
For that, I am trying to use an AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate for an AVURLAsset. However, Content-Length is not known at the start. To overcome this, I tried several methods:
Set content length as nil, in the AVAssetResourceLoadingContentInformationRequest
Set content length to -1, in the ContentInformationRequest
Both of these cause the AVPlayerItem to fail with an error.
I also tried setting Content-Length as INT_MAX, and setting a renewalDate = Date(timeIntervalSinceNow: 5). However, that seems to be buggy. Even after updating the Content-Length to the correct value (e.g. X bytes) and finishing that loading request, the resource loader keeps getting requests with requestedOffset = X with dataRequest.requestsAllDataToEndOfResource = true. These requests keep coming indefinitely, and as a result it seems that the next item in the queue does not get played. Also, .AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTime notification does not get called.
I wanted to check if this is an expected behavior or is there a bug in this implementation. Also, what is the recommended way to stream audio of unknown initial length from local file system?
Thanks!
Hi everyone,
I wanted to bring up a question about Core Audio and its potential for future updates or improvements, specifically regarding latency optimization. As someone who relies on Core Audio for real-time audio processing, any enhancements in this area would be incredibly beneficial for professionals in the industry.
Does anyone know if Apple has shared any plans or updates regarding Core Audio’s performance, particularly for low-latency applications? I’d appreciate any insights or advice from the community!
Thanks so much!
Best,
Michael
Hi everyone,
I’m working on an iOS MusicKit app that overlays a metronome on top of Apple Music playback, using ApplicationMusicPlayer. To line the clicks up perfectly I’d like access to low-level audio analysis data—ideally a waveform / spectrogram or beat grid—while the track is playing.
I’ve noticed that several approved DJ apps (e.g. djay, Serato, rekordbox) can already:
• Display detailed scrolling waveforms of Apple Music songs
• Scratch, loop or time-stretch those tracks in real time
That implies they receive decoded PCM frames or at least high-resolution analysis data from Apple Music under a special entitlement.
My questions:
Does MusicKit (or any public framework) expose real-time audio buffers, FFT bins, or beat markers for streaming Apple Music content?
If not, is there an Apple program or entitlement that developers can apply for—similar to the “DJ with Apple Music” initiative—to gain that deeper access?
Where can I find official documentation or a point of contact for this kind of request?
I’ve searched the docs and forums but only see standard MusicKit playback APIs, which don’t appear to expose raw audio for DRM-protected songs. Any guidance, links or insider tips on the proper application process would be hugely appreciated!
Thanks in advance.
Everytime I put my AirPods in and connect them to my phone or my Mac or my iPad since the iOS 18.3 update on my devices they’ve been disconnecting without reason, pausing songs I’m in the middle of playing, and only partially reconnecting in one pod and it’s getting really frustrating
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Audio
Hello,
Has anyone else experienced variations in the accuracy of the playbackTime value? After a few seconds of playback, the reported time adjusts by a fraction of a second, making it difficult to calculate the actual playbackTime of the audio.
This can be recreated by playing a song in MusicKit, recording the start time of the audio, playing for at least 10-20 seconds, and then comparing the playbackTime value to one calculated using the start time of the audio. In my experience this jump occurs after about 10 seconds of playback.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
private var audioEngine = AVAudioEngine()
private var inputNode: AVAudioInputNode!
func startAnalyzing() {
inputNode = audioEngine.inputNode
let recordingFormat = inputNode.outputFormat(forBus: 0)
let hardwareSampleRate = recordingSession.sampleRate
inputNode.removeTap(onBus: 0)
if recordingFormat.sampleRate != hardwareSampleRate {
print("。")
let newFormat = AVAudioFormat(commonFormat: recordingFormat.commonFormat,
sampleRate: hardwareSampleRate,
channels: recordingFormat.channelCount,
interleaved: recordingFormat.isInterleaved)
inputNode.installTap(onBus: 0, bufferSize: 1024, format: newFormat) { buffer, time in
self.processAudioBuffer(buffer, time: time)
}
} else {
inputNode.installTap(onBus: 0, bufferSize: 1024, format: recordingFormat) { buffer, time in
self.processAudioBuffer(buffer, time: time)
}
}
do {
audioEngine.prepare()
try audioEngine.start()
} catch {
print(": \(error)")
}
}
I back the app to the background and then call startAnalyzing(), which reports an error and the background recording permissions are configured。
error:
[10429:570139] [aurioc] AURemoteIO.cpp:1668 AUIOClient_StartIO failed (561145187)
[10429:570139] [avae] AVAEInternal.h:109 [AVAudioEngineGraph.mm:1545:Start: (err = PerformCommand(*ioNode, kAUStartIO, NULL, 0)): error 561145187
Audio engine couldn't start.
Is background boot not allowed?
It's only occurs on iOS 18+. Backtrace attached below.
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Termination Reason: SIGNAL 6 Abort trap: 6
Terminating Process: NoteKeys [24384]
Triggered by Thread: 0
Last Exception Backtrace:
0 CoreFoundation 0x1a2d4c7cc __exceptionPreprocess + 164 (NSException.m:249)
1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x1a001f2e4 objc_exception_throw + 88 (objc-exception.mm:356)
2 CoreFoundation 0x1a2e47748 +[NSException raise:format:] + 128 (NSException.m:0)
3 AVFAudio 0x1bd41f4c8 -[AVMIDIPlayer play:] + 300 (AVMIDIPlayer.mm:145)
4 NoteKeys 0x1023c0670 SoundGenerator.playData() + 20 (SoundGenerator.swift:170)
5 NoteKeys 0x1023c0670 EditViewController.playBtnTapped(startIndex:) + 940 (EditViewController.swift:2034)
6 NoteKeys 0x1024497fc specialized Keyboard.playBtnTapped(sender:) + 1904 (Keyboard.swift:1249)
7 NoteKeys 0x10244631c Keyboard.playBtnTapped(sender:) + 4 (<compiler-generated>:0)
8 NoteKeys 0x10244631c @objc Keyboard.playBtnTapped(sender:) + 48
9 UIKitCore 0x1a58739cc -[UIApplication sendAction:to:from:forEvent:] + 100 (UIApplication.m:5816)
10 UIKitCore 0x1a58738a4 -[UIControl sendAction:to:forEvent:] + 112 (UIControl.m:942)
11 UIKitCore 0x1a58736f4 -[UIControl _sendActionsForEvents:withEvent:] + 324 (UIControl.m:1013)
12 UIKitCore 0x1a5fe8d8c -[UIButton _sendActionsForEvents:withEvent:] + 124 (UIButton.m:4198)
13 UIKitCore 0x1a5fea5a0 -[UIControl touchesEnded:withEvent:] + 400 (UIControl.m:692)
14 UIKitCore 0x1a57bb9ac -[UIWindow _sendTouchesForEvent:] + 852 (UIWindow.m:3318)
15 UIKitCore 0x1a57bb3d8 -[UIWindow sendEvent:] + 2964 (UIWindow.m:3641)
16 UIKitCore 0x1a564fb70 -[UIApplication sendEvent:] + 376 (UIApplication.m:12972)
17 UIKitCore 0x1a565009c __dispatchPreprocessedEventFromEventQueue + 1048 (UIEventDispatcher.m:2686)
18 UIKitCore 0x1a5659f3c __processEventQueue + 5696 (UIEventDispatcher.m:3044)
19 UIKitCore 0x1a5552c60 updateCycleEntry + 160 (UIEventDispatcher.m:133)
20 UIKitCore 0x1a55509d8 _UIUpdateSequenceRun + 84 (_UIUpdateSequence.mm:136)
21 UIKitCore 0x1a5550628 schedulerStepScheduledMainSection + 172 (_UIUpdateScheduler.m:1171)
22 UIKitCore 0x1a555159c runloopSourceCallback + 92 (_UIUpdateScheduler.m:1334)
23 CoreFoundation 0x1a2d20328 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE0_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ + 28 (CFRunLoop.c:1970)
24 CoreFoundation 0x1a2d202bc __CFRunLoopDoSource0 + 176 (CFRunLoop.c:2014)
25 CoreFoundation 0x1a2d1ddc0 __CFRunLoopDoSources0 + 244 (CFRunLoop.c:2051)
26 CoreFoundation 0x1a2d1cfbc __CFRunLoopRun + 840 (CFRunLoop.c:2969)
27 CoreFoundation 0x1a2d1c830 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 588 (CFRunLoop.c:3434)
28 GraphicsServices 0x1eecfc1c4 GSEventRunModal + 164 (GSEvent.c:2196)
29 UIKitCore 0x1a5882eb0 -[UIApplication _run] + 816 (UIApplication.m:3844)
30 UIKitCore 0x1a59315b4 UIApplicationMain + 340 (UIApplication.m:5496)
31 NoteKeys 0x10254bc10 main + 68 (AppDelegate.swift:15)
32 dyld 0x1c870aec8 start + 2724 (dyldMain.cpp:1334)
Thanks very much for any help: )
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Audio