How to play sound in Android?

Oct 5, 2023

Cowrie

Dev @ Bswen

Purpose

In this post, I will demonstrate how to play sound or audio in an Android application.

Solution

First step: Convert an audio file into an Android-compatible format

For Mac users, you can open the audio file in QuickTime Player and export it to a format like ‘m4a’.

What is m4a?

MPEG-4 audio files with M4A file extension usually contain digital audio stream encoded with AAC or ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) compression standards.

Second step: Add the audio file to Android Studio

Place your audio file in the src/main/res/raw directory:

src/main/res/raw/tititi.m4a

Third step: Create playback UI and logic

Add a button to your layout file:

<Button
    android:id="@+id/cbTestNotif2"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:text="Play Sound"
    android:onClick="onTestPlaySound"
    android:layout_centerVertical="true"
    android:layout_centerHorizontal="true" />

Implement the click handler in your activity:

public void onTestPlaySound(View view) {
    new Thread(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            MediaPlayer player = MediaPlayer.create(
                AboutActivity.this, R.raw.tititi);
            player.start();
        }
    }).start();
}

Key implementation details:

MediaPlayer player = MediaPlayer.create(
    AboutActivity.this, R.raw.tititi);
player.start();

Summary

To implement audio playback in Android:

Convert audio files to Android-supported formats like m4a
Store files in the res/raw directory for resource access
Use MediaPlayer with proper threading
Trigger playback through UI components

The complete solution combines proper resource management with Android’s MediaPlayer API while maintaining responsive UI through background threading.

Final Words + More Resources

My intention with this article was to help others who might be considering solving such a problem. So I hope that’s been the case here. If you still have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me by email: Email me

Here are also the most important links from this article along with some further resources that will help you in this scope:

Oh, and if you found these resources useful, don’t forget to support me by starring the repo on GitHub!