Simple to use sound in Java games

General Discussions
#1

I’m just an amateur games writer but I’d like to know an easy to use way of playing sound in games. I’m looking for something that’s:

  • easy of use (most important)
  • good performance (important)
  • the ability to play mp3’s (preferably)
  • volume control (preferably)
  • left right control (a nice to have).

When running my current game on a low performance laptop (haswell 2955U, 2GB, no GPU) I find the game itself play fine but the sound is all over the place and eventually seems to turn off. I’m not sure whether this is a caching thing (currently use wav’s sized between 20k and 100k) or whether it’s just too much processing to play the sound as well as the game.

I run the game as a jar and my existing sound code is a bit like this:

SoundEffect.SHOOT.play();

enum SoundEffect {
		ALIEN_HIT("alien_hit"),
                ....
		SHOOT("machine_gun");

	// Each sound effect has its own clip, loaded with its own sound file.
	private Clip clip;
	private String name;
	private long timeLastSound = System.currentTimeMillis();

	// Constructor to construct each element of the enum with its own sound file.
	SoundEffect(String file) {
		try {   
			// play sound
			name = file;
			AudioInputStream inputStream = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(this.getClass().getResource(file+".wav"));
			AudioFormat format = inputStream.getFormat();
			DataLine.Info info = new DataLine.Info(Clip.class, format);
			clip = (Clip)AudioSystem.getLine(info);
			clip.open(inputStream);

		} catch (UnsupportedAudioFileException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (LineUnavailableException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
	}

	public void stop() {
		if (clip.isRunning()) { clip.stop(); }
	}

	// Play or Re-play the sound effect from the beginning, by rewinding.
	public void play() {
		timeLastSound = System.currentTimeMillis();

		// Stop the player if it is still running
		if (clip.isRunning()) { clip.stop(); }

		// play
		clip.setFramePosition(0); // rewind to the beginning
		clip.start();     // Start playing
	}

	static void init() {
		values();
	}
}

Suggestions for a simple to use method of making sounds or how to speed up what I have? would switching to mp3’s help or would I just be trading file size for processing required?

Many thanks

Mike