C# Play MP3 file using NAudio from Resource

c#, naudio, resources, stream

Solution

The `Mp3FileReader` class can be constructed from either a filename or a `System.IO.Stream`. So what you need is to read the MP3 resource as a stream. How you do that depends on how you've added the resource.

Resources added using the `Properties/Resources.resx` file (managed through the application properties dialog) are accessible through the `Properties.Resources` object. Known resource types (images, etc) should be represented here by their appropriate types, but MP3 files are accessed as `byte[]`. You can create a `MemoryStream` from the resource and use that to construct the `Mp3FileReader` like so:

MemoryStream mp3file = new MemoryStream(Properties.Resources.MP3file);
Mp3FileReader mp3reader = new Mp3FileReader(mp3file);

Other resource methods differ in the details of how you get the stream, but apart from that are basically the same. If you add an MP3 file to your project with the `Embedded Resource` build action, you can use the following:

public Stream GetResourceStream(string filename)
{
    Assembly asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
    string resname = asm.GetName().Name + "." + filename;
    return asm.GetManifestResourceStream(resname);
}

...
Stream mp3file = GetResourceStream("some file.mp3");
Mp3FileReader mp3reader = new Mp3FileReader(mp3file);

WPF resources are different again, using the `pack:...` uri format and `Application.GetResourceStream`.

In all cases you should, of course, dispose the Stream once you're done reading it.

Problem

I have a Windows Forms Application where I'm trying to simply play an MP3 file from the Resource using the NAudio library. I believe what needs to be done is to stream the file somehow, here is an example of NAudio, unfortunately it accepts File path string as an argument. ``` private WaveStream CreateInputStream(string fileName) { WaveChannel32 inputStream; if (fileName.EndsWith(".mp3")) { WaveStream mp3Reader = new Mp3FileReader(fileName); inputStream = new WaveChannel32(mp3Reader); } else { throw new InvalidOperationException("Unsupported extension"); } volumeStream = inputStream; return volumeStream; } ``` To play the file: ``` waveOutDevice = new WaveOut(); mainOutputStream = CreateInputStream("C:\\song.mp3"); ``` Works fine with normal files, how would I go about files that are located in the Resources? Thank you.

Original source