I've been listening to FLAC files with my phone, and thanks to voodoo sound the quality is fantastic. but there's an issue i've come up with lately.
it first started on srf 1.1.0 when i tried to play an album that was encoded as a single large FLAC file. screen went black except for notifications bar, completely unresponsive then began vibrating and showing the boot animation.
this was the first strange happening of any kind i've had on any rom since rooting my epic, so i figured i'd just odin back to stock, format my sd, reroot and start off with a fresh install of srf. i never even bothered trying to play that one file again thinking maybe it was too large to handle (or possibly even corrupted?), but i have still encountered this same issue using stock music, winamp and even the miui music player on srf, midnight AND simply aosp roms.
anyone else experienced anything like this or can help point me in the right direction? or is android just not built to handle these kind of files? i admit i haven't researched it
Why are you playing flac files? The only thing flac is good for is making perfect copies of cds, having the ability to re-encode as many times as you would like, and wasting space.
Do yourself a favor. ABX and find which level of mp3 or ogg is transparent for you.
I personally reccommend ogg. Q5 is transparent to me.
Additionally, android supports gapless playback, so there is no reason to have an album encoded into a single file. Go ahead and split it into tracks.
thanks for the reply!
can anyone go into further detail about abx? is it some sort of test i'm supposed to take?
/audiophile newb
Yeah sure.
Basically an ABX test is where you compare a compressed file like mp3 or ogg, to a perfect file like a flac or wav. It is a double-blind test, so you have no clue which track is which. It will give you both tracks, covered under the name A and B, and it will also give you both tracks under the name X and Y.
You have to listen to all 4 tracks and decide which ones match. Whether A is X, B is Y,, or B is X, A is Y. Most people on the internet say you need to match these 10 times perfectly to be taken seriously. But for me, 6 matches out of 6 tries was enough for me.
You are free to pause, rewind, change tracks, or do a replay loop at any time.
What you will want to do is convert the same song into many different formats. For mp3 maybe something like V6, V5, V4, V3, V2, V1, V0. Start with the lowest bitrate, V6, and slowly work your way up until you can no longer hear a difference.
You can use foobar 2000 along with the abx plugin on their site to do some quick tests.
Also make sure to use replaygain, which you can apply in foobar, to make sure there is no volume differences betweeb the encodes.
Also, I would still keep flacs of your files around, just in case something happens to your compressed files. I keep a storage of all my songs in flac on my terabyte hard drive.
Related
Hello everyone,
I have an issue that is driving me CRAZY, and I hope some of you are having the same issue...or at least suggestions for how to fix it. I am running the new Android 2.2 update on my Evo. (It's just the normal, plain software from Sprint/HTC...nothing custom, none of that root stuff...just regular).
I always keep a few gigabytes of music (in WMA format) on my SD card. I noticed that after the update, the HTC Music player would no longer recognize (and sort) the music by Artist or Composer. The only things it could identify about each file were the Title, Album, and Genre. I miss the option of browsing through my music by Artist and/or Composer. This was not a problem with Android 2.1, but it is now. I even tried deleting all the music from my SD card and re-syncing it from my PC...same result. I also tried music from a different PC...same result.
So here's what I discovered this morning: If I convert my WMA files to MP3s, then the music player works just as before!! It recognizes all the ID3 tags within each file. This is a big problem for me. First of all, my music library is nearly 40 GB in size, and I do not want to have to convert EVERYTHING to MP3 before I sync. This is tedious and unnecessary. Secondly, the original specs/documentation of the HTC Evo state that it supports the WMA file format. I made sure of that before purchasing, because it was one of the big factors for me in making the decision to switch to Sprint and the Evo.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to solve this problem? I'm about to call HTC now and complain. Thanks.
Why are you so attached to WMA? IME/IMHO it's not a very good format because the quality of the mp3 format is a little better plus the DRM that gets embeded in the tracks. Every track that I have *ahem* acquired or even recorded myself has time bombed on me at some point. I should be able to play the music I record at any time!
/Rant
Don't take what I said too personally. I'm just pissed off at Microsoft. That said, I do not know what is causing your files not be played back properly as I do not have any to test.
Just a guess but, perhaps the new player in froyo doesn't read id3 tags from wma files correctly.
sent from my HTC evo
Well, that wasn't the purpose of this post, but since you asked...
I've been ripping my CDs to my hard drive for about 10 years now. Windows Media Player made it sooo easy to organize my music library. Way back in the day, you could only rip to WAV or different varieties of WMA. To rip to mp3, I would have had to use a different program, or purchase a plug-in for Windows Media Player. Only in the last few versions has Windows Media Player had the "rip to mp3" option built-in for free.
When I originally started my collection, I read about the differences between WMA and mp3. I got the understanding that the two formats essentially offered the same quality and features, but WMA generally used about half the file size for the same bitrate. So I chose WMA and stuck with it all this time.
Even when I buy music from Amazon or iTunes, I've gotten in the habit of converting it to WMA...just for consistency.
I just got off the phone with HTC, who says they haven't heard of this issue before. I was advised to perform a factory reset. But if I can't resolve the issue soon, I'm considering just converting every piece of music I have to mp3. (Sigh). But at nearly 40 GB, and various bitrates, who knows how long that could take!? (Sighing again). I wonder what program could handle that amount of music all at once. And I pray it won't screw up all the ID3 tags and the ratings I've so carefully given.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I have a couple of WMA files on my SD card. They have always been listed under "Unknown Artist" along with a few mp3's.
when I click on unknown artist, the files show up listed under their correct names. When I click on the wma files (both by the same artist), they expand into individual file names.
After updating to 2.2 nothing has changed. Everything works normally. That would suggest HTC's advice may work for you.
On another note, don't you love it when you post a question, and the first response is, "I don't know how to help, but I don't like that kind of file anyway, and neither should you!!!
Hmmm...and your WMA files were never fully recognized? Not even on Android 2.1? Interesting. I guess I'll attempt a hard reset tonight, or maybe tomorrow.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I had the exact same issue and can report that a hard reset had no effect. I'll be looking to convert my library to mp3 as well. Froyo has its quirks.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Wow!! Thanks, pstar...I was literally 3 minutes away from starting the hard reset process and restoring everything. What is we gon' do? :-(
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
helpwithmy8525 said:
Wow!! Thanks, pstar...I was literally 3 minutes away from starting the hard reset process and restoring everything. What is we gon' do? :-(
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's an idea: Go into a Sprint store with your Mini SD chip and see if they'll put in in another Android phone. See if it exhibits the same issue.
Good idea. I might try that tomorrow.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
ptsar said:
I had the exact same issue and can report that a hard reset had no effect. I'll be looking to convert my library to mp3 as well. Froyo has its quirks.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I couldn't resist finding out for myself; I also tried a hard reset, to no avail...
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Funny, my wife is using the rooted stock froyo, first leaked build and all wma look fine with embedded art using HTC player. I am using cyanogen latest nightly and it still can't read wma tags at all. But I do like playing with the new DSP settings--worth the switch. As a workaround I converted the wma to mp4 and they read just fine.
I'm surprised anyone had success with wma on any version of android. For me, on 2.1, wma files wouldn't play (but a few DID, which confounds me to no end). Now on rooted 2.2, I experience the same behavior. Just for fun, I used astro and simply renamed the file type of some wmas to .mp3. Surprisingly, it seemed to work. I thought I was on to something. Then I tries that with some Audioslave songs. No worky. So probably the ones I did 'get to work', were some of the few that for no discernible reason, to me, already worked.
I would like to hear more about this issue, actually.
Its a problem in Froyo with both WMA and AAC encoded files. Reported in Google Code, so please go there, sign in to google, then star the issue so it gets some attention:
http://code.google.com/p/android/is...ag&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
I've been trying to figure this out on my own for a while and haven't made any headway. I have about 3gb of music on the internal memory and about 10gb on my 16gb memory card.
In general I am having trouble getting all of my music to be seen and to play. In the HTC music player most if not all of the albums show up, but are missing songs and the like. DoubleTwist doesn't see any of the songs in the internal memory and has the same issue with not seeing all of the songs on each album. The cubed media player shows 89 albums of "unknown" artist that contain a bunch of the songs that aren't showing where they are supposed to, but have a length of 0:00.
All of the music appears when I browse the card in astro.
I've tried using SongBird's FolderSync to copy the music and I've used doubleTwist, along with just dragging and dropping the music folders. It seems no matter what I have some set of the same issues.
What are people doing to actually get all of their music to copy and play properly?
me too...finally someone else who is seeing the same issue....EVERY 2.2 ROM has done.this and it DID NOT group almost everything into an (UNKNOWN) artist folder ...
I've noticed no media player will read artist folders properly..root explorer and astrology...(file managers) have no problem seeing the files and the proper names its just the phone and its media reader
1900 songs on my media card and 1700 of them are grouped as unknown makes media player almost unusable...
Also I've noticed that if u are looking at artists and go to album view it even reads those and orders those properly but still lists them as unknown artist
anyone have ANY insight would be awesome
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
I have spent about 2 days now tagging and retagging my music. I have about 2700 songs all on my internal storage and was upset when it went from being mostly, properly, sorted to all "Unknown Artist". I tagged and retagged and then tagged some more. I changed the album art and double checked all of it time and time again. I've formatted the memory, restarted the phone, flashed an updated ROM and have yet to figure it out.
I am currently using Virtuous 2.5. I had the issue using Virtuous 2.1 and 2.3 and Adrynalyne's Third Wave (but not his FrankenROM). It's pretty annoying. I am hoping that someone can shed the light on this issue. I haven't heard many people talk about it, but it is one of my main issues with 2.2 thus far.
I guess that I'm lucky to have a main gripe be something as trivial as the way it sorts the media, though.
Glad I'm not the only one, but really, did re-tagging help? I don't have the time to do all of that. A lot of my files won't even play, even though they appear on the card in Astro and have a reasonable file size. They show up in the media players as 0:00 length.
Anyone have any success? Is this a 2.2 issue? It occured on SkyRaider 2.5.2, 3.0, and the latest Virtuous ROM.
fastandlight said:
Glad I'm not the only one, but really, did re-tagging help? I don't have the time to do all of that. A lot of my files won't even play, even though they appear on the card in Astro and have a reasonable file size. They show up in the media players as 0:00 length.
Anyone have any success? Is this a 2.2 issue? It occured on SkyRaider 2.5.2, 3.0, and the latest Virtuous ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The extensive tagging did nothing. It made me feel better, because I know that everything is right, but little more than that.
It seems like it is a 2.2 issue of some kind, I'm just not sure of where or what it is. Which is why I came here. I don't see many other posts concerning this issue, so I assume we are either a minority or are missing something very simple.
I just looked through my music more closely after a new sync using the new version of doubleTwist. It looks like the HTC Media Player is not seeing the first 4 or 5 tracks of my albums on the SD card. It looks like it is seeing most of the music on the internal memory.
fastandlight said:
I just looked through my music more closely after a new sync using the new version of doubleTwist. It looks like the HTC Media Player is not seeing the first 4 or 5 tracks of my albums on the SD card. It looks like it is seeing most of the music on the internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I ran a Media Go (some piece of garbage Sony syncing software) and Windows Media Player sync today. I synced them right over the top of each other, hoping that at least one of them would work. I see a lot of album art and I see a whole lot of songs, but for some unknown reason the Artists are all "Unknown".
Every. Last. One.
I have them split into albums and I've got plenty of songs that seem to be set up properly and have the art that goes with them, but under the "Artist" tab, it refuses to recognize. I never had this problem when I first got my phone and I am sure it has something to do with the newer ROMs.
Again, I don't see many people talking about this... so, I have to be a minority or an idiot. Maybe both. Hopefully I can get the problem fixed. I'm going to go on a tagging spree and try to get a dozen or so songs working so that maybe I can spend another couple of days getting all 2700 or so songs working. =(
Alright.
I did some digging. It turns out that there are either more people with EVOs or they communicate far better than the Incredible community, because I found several threads pertaining to issues similar to this with the EVO.
Thread 747895 right here on XDA.
Android Central has a post about a similar issue - (32456) problems-music-player-after-update under the Droid Incredible section.
Basically, it looks like WMA and AAC files refuse to acknowledge their tags, properly. Sorting them by song name or into folders by album seems to help a little, but the tracks still seem to have issues recognizing artists and track numbers.
There are other problems, apparently, but these seem to be the ones mostly likely upsetting my music player.
Tagged for
Experiencing the same PITA
TIA
I first documented this issue here, but did not have info at the time that is also affects AAC files:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=773905
Go to the google Code reporting thread, sign into google, and star the thread so it will get some bloody attention.
http://code.google.com/p/android/is...ag&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
Update - I discovered that the doubleTwist player will read the ID3 tags properly, so it is obviously not depending on whatever item in Froyo is messing this up that the other players are. The one downside is that it currently does not ignore ring tones, alarms and notification tones stored on the SD card. This is supposed to be addressed int the next upcoming version.
timehunter said:
Update - I discovered that the doubleTwist player will read the ID3 tags properly, so it is obviously not depending on whatever item in Froyo is messing this up that the other players are. The one downside is that it currently does not ignore ring tones, alarms and notification tones stored on the SD card. This is supposed to be addressed int the next upcoming version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Using Songbird 1.8 and the MSC plug-in, I transcoded my library to OGG and it is working perfectly. DoubleTwist no longer sees any music, but the HTC player is working well and cubed seems to be running well, except for not seeing any music on the internal memory.
The bug is clearly in how the music players are reading the MP4 files from iTunes. F-ing Apple.
I know that cyanogenmod supports wma in the music player, I was wondering if anyone knows if that be easy or difficult to port to xdandroid? (or a good way to get wma support)
thanks!
so, made a bit of progress. I looked at a cyanogen rom
I copied over the pvasf related files (file format for wma/wmv files) (in system/etc and system/lib)
and the libomx_wma/wmv decoder files (in system/lib)
and now I'm playing wma files perfectly on my sprint touch pro 2.
though, don't have meta parsing and it seems cyanogen does have support for that.
any chance this can be rolled into an xdandroid build?
WMA is probably the WORST format for media. Statistics have shown that it's even worse than MP3 for acoustic reproduction.
I would advise avoiding that codec like the plague.
arrrghhh said:
WMA is probably the WORST format for media. Statistics have shown that it's even worse than MP3 for acoustic reproduction.
I would advise avoiding that codec like the plague.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
#1, I've read many things that seem to imply that its not worse than mp3 (and definitely better at low bitrates)
#2, does it matter if I already have a lot of music in WMA format that isn't DRMd so that reencoding it would make things worse (I didn't choose WMA for these tracks, but I dont want to reencode)
#3, why would it be an issue if as I've shown support already exists in android and can be easily included at the loss of a small amount of space (been playing wma all day on my xdandroid sprint touch pro 2)
Eh, no reason it shouldn't be supported in Android, I just know that it's awful - especially at low bitrates.
OGG Vorbis and AAC are the ONLY codecs I would trust at any bitrate that would be considered 'low'...
Let me find the research...
ok, so we agree. I wouldn't use wma for anything I make either, its more of a historical artifact that I have it (and was mostly a windows mobile user before when I collected it, so didn't mind).
I'm not sure how to get metadata working, but not the biggest deal
Is this working yet?
if you follow my steps, it works to play (though doesn't get any info out of the files).
I've stopped doing anything with this as bought an Epic 4G.
I have tons of wma's. This would be great if I could use them with out converting them to MP3's
Hi kwoodyusa, I guess you'll have to tweak your build by hand, following thetoady's directives in post 2.
sad0felix said:
Hi kwoodyusa, I guess you'll have to tweak your build by hand, following thetoady's directives in post 2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what was said, it was pretty easy, I just copied files over and then it just worked.
thetoady said:
what was said, it was pretty easy, I just copied files over and then it just worked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How about posting those files here? Please?
1) download hero rom from
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Latest_Version
2) unzip it.
3) files are where I say they are in post #2 (though for system/lib they are system/lib/libpvasf*
arrrghhh said:
Eh, no reason it shouldn't be supported in Android, I just know that it's awful - especially at low bitrates.
OGG Vorbis and AAC are the ONLY codecs I would trust at any bitrate that would be considered 'low'...
Let me find the research...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats funny every thing I've ever read says AAC is the worst. and WMA beats MP3. And lets face it OGG is a non-factor.
genaldar said:
Thats funny every thing I've ever read says AAC is the worst. and WMA beats MP3. And lets face it OGG is a non-factor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol we're talking about the same bitrates right? WMA has a 'lossless' option, so if you're comparing that to MP3 then it's not apples-to-apples anymore...
I mean let's take one file. Compress it to 64kbps. Same song, same bitrate, different formats - which would perform the best? AFAIK, OGG would be #1. Then AAC, then MP3, then WMA last... WMA is a horrible format from what I remember reading, but I can't find the dang report I read - which was years ago, to be honest... But MP3 is 17 years old...
Hi recently upgraded to a Nexus and am having problems with the sound quality.
I have downloaded several wmv to mp3 software programs and have also tried to copy them at different qualities and it makes no difference..
These are genuine CD's that I own not copys or songs or albums that been downloads
Its not the head phones that are a problem all 3 of my sets have been tried and work fine on my Galaxy S1 & my PC
How is the sound supplied on the Nexus is it software or hardware and software like a sound card in a pc?
Can any one help me please?
Regards Lee F
Anyone please I really want to keep this phone but without a decent sound its go to go back
I can't believe there are so many clever people on here and not one reply..
"O well the phone is going back to Vodafone now!"
You didn't even describe the sound problems you're having...
Click the link in my sig to see if that is the problem you're having.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Thanks for getting back to me...
The problem is that any music I convert to MP3 no matter how or what program I use the to convert the music comes out either like its underwater or if it is understanderable you hear the music but its sounds very dull mono tone like! also you can only vaguely hear the singing......No clarity at all.....I can best describe it as it sound like you are at the back of a giant concert on the back row.....
Regards Lee F
You might consider grabbing "Volume+" from the market. It has volume boost as well as a EQ that will work globally in that it will shape the sound regardless of music player. For my money I would just plunk down the cash and purchase "PowerAmp" It's one of the best music players for Android and contains a excellent EQ.
I bought the pro version of winamp with the same thoughts no difference...
I am beggining to think its something related to copying from the CD to my music file....it keeps coming up as a VLC file could it be associating them with video sound of less quality...?
Or what about that I am using a 32bit application in a 64 bit enviroment?
Any chance of a reply please?
Do the MP3's sound fine on your computer? If they don't I suggest ripping the CD's with EAC and then converting them with a LAME encoder.
If they do: Try out DSPManager and make sure the headphones are plugged in all the way.
My Galaxy Nexus doesn't have any playback issues (other than the loudspeaker's output not being very loud) so it's not the sound chip.
They sound fine on my pc and I have converted them using different software and nothing seems to work.....I will try EAC and let you know thanks for taking the time to respond to my post..
cash_13 said:
They sound fine on my pc and I have converted them using different software and nothing seems to work.....I will try EAC and let you know thanks for taking the time to respond to my post..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try downloading the same song just one file by normal mp3 format see if that works well.
Downloaded EAC and it was easy to use and the music no longer sounds remote but the quality is not very good....
Perhaps I have not got it configured incorrectly do you think you could write a a few instructions on how you set yours up for the best results......
I did try to copy the mp3 files to my nexus direct from EAC but it did not reconise my phone...
Here's a guide to set up EAC: http://blowfish.be/eac/Setup/setup1.html
You can substitute .flac with .mp3 and type 320 in to the kbps box or follow the guide completely and then convert it to .mp3 with something like WinLAME.
If the files play fine on your PC with the same headphones I'm not sure how much this will help. It's worth a shot if you saw some improvement before though.
Hi, I've recently discovered an audio format I'm looking into using on my device in the future, instead of MP3. The format I've recently discovered is opus. I know it's not quite as universal as MP3, but it appears as though it's becoming commonly accepted that converted files are nearly transparent at bitrates as low as 144kbps for a lot of people, even lower for some others. This would be awesome, as I'm out of space on my phone and have about 30GB of MP3s I'd like to have with me in addition to what's already on my device. I'd like to find a way to make sure the difference in audio quality between my V-0 VBR MP3s and my Opus files at 144kbps is undetectable to me.
I was looking for a way to test this reliably directly on my Galaxy S4, because the sound quality I get on this device (using V4A) is far better than the quality I get on my computer, even with lossless files. Does anyone know of an application that will allow double blind ABX sound tests on Android and that can support .OPUS, .MP3, and .FLAC files? I've searched in the play store, the forums here, and on Google and haven't been able to find any such application, but figured my last step was to ask people here on the forums before I gave up entirely.
Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read my post and respond.