Sorry, but where exactly do I start with the example provided?

[patrikpatrik]

Sorry for being such a dumbo but I can't figure out how to pause just in case and then resume again?

[mackron]

I'm assuming you're talking about the simple_playback example or the one in the readme (they're the same). That example is only really intended to be used as a starting point. To answer your question though, use ma_device_stop() and ma_device_start() to stop and resume the device.

The programming manual has pretty much everything you need to get started. You can find it at the top of miniaudio.h or online here: https://miniaud.io/docs/manual/index.html.

[patrikpatrik]

Thank you for the quick reply. I'm reading the manual and I'm assuming to figure out if a sound is still playing is to check the frames yes? So in the example:

ma_uint64 framesRead = ma_decoder_read_pcm_frames(pDecoder, pFrames, framesToRead);
if (framesRead < framesToRead) {
    // Reached the end.
}

Im having trouble on how to get the total frames of the sound file to pass as a reference to framesToRead do I have that correct or am I way off? And would pFrames for the 2nd parameter be 0 to start the count?

Sorry for asking so many questions, I just want to play like a 3 second sound wav/mp3, and then press P to pause and then P again to resume and maybe pressing Space would restart and play from the beginning.

[mackron]

The data callback will have a parameter called frameCount which is how many frames you should be reading from the decoder. If there are less frames available for decoding than frameCount it's all good. When you read, just read straight into the data callback's output buffer (pOutput in the examples). You just need to make sure the decoder and device are configured with the same format or else you'll get horrible glitching.

A way to "pause" decoding is to simply not read from the decoder in the data callback. An important concept to consider is that the decoder and the device are entirely decoupled. If you don't read anything from the decoder you'll simply not hear anything and therefore the playback of the decoder will essentially be paused.

Here's a quick sample (not tested):

ma_bool32 g_IsPaused = MA_FALSE;
ma_bool32 g_Restart = MA_FALSE;

void data_callback(ma_device* pDevice, void* pOutput, const void* pInput, ma_uint32 frameCount)
{
    // Restart if requested.
    if (g_Restart) {
        ma_decoder_seek_to_pcm_frame(pDecoder, 0);
        g_Restart = MA_FALSE;
    }

    // Only read if the sound is not paused.
    if (!g_IsPaused) {
        ma_decoder_read_pcm_frames(pDecoder, pOutput, frameCount);
    }
}

For restarting you'll want to use ma_decoder_seek_to_pcm_frame(pDecoder, 0). The complication with this is that you must not seek on a different thread while the data callback is in the middle of reading from the decoder. In the sample code above I'm just setting a variable and doing the seek in the data callback thread which should solve the problem well enough. With this sample, you would set g_IsPaused appropriately when the 'P' key is pressed, and set g_Restart to true when the space key is pressed.

Finally, one alternative you might consider is the work-in-progress high level API that I'm developing in the dev-0.11 branch. There's documentation and examples in that branch. This will save you with needing to deal with the low-level API and the multithreading stuff. The high level API uses the notion of a "sound" which you can just pause and resume and restart without needing to worry about the data callback.

[patrikpatrik]

Pure genius, thank you! I was using SFML audio for the longest time but I wanted something quick & lightweight to complement modern OpenGL with GLFW and miniaudio reminds me of their API! I will definitely check out the dev branch as well.

Cheers.