Java – Writing PCM recorded data into a .wav file (java android)

androidaudiorecordjavapcmwav

I'm using AudioRecord to record 16 bit PCM data in android. After recording the data and saving it to a file, I read it back to save it as .wav file.

The problem is that the WAV files are recognized by media players but play nothing but pure noise. My best guess at the moment is that my wav file headers are incorrect but I have been unable to see what exactly the problem is. (I think this because I can play the raw PCM data that I recorded in Audacity)

Here's my code for reading the raw PCM file and saving it as a .wav:

private void properWAV(File fileToConvert, float newRecordingID){
    try {
        long mySubChunk1Size = 16;
        int myBitsPerSample= 16;
        int myFormat = 1;
        long myChannels = 1;
        long mySampleRate = 22100;
        long myByteRate = mySampleRate * myChannels * myBitsPerSample/8;
        int myBlockAlign = (int) (myChannels * myBitsPerSample/8);

        byte[] clipData = getBytesFromFile(fileToConvert);

        long myDataSize = clipData.length;
        long myChunk2Size =  myDataSize * myChannels * myBitsPerSample/8;
        long myChunkSize = 36 + myChunk2Size;

        OutputStream os;        
        os = new FileOutputStream(new File("/sdcard/onefile/assessor/OneFile_Audio_"+ newRecordingID+".wav"));
        BufferedOutputStream bos = new BufferedOutputStream(os);
        DataOutputStream outFile = new DataOutputStream(bos);

        outFile.writeBytes("RIFF");                                 // 00 - RIFF
        outFile.write(intToByteArray((int)myChunkSize), 0, 4);      // 04 - how big is the rest of this file?
        outFile.writeBytes("WAVE");                                 // 08 - WAVE
        outFile.writeBytes("fmt ");                                 // 12 - fmt 
        outFile.write(intToByteArray((int)mySubChunk1Size), 0, 4);  // 16 - size of this chunk
        outFile.write(shortToByteArray((short)myFormat), 0, 2);     // 20 - what is the audio format? 1 for PCM = Pulse Code Modulation
        outFile.write(shortToByteArray((short)myChannels), 0, 2);   // 22 - mono or stereo? 1 or 2?  (or 5 or ???)
        outFile.write(intToByteArray((int)mySampleRate), 0, 4);     // 24 - samples per second (numbers per second)
        outFile.write(intToByteArray((int)myByteRate), 0, 4);       // 28 - bytes per second
        outFile.write(shortToByteArray((short)myBlockAlign), 0, 2); // 32 - # of bytes in one sample, for all channels
        outFile.write(shortToByteArray((short)myBitsPerSample), 0, 2);  // 34 - how many bits in a sample(number)?  usually 16 or 24
        outFile.writeBytes("data");                                 // 36 - data
        outFile.write(intToByteArray((int)myDataSize), 0, 4);       // 40 - how big is this data chunk
        outFile.write(clipData);                                    // 44 - the actual data itself - just a long string of numbers

        outFile.flush();
        outFile.close();

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

}


private static byte[] intToByteArray(int i)
    {
        byte[] b = new byte[4];
        b[0] = (byte) (i & 0x00FF);
        b[1] = (byte) ((i >> 8) & 0x000000FF);
        b[2] = (byte) ((i >> 16) & 0x000000FF);
        b[3] = (byte) ((i >> 24) & 0x000000FF);
        return b;
    }

    // convert a short to a byte array
    public static byte[] shortToByteArray(short data)
    {
        /*
         * NB have also tried:
         * return new byte[]{(byte)(data & 0xff),(byte)((data >> 8) & 0xff)};
         * 
         */

        return new byte[]{(byte)(data & 0xff),(byte)((data >>> 8) & 0xff)};
    }

I haven't included getBytesFromFile() since it takes up too much space and its a tried and tested method.
Anyway, here's the code that does the actual recording:

public void run() { 
    Log.i("ONEFILE", "Starting main audio capture loop...");

    int frequency = 22100;
    int channelConfiguration = AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO;
    int audioEncoding = AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT; 

    final int bufferSize = AudioRecord.getMinBufferSize(frequency, channelConfiguration, audioEncoding); 

    AudioRecord audioRecord = new AudioRecord(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC, frequency, channelConfiguration, audioEncoding, bufferSize);

    audioRecord.startRecording();
    ByteArrayOutputStream recData = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); 
    DataOutputStream dos = new DataOutputStream(recData);

    short[] buffer = new short[bufferSize];  
    audioRecord.startRecording();

    while (!stopped) {  
        int bufferReadResult = audioRecord.read(buffer, 0, bufferSize);

        for(int i = 0; i < bufferReadResult;i++) {
            try {
                dos.writeShort(buffer[i]);
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }  
    audioRecord.stop();
    try {
        dos.flush();
        dos.close();
    } catch (IOException e1) {
        e1.printStackTrace();
    }

    audioRecord.stop();

    byte[] clipData = recData.toByteArray();

    File file = new File(audioOutputPath);
    if(file.exists())
        file.delete();
    file = new File(audioOutputPath);
    OutputStream os;
    try {
        os = new FileOutputStream(file);

        BufferedOutputStream bos = new BufferedOutputStream(os);
        DataOutputStream outFile = new DataOutputStream(bos);

        outFile.write(clipData);  

        outFile.flush();
        outFile.close();

    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

Please suggest what could be going wrong.

Best Answer

I've been wrestling with this exact same question for hours now, and my issue was mostly that when recording in 16 bits you have to be very careful about what you write to the output. The WAV file expects the data in Little Endian format, but using writeShort writes it to the output as Big Endian. I also got interesting results when using the other functions so I returned to writing bytes in the correct order and that works.

I used a Hex editor extensively while debugging this. I can recommend you do the same. Also, the header in the answer above works, I used it to check versus my own code and this header is rather foolproof.

Related Solutions

Java – How to read / convert an InputStream into a String in Java

Summarize other answers I found 11 main ways to do this (see below). And I wrote some performance tests (see results below):

Ways to convert an InputStream to a String:

Using IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils)

 String result = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

Using CharStreams (Guava)

 String result = CharStreams.toString(new InputStreamReader(
       inputStream, Charsets.UTF_8));

Using Scanner (JDK)

 Scanner s = new Scanner(inputStream).useDelimiter("\\A");
 String result = s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";

Using Stream API (Java 8). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like \r\n) to \n.

 String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
   .lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));

Using parallel Stream API (Java 8). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like \r\n) to \n.

 String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
    .lines().parallel().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));

Using InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK)

 int bufferSize = 1024;
 char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
 StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
 Reader in = new InputStreamReader(stream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
 for (int numRead; (numRead = in.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length)) > 0; ) {
     out.append(buffer, 0, numRead);
 }
 return out.toString();

Using StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache Commons)

 StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
 IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, "UTF-8");
 return writer.toString();

Using ByteArrayOutputStream and inputStream.read (JDK)

 ByteArrayOutputStream result = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
 byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
 for (int length; (length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1; ) {
     result.write(buffer, 0, length);
 }
 // StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name() > JDK 7
 return result.toString("UTF-8");

Using BufferedReader (JDK). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like \n\r) to line.separator system property (for example, in Windows to "\r\n").

 String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator");
 BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
         new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
 StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
 for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null; ) {
     if (result.length() > 0) {
         result.append(newLine);
     }
     result.append(line);
 }
 return result.toString();

Using BufferedInputStream and ByteArrayOutputStream (JDK)

BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
ByteArrayOutputStream buf = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
for (int result = bis.read(); result != -1; result = bis.read()) {
    buf.write((byte) result);
}
// StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name() > JDK 7
return buf.toString("UTF-8");

Using inputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK). Warning: This solution has problems with Unicode, for example with Russian text (works correctly only with non-Unicode text)
```
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int ch; (ch = inputStream.read()) != -1; ) {
    sb.append((char) ch);
}
return sb.toString();
```

Warning:

Solutions 4, 5 and 9 convert different line breaks to one.
Solution 11 can't work correctly with Unicode text

Performance tests

Performance tests for small String (length = 175), url in github (mode = Average Time, system = Linux, score 1,343 is the best):

              Benchmark                         Mode  Cnt   Score   Error  Units
 8. ByteArrayOutputStream and read (JDK)        avgt   10   1,343 ± 0,028  us/op
 6. InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK)   avgt   10   6,980 ± 0,404  us/op
10. BufferedInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream  avgt   10   7,437 ± 0,735  us/op
11. InputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK)  avgt   10   8,977 ± 0,328  us/op
 7. StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache)      avgt   10  10,613 ± 0,599  us/op
 1. IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils)             avgt   10  10,605 ± 0,527  us/op
 3. Scanner (JDK)                               avgt   10  12,083 ± 0,293  us/op
 2. CharStreams (guava)                         avgt   10  12,999 ± 0,514  us/op
 4. Stream Api (Java 8)                         avgt   10  15,811 ± 0,605  us/op
 9. BufferedReader (JDK)                        avgt   10  16,038 ± 0,711  us/op
 5. parallel Stream Api (Java 8)                avgt   10  21,544 ± 0,583  us/op

Performance tests for big String (length = 50100), url in github (mode = Average Time, system = Linux, score 200,715 is the best):

               Benchmark                        Mode  Cnt   Score        Error  Units
 8. ByteArrayOutputStream and read (JDK)        avgt   10   200,715 ±   18,103  us/op
 1. IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils)             avgt   10   300,019 ±    8,751  us/op
 6. InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK)   avgt   10   347,616 ±  130,348  us/op
 7. StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache)      avgt   10   352,791 ±  105,337  us/op
 2. CharStreams (guava)                         avgt   10   420,137 ±   59,877  us/op
 9. BufferedReader (JDK)                        avgt   10   632,028 ±   17,002  us/op
 5. parallel Stream Api (Java 8)                avgt   10   662,999 ±   46,199  us/op
 4. Stream Api (Java 8)                         avgt   10   701,269 ±   82,296  us/op
10. BufferedInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream  avgt   10   740,837 ±    5,613  us/op
 3. Scanner (JDK)                               avgt   10   751,417 ±   62,026  us/op
11. InputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK)  avgt   10  2919,350 ± 1101,942  us/op

Graphs (performance tests depending on Input Stream length in Windows 7 system)

Performance test (Average Time) depending on Input Stream length in Windows 7 system:

 length  182    546     1092    3276    9828    29484   58968

 test8  0.38    0.938   1.868   4.448   13.412  36.459  72.708
 test4  2.362   3.609   5.573   12.769  40.74   81.415  159.864
 test5  3.881   5.075   6.904   14.123  50.258  129.937 166.162
 test9  2.237   3.493   5.422   11.977  45.98   89.336  177.39
 test6  1.261   2.12    4.38    10.698  31.821  86.106  186.636
 test7  1.601   2.391   3.646   8.367   38.196  110.221 211.016
 test1  1.529   2.381   3.527   8.411   40.551  105.16  212.573
 test3  3.035   3.934   8.606   20.858  61.571  118.744 235.428
 test2  3.136   6.238   10.508  33.48   43.532  118.044 239.481
 test10 1.593   4.736   7.527   20.557  59.856  162.907 323.147
 test11 3.913   11.506  23.26   68.644  207.591 600.444 1211.545

Java – How to create a Java string from the contents of a file

Read all text from a file

Java 11 added the readString() method to read small files as a String, preserving line terminators:

String content = Files.readString(path, StandardCharsets.US_ASCII);

For versions between Java 7 and 11, here's a compact, robust idiom, wrapped up in a utility method:

static String readFile(String path, Charset encoding)
  throws IOException
{
  byte[] encoded = Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(path));
  return new String(encoded, encoding);
}

Read lines of text from a file

Java 7 added a convenience method to read a file as lines of text, represented as a List<String>. This approach is "lossy" because the line separators are stripped from the end of each line.

List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(Paths.get(path), encoding);

Java 8 added the Files.lines() method to produce a Stream<String>. Again, this method is lossy because line separators are stripped. If an IOException is encountered while reading the file, it is wrapped in an UncheckedIOException, since Stream doesn't accept lambdas that throw checked exceptions.

try (Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(path, encoding)) {
  lines.forEach(System.out::println);
}

This Stream does need a close() call; this is poorly documented on the API, and I suspect many people don't even notice Stream has a close() method. Be sure to use an ARM-block as shown.

If you are working with a source other than a file, you can use the lines() method in BufferedReader instead.

Memory utilization

The first method, that preserves line breaks, can temporarily require memory several times the size of the file, because for a short time the raw file contents (a byte array), and the decoded characters (each of which is 16 bits even if encoded as 8 bits in the file) reside in memory at once. It is safest to apply to files that you know to be small relative to the available memory.

The second method, reading lines, is usually more memory efficient, because the input byte buffer for decoding doesn't need to contain the entire file. However, it's still not suitable for files that are very large relative to available memory.

For reading large files, you need a different design for your program, one that reads a chunk of text from a stream, processes it, and then moves on to the next, reusing the same fixed-sized memory block. Here, "large" depends on the computer specs. Nowadays, this threshold might be many gigabytes of RAM. The third method, using a Stream<String> is one way to do this, if your input "records" happen to be individual lines. (Using the readLine() method of BufferedReader is the procedural equivalent to this approach.)

Character encoding

One thing that is missing from the sample in the original post is the character encoding. There are some special cases where the platform default is what you want, but they are rare, and you should be able justify your choice.

The StandardCharsets class defines some constants for the encodings required of all Java runtimes:

String content = readFile("test.txt", StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

The platform default is available from the Charset class itself:

String content = readFile("test.txt", Charset.defaultCharset());

Note: This answer largely replaces my Java 6 version. The utility of Java 7 safely simplifies the code, and the old answer, which used a mapped byte buffer, prevented the file that was read from being deleted until the mapped buffer was garbage collected. You can view the old version via the "edited" link on this answer.