google

oboe

C++2018–2026

google / oboe

oboe

Oboe is a C++ library that makes it easy to build high-performance audio apps on Android.

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12Mentions

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4.1KGitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

Oboe is a C++ library that makes it easy to build high-performance audio apps on Android.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year12 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-01-04 20:28:58 UTC to 2026-03-31 17:16:49 UTC.

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2018	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	1	2
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	4	0	4
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	2	1
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2025	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2026 (partial)	2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1

What Hacker News says

12 sources

jhasse·Mar 31, 2026

You mean OpenSL ES? Is anyone actually using that on desktop? On Android there's https://github.com/google/oboe. While Mesa has OpenGL ES it wasn't always available (for example not all drivers are using Mesa).

In Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?

fisian·Sep 26, 2023

The file also appears in this Github repo in the branch devicelist: https://github.com/google/oboe/blob/1c95aa99177d25bd573bf398...

In Ask HN: Android low latency audio in 2023

techon·Sep 25, 2023Submission

Android low latency / high performance audio in 2023

With the desire to clarify what's going on with Android low latency, see the links below from around 2018-2021, with a third link from an unknown date, however which claims devices that can go down to around 13ms round trip latency. On March 11th of the first link, the author talks about using a MIDI device to be able to focus mainly on the output latency only, does that mean using another input device other than the screen can generally get Android output latency down to 20ms or lower!? Any clarification gratefully received. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26388441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199290 https://chromium.googlesource.com/external/github.com/google/oboe/+/refs/heads/dev…

1 points · Open discussion

techon·Sep 25, 2023Submission

Ask HN: Android low latency audio in 2023

54 points · Open discussion

pjmlp·Sep 5, 2021

https://microsoft.github.io/microsoft-ui-xaml > WinUI is powered by a highly optimized C++ core that delivers blistering performance, long battery life, and responsive interactivity that professional developers demand. Its lower system utilization allows it to run on a wider range of hardware, ensuring your sophisticated workloads run with ease. Apparently Microsoft does care about OOP in C++. As does Apple, https://developer.apple.com/metal/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit And Google, https://github.com/google/oboe https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs Maybe modern C++ is safe from OOP, so lets look into ranges, https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/ranges So we have factories, adaptors, concepts (aka interfaces/traits in other languages), std::ranges::view_interface as base class mixin, all stuff I can find on the Gang of

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Four book.

In Object-Oriented Programming in C (2019) [pdf]

ArtWomb·May 1, 2021

Just getting back into Android dev myself. Rapid workflow stack: Jetpack Compose / Kotlin, Material Design UI kits and Stripe / Firebase Cloud Functions. The emphasis on being able to go from idea to release in the shortest time frame. Target being Fast Mobile Commerce https://github.com/android/compose-samples https://material.io/resources https://firebase.google.com/docs/use-cases/payments Other than that I'm excited about next-gen low latency audio library Oboe and real-time physically based renderer Filament https://github.com/google/oboe/tree/master/samples https://github.com/google/filament/tree/main/samples Best of Luck ;)

In Ask HN: What are some of must have skills for a Mobile App Developer in 2021?

donturner·Mar 11, 2021

Below is a collaborative answer from myself and my colleague, Phil Burk who is a SWE on the audio framework team. Thanks for your interest in the details of Android Latency measurement techniques. Some of the measurements were collected by third parties. We cannot describe their techniques but they are probably similar to ours. We use OboeTester to measure latency. You can find a description of how to measure Tap-to-Tone Latency and Round Trip Latency in this doc: https://github.com/google/oboe/blob/master/apps/OboeTester/d... We do not use the Larsen Effect any more because it was too sensitive to variations in gain. We now use a random encoded bit stream that sounds like a short noise burst. We can get a better correlation peak with that signal. > Many of the latency measurements break the latency down between > audio downlink and upli

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nk. It is very hard to separate the input and output latency without special hardware (like the WALT device). You can measure combined input+output latency using a loopback test. Input latency tends to be much lower than output latency. This is because, when the full duplex stream is stable, the input buffer is close to empty and the output buffer is close to full. Then, if there is a preemption, the input buffer fills up and the output buffer drains, providing glitch protection. You can measure touch+output latency using tap-to-tone. The screen touch latency is about 15-30 msec. If you use a hardware MIDI controller (like a keyboard or drum pad) instead of tapping the touch screen then you can get a “touch” latency of about 1 msec (MIDI is a lightweight and low latency protocol). Then you can get a better estimate of just the output latency. > The android doc discusses using a GPIO to have a zero-latency signal. We don’t normally use that technique because it requires special hardware. > I found oboetester, splatency, drrickorang, and google walt. Our group supports OboeTester. > The first interesting thing is that oboetest, drrickorang, and walt seem to need an external jack-based dongle. The lowest latency path is usually over the headphone jack (either through 3.5mm or USB dongle). To test this path you do need a "jack-based dongle" aka loopback adapter. The reason why wired headphones usually give you lower latency is that OEMs often introduce digital signal processing for the speaker to improve the acoustics/quality, which can introduce additional latency. Side note: this is why you will often see "best with headphones" on games and music apps. That said, OboeTester will work over the speakers and mic in a quiet room. That is because the new random bit technique is more robust. > I'd like to script these tests. OboeTester can be scripted. We use it for continuous integration testing. https://github.com/google/oboe/blob/master/apps/OboeTester/d...

In An update on Android's audio latency

donturner·Mar 8, 2021

I'm the author. My testing methodology was to run the round-trip latency test using OboeTester: https://github.com/google/oboe/tree/master/apps/OboeTester/d.... It's a simple test: produce a tone (either on built-in speaker or over wired headphones if using a loopback dongle), measure the time it takes for that tone to reach the audio input. For devices which I didn't have access to (our team has a limited number of test devices) I used the figures from Superpowered, but with some assumptions/rules: #1 If AAudio was available on the device I used the measurements from that rather than OpenSL ES #2 No measurements from custom ROMs #3 I used the measurements from the latest version of Android which the OEM had released for that device. For example, if a device was originally released with Lollipop but it was possible to upgrade to Marshmal

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low then I used the figures for Marshmallow. For touch screen latency measurements I used a WALT device (https://github.com/google/walt)

In An update on Android's audio latency

romwell·Mar 21, 2019

Android Oboe[1] might fix that (an API that goes through (OpenSL ES or AAudio depending on what is available). Then, in future far, far away we might get a touch input method that isn't too laggy for interaction with audio. Last year, the best we could get was around 30ms[2] on iSomething; and I hope that 120hz refresh rate becomes the standard (but even that is huuuuge compared to a MIDI controller). [1]https://github.com/google/oboe [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/7teiwe/lets_discus...

In Terminal latency (2017)

pierreneter·Nov 26, 2018Submission

[Android] Oboe – C++ high-performance audio library, easy way to build audio app

3 points · Open discussion

hyperpallium·Oct 12, 2018

> Oboe provides the lowest possible audio latency across the widest range of Android devices The "lowest possible" on android might not be low enough for musical instuments (<10-15ms). It's revealing that they don't reveal latency for any devices at all. (If I sound cynical, this isn't the first low-latency offering for android.) It's just "low" for android. funfact: consoles also have terrible audio latency. Rhythm games like rockband/guitar hero don't actually need this, they need only relate it to the audio playing (and also config compensation for input latency). The latency is shocking if you use the mode where you free-"play" the instrument, and is why actual musicians often a tough time with these games. The surprising thing is that delayed sound effects from games in general aren't so jarring. FWIW iphone audio latency also isn't

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good enough, despite being far better than android. That's how bad android is. EDIT 7ms claimed in screenshot at https://github.com/google/oboe/blob/master/samples/hello-obo... - doesn't include input latency: average latency of the audio stream between data entering the stream and it being presented to the audio device EDIT they know they need latency figures "Publish a list of Android device latency" https://github.com/google/oboe/issues/235

In Oboe: A C++ library for low latency audio in Android

pjmlp·Jan 4, 2018

It might, never bother trying it, because that is just one of the issues among the ones I have listed, and I skipped a few other ones, like producing AAR libs for example. Also some of the nicer native libraries are C++, like the newly introduced real time audio, https://github.com/google/oboe So it is still an higher bar to use Rust than just using what the the NDK/SDK offer out of the box.

In Announcing Rust 1.23