Playing a never-ending stream will never delete used content from memory.

[thatmaxplayle]

Hey there, asking for advice here.

I'm using NAudio to play a never-ending stream from a radio station. See the below code for some context.

This works perfectly fine - it will do just as intended - play the never-ending stream, from the given URL. The only problem I have is deleting the content I've played from memory. The memory usage of the application will just steadily increase. I don't really know much about MemoryStream (or NAudio itself) and thought I would come here in an attempt to find some assistance.

So, how would I go about optimizing this, to remove the used playback components from memory? I've tested this code, and the size of the ms object does steadily increase over time. About 0.2mb/10 seconds. As such, what can I do to counteract this?

Ideally, the simple option sounds like it is just going to be to dump the buffer/stream/whatever it is after it reaches a certain size. How would I go about doing this?

Any help would be appreciated 🙏

Kind regards,
Max

ChangePlaybackState(RadioPlaybackState.Initializing);

ms.Close();

ms = new MemoryStream();
        
thread = new Thread(delegate (object o)
    {
        var response = WebRequest.Create(url).GetResponse();
        using (var stream = response.GetResponseStream())
        {
            byte[] buffer = new byte[65536]; // 64kb chunks
            int read;
            while ((read = stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
            {
                var pos = ms.Position;
                ms.Position = ms.Length;
                ms.Write(buffer, 0, read);
                ms.Position = pos;
            }
        }
    });

    thread.Start();

    // Pre-buffering some data to allow NAudio to start playing
    while (ms.Length < PrebufferSize)
    {
        ChangePlaybackState(RadioPlaybackState.Prebuffering);

        Thread.Sleep(500);
    }

    ChangePlaybackState(RadioPlaybackState.Playing);

    ms.Position = 0;
        
    Debug.WriteLine("Using decoder: {0}", (DecodeEngine)User.Default.Decoder);

    using (WaveStream blockAlignedStream = new BlockAlignReductionStream(WaveFormatConversionStream.CreatePcmStream(new Mp3FileReader(ms))))
        {
            using (WaveOut waveOut = new WaveOut(WaveCallbackInfo.FunctionCallback()))
            {
                waveOut.Init(blockAlignedStream);
                waveOut.Play();
                while (waveOut.PlaybackState == NAudio.Wave.PlaybackState.Playing)
                {
                    Thread.Sleep(100);
                    waveOut.Volume = this.volume;

                    if (StopNextCycle)
                        break;
                }
            }
        }
    

[markheath]

Take a look at the MP3 Streaming Demo code for a better approach to achieving what you are trying to do