Question How to load MP3 file into an AudioClip and make it stay compressed in memory?

I've searched around, and can't find a solution for this.

Basically, I have a multimedia / entertainment app, not really a game. It loads MP3 files from a server - but that doesn't matter so much because it stores them in the file system locally.

When I use

UnityWebRequestMultimedia.GetAudioClip($"file://{cacheFileName}", AudioType.MPEG)

, it decompresses the MP3 file in memory, and since those are hour long MP3s, it results in hundreds of MB of memory taken just for the audio. I'm looking for a way to load MP3s from files so that they are either streaming or compressed in memory, at runtime, from a script.

Importing MP3s within the editor isn't an option.

 

Answering my own question in case someone encounters the same issue, the solution is in using

DownloadHandlerAudioClip

manually.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2.     var dh = new DownloadHandlerAudioClip($"file://{cacheFileName}", AudioType.MPEG);
3.     dh.compressed = true; // This
4.  
5.     using (UnityWebRequest wr = new UnityWebRequest($"file://{cacheFileName}", "GET", dh, null)) {
6.         yield return wr.SendWebRequest();
7.         if (wr.responseCode == 200) {
8.             audioSource.clip = dh.audioClip;
9.         }
10.     }
11.  

 

1) Using file download handlers is far far far slower than using the System.File library in my experience... Is they any way to use this internal audio conversation without the file http overhead?

2) Is there any way of controlling what bit depth of mp3 is loaded as (like covering it to 32 bit PMC instead of 16 bit) when the mp3 is decoded?

3) Have you found any platform restrictions where this awesome method doesn't work? / If not I'm so happy they finally add a universal mp3 decoder now that the patent is expired.

 

omg this. Loading mp3's dynamically from the internet into a webgl build was proving to be completely unusable until I found this. Thanks so much.

 

Thanks bro. How much time did i spend to find your solution. Its so disappointing that unity still not able to load mp3 files from local disk storage. In my case i downloaded base64 data of mp3 and did not find any helpfull ideas to play that mp3 data untill i read your solution.

 

sweeeet! Thanks for putting out this solution.

 

What is the difference in performance between this solution vs "WWW" as described in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44938268/how-to-connect-audioclip-at-local-file? And which way is more futureproof?

Edit: Looks like WWW is deprecated and UWR is preferred