Quickly switch playing sound over headphones and speakers or play continuously on both

Question

Playing sound over speakers while playing music through headphones

This guy had exactly the same problem to solve as I do now. I read all of his responses and since some were outdated and some didn't work at all or not on most devices then I decided that maybe it is better approach to go with quick switching. Also I was unable to contact him directly.

I need to play continuous tone on headphones to power my peripheral and sometimes (~3-4 times a second would be very good) play a very short, but still audible "beep" over speakers. It is crucial that headphones are interrupted for as short time as possible or not at all.

This is how I am doing it at the moment: I have one main continuous AudioTrack for power and one for the "beep". It works like i want it to, but the switch between 2 tracks is very slow - up to 600ms on my phone and about 200ms on my friends' phones. This is too much if i want to play the beeps more than 2 times a second. If I timed the commands, then the one taking all the time was beepTrack.play().

powerThread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            while(running) {
                if (systemAudioManager.isWiredHeadsetOn()) {
                    powerTrack.write(powerSamples, 0, powerSamples.length);
                }

            }
        }
    });

private void playBeep() {
    beepTrack = new AudioTrack(
            BEEP_STREAM_TYPE,
            BEEP_SAMPLE_RATE,
            AudioFormat.CHANNEL_OUT_MONO,
            AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT,
            minBeepBufferSize,
            AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM
    );

    beepTrack.setStereoVolume(AudioTrack.getMaxVolume() / 2, AudioTrack.getMaxVolume() / 2);
    powerTrack.stop();

    //Delay, otherwise my power track isn't stopped and starts sounding over speakers
    try {
        Thread.sleep(50);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    //Main time consumer
    beepTrack.play();
    beepTrack.write(beepSamples, 0, beepSamples.length / 2);

    beepTrack.stop();
    powerTrack.play();
}