Looped Playback in .NET with NAudio

In this post I will explain how to seamlessly loop audio with NAudio. The first task is to create a WaveStream derived class that will loop for us. This class takes a source WaveStream, and in the override Read method, will loop back to the beginning once the source stream stops returning data. Obviously this requires that the source stream you pass in does in fact stop returning data. Another option would be to use the Length property of the source stream, and go back to the beginning once we have sent Length bytes. Here’s my implementation of LoopStream. I might put this into NAudio for the next release: (Update: have fixed a bug in the Read method, thanks Neverbith for spotting it. I will also possibly add a configuration to allow you to use the Source’s Length property as well)

/// <summary>
/// Stream for looping playback
/// </summary>
public class LoopStream : WaveStream
{
    WaveStream sourceStream;

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a new Loop stream
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="sourceStream">The stream to read from. Note: the Read method of this stream should return 0 when it reaches the end
    /// or else we will not loop to the start again.</param>
    public LoopStream(WaveStream sourceStream)
    {
        this.sourceStream = sourceStream;
        this.EnableLooping = true;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Use this to turn looping on or off
    /// </summary>
    public bool EnableLooping { get; set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// Return source stream's wave format
    /// </summary>
    public override WaveFormat WaveFormat
    {
        get { return sourceStream.WaveFormat; }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// LoopStream simply returns
    /// </summary>
    public override long Length
    {
        get { return sourceStream.Length; }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// LoopStream simply passes on positioning to source stream
    /// </summary>
    public override long Position
    {
        get { return sourceStream.Position; }
        set { sourceStream.Position = value; }
    }

    public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count)
    {
        int totalBytesRead = 0;

        while (totalBytesRead < count)
        {
            int bytesRead = sourceStream.Read(buffer, offset + totalBytesRead, count - totalBytesRead);
            if (bytesRead == 0)
            {
                if (sourceStream.Position == 0 || !EnableLooping)
                {
                    // something wrong with the source stream
                    break;
                }
                // loop
                sourceStream.Position = 0;
            }
            totalBytesRead += bytesRead;
        }
        return totalBytesRead;
    }
}

Now using this to play a looping WAV file is trivial:

private WaveOut waveOut;

private void buttonStartStop_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (waveOut == null)
    {
        WaveFileReader reader = new WaveFileReader(@"C:\Music\Example.wav");
        LoopStream loop = new LoopStream(reader);
        waveOut = new WaveOut();
        waveOut.Init(loop);
        waveOut.Play();
     }
     else
     {
         waveOut.Stop();
         waveOut.Dispose();
         waveOut = null;
     }
}