How do I capture the audio of a wpf window or cscore output in c#?

Question

I made a music player in wpf using cscore. Now, I want to add a feature so I can stream the output in real-time (like a radio) to another instance of the music player over internet. I could see how to stream the data later, but first I need to know how to get the bytes of the audio output. I'm asking for help because I'm lost, I've done some research and found nothing but how to stream the desktop audio. That's not a solution, because I want to listen to the same music with some friends while hanging out on Discord, so if I stream the desktop audio, they will listen to themselves besides the music. Any help will be welcome. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I am have not used cscore I mainly use naudio a similar library that facilitates getting audio to and from the sound card. So I will try and answer in a way that allows you to find what you are looking for in cscore.

In your player code you will be pulling data from the audio file. In naudio this is done with a audio file reader. I think it is called a wavFileReader in cscore, This file reader translates the audio file into a stream of audio samples in the form of byte arrays, the byte arrays are then used to feed the WASAPI Out to allow the audio to play on the sound card.

The ideal place to start with your streaming system would be in the middle of those two processes. So rather than just passing the audio samples to the sound card you need to take a copy of the byte array containing the samples. it is this data you will need to stream to your friends.

From here you will need to look at compressing the audio and streaming protocols like RTP all can be done in c#. The issue will be, as it always is in audio having your data stream keep pace with the sound card. Every time WASAPIOut asks for more samples you need to have the ready otherwise the audio will be choppy.

I do hope this helps point you in the right direction. Others with experience with cscore may have some code examples to assist you more directly I am simply trying to point you in the right direction