Develop Bugs

Please post at HTC Community about the AAC issue in Froyo!

I'm so sick of this... My whole music collection is screwed since it's encoded into he-aac v2. Since the 2.2 update parametric stereo isn't working and the sound quality is ****!
Google have already released a patch for it but it needs to be implemented by HTC, so please complain at the HTC community and maybe they'll read it and release a patch for us as soon as possible http://community.htc.com/na/htc-forums/android/f/97.aspx
This is a MAJOR issue and it's affecting many streaming music applications aswell!

Probably not many users like AAC?
I am using MP3
Good luck with asking HTC to release patch!
Probably it is better to root your device and install another ROM.

Exactly!
MP3 ftw!!! AAC is an Apple-only file format (well, it's not but it's iTunes which I REFUSE to use)

AAC isn't an apple format. it's just the next step beyond MP3.
i use AAC exclusively now (and i hate all things apple) and they play fine on the phone

Still think AAC is a fail (WAV is the ultimate file format!!) - suppose you'll have to complain to HTC, or go back to 320kbps MP3 (which is better IMO than AAC anyway). If it was as big an issue as you say there'd be a lot more people complaining on here...

[Q] wma support in xdanroid?

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...

Best music player with flac support

Hi,
I was using Winamp but it doesn't have FLAC support. I've tried downloading LePlayer and Meridian, which both claim to have FLAC support, but it doesn't find any of the FLAC files in my sdcard. I can open FLAC files in ES File Explorer and choose Meridian and it'll play, but I'd like something that detects them automatically.
Thanks.

CM7 has FLAC support

I'm using Virtuous Sense, not CM7.

I started using the beta of GoneMad Media Player. It seems to be pretty good, and have some great features, .flac support as well.

Thanks. Does it discover flac files automatically?

goister: I have a burning question for you.
Obviously if you care enough to listen to .flac files you must be an audiophile of some sort. And the thing that bothered me is that my 5 year old Samsung YP-P2 MP3 player with DNSE 2.0 sounds SOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than any of the new phones, even with their Beat Mod crap.
I was thinking, is there any app or anything you can do to the phone that will make it produce quality playback?

Sorry, can't help you there. I suppose a headphone amp would help, but I'm not an audiophile anymore. I used to be (hence the flac files) but now I just enjoy the music as much as I can on my phone and a Sennheiser C300.
I don't think there's much you can do though, as phones are made with very tight tolerances in size and integration, so usually corners are cut in audio performance since most people can't tell the difference.

ATM, I am downloading Neutron Music Player. From the description, it seems to be good. Will test and let you know.
=O
It's pretty good!
If you don't wanna buy it, just pm me =P
EDIT: Still not as good as my Samsung player, but better than all the other's i tried.
Edit 2: I failed to press menu. Once I did, they had soooooo much options to fiddle with. I ended up tweaking the settings for like half an hour and got my phone on par with my mp3 player!
Super good! Highly recommend!

Does Neutron automatically discover flac and other non mp3 audio files?

no clue, but on their main site it lists like 30 different formats lol.
And Flac was one of em.

How about Andless?

New Update on Google Music Now Supports Gapless Playback!!!!

I just got an update today for both my Gnex and N7 and tested it out and it works!!! I am SOO happy now This has been bothering me for so long, but after the update, I put a live album on that is easy to tell and there were NO GAPS!!

I'm just mildly happy. It does work for MP3 and Vorbis files, but not for AAC which I happen to use for my audio collection. Haven't tested any other formats so far.
Definitely a step in the right direction though.

MoosDiagramm said:
I'm just mildly happy. It does work for MP3 and Vorbis files, but not for AAC which I happen to use for my audio collection. Haven't tested any other formats so far.
Definitely a step in the right direction though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I upload my music to google music, and all higher quality music just gets converted to the highest rate MP3 anyway. But that is good to know, thanks.

Listening to it now, love it.
#Galaxy Nexus HSPA+

I think this was done in time to appease people who buy the Nexus 4 and need a solution for music that they can't put on their phone due to the low storage space.

CADude said:
I think this was done in time to appease people who buy the Nexus 4 and need a solution for music that they can't put on their phone due to the low storage space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And gapless playback helps this how?

rand4ll said:
And gapless playback helps this how?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
People with a ton of music on their computer, especially live albums, tend to love things like gapless playback. If they can't play a lot of music on their phone locally, as is the case on the Nexus 4 with its limited storage which is also needed for apps, photos, video, etc, they will buy another phone or a dedicated mp3 player. However, now that Google music has gapless playback just in time for the sale of the Nexus 4, more people will warm up to the idea of playing their music over the cloud with a Nexus 4 and they will buy it.

This isn't related to cloud storage. Gapless playbck didn't work AT ALL in the Android music app until now, even for files stored on the device.
I've tested a different AAC encoder and the files it produced do play gaplessly.
Apparently, the gapless information stored by Nero AAC (current version 1.5.4.0) isn't supported by the Android music app. It does work an any other device/software player with gapless playback support I tried, so the problem is probably on Google's end. It even works on Apple devices.
Files produced by the Quicktime AAC encoder work fine.

Does it have to be in an album or what? And is the gap less trigger stored in the file itself?
There are some tracks - not live albums - of various artists that have gap less tracks (Green Day's Holiday and Boulevard Of Broken Dreams is an example, Royksopp's Melody A.M. album is another)... So how does it great those tracks in that case? Gap less, or standard?
Cheers. And sent from my mini tractor

You're confusing gapless with crossfade. Crossfade plays the second track before the first ends, merging them into one. Gapless just makes sure that there is no additional gap between the files, the second track is played exactly when the first ends.
As you can see, there is no reason to disable gapless for specific situations. It is never harmful.

I didn't mean cross fade; I know exactly what gapless playback is all I was curious to find out was are there certain rules where gapless playback kicks in, or does it apply on all tracks by default.
(In short - how the app knows when to remove gaps and when to treat it like normal files)
Because it was said that encoding it in AAC using Nero doesn't help, but QuickTime encoding works... So... Kinda confusing me.
sent from my mini tractor

aeoveu said:
I didn't mean cross fade; I know exactly what gapless playback is all I was curious to find out was are there certain rules where gapless playback kicks in, or does it apply on all tracks by default.
(In short - how the app knows when to remove gaps and when to treat it like normal files)
Because it was said that encoding it in AAC using Nero doesn't help, but QuickTime encoding works... So... Kinda confusing me.
sent from my mini tractor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gapless playback under Android doesn't remove any data from the files or depend on any metadata scheme. It just plays the tracks back-to-back so that any silence between tracks is due to that silence being encoded in the files themselves.
The underlying mechanism for gapless playback was added to the Android SDK for Jellybean/4.1. I added it my music app a couple months ago. I was surprised that Google didn't add this into their player at the same time that Jellybean was released.

Oh... So there's no gap or delay when playing the files (or switching from one file to another), right?
I thought it involved using a buffer and cutting to the next file and whatnot.
So its all normal. Thanks.
sent from my mini tractor

Hmm some things are gapless others aren't. Really annoying.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

aeoveu said:
I didn't mean cross fade; I know exactly what gapless playback is all I was curious to find out was are there certain rules where gapless playback kicks in, or does it apply on all tracks by default.
(In short - how the app knows when to remove gaps and when to treat it like normal files)
Because it was said that encoding it in AAC using Nero doesn't help, but QuickTime encoding works... So... Kinda confusing me.
sent from my mini tractor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, now I understand what you mean.
Lossy audio compression (like MP3, AAC, whatever...) adds a bit of silence at the end and beginning of each track. It's part of how lossy audio codecs work.
In order to remove this silence during playback, modern encoding tools write some additional data to the compressed audio file that says "remove x milliseconds at the beginning and y milliseconds at the end" to restore the tracks original length. Players need to look for such data and skip the additional parts accordingly.
If you take an album that has silence at the end of tracks on the CD and convert it to MP3/AAC/whatever, it will add some more silence to it. A player that supports gaplesss playback will remove this additional silence, but keep the original silence that was on the CD.
AFAIK, there is no official standard on how to write this gapless information to the compressed audio file, so different codecs do it in a different way and developers of audio players must take a look at files produced by popular codecs to understand how each codec handles it and implement support for it.
Android 4.2 along with the latest version of the music app supports the format used by Lame MP3, Vorbis and Quicktime AAC (and probably others, these are just the ones I tested). AAC files produced by Nero AAC, which do have gapless data and work fine on other players, are not supported at the moment.

Ahhh so that's how it works. I've been a long time winamp user and use the silence remover capability in there...which does it on the fly! Never tried it with portable devices...but I think I may give it a shot this time.
Cheers!
sent from my mini tractor

I enjoy the cross-fade feature in PowerAmp, would be cool to see that implemented one day too.

Cross fading in those apps are basic i.e. they only work on a constant. Not sure if any of you guys know about this plugin for Winamp called Sqr Advanced Cross fader... it works based on the silence level of the currently paying song, and works wonderfully in most cases.
Then there are times when I end up cross fading songs myself in Winamp
sent from my mini tractor

MoosDiagramm said:
Ah, now I understand what you mean.
Lossy audio compression (like MP3, AAC, whatever...) adds a bit of silence at the end and beginning of each track. It's part of how lossy audio codecs work.
In order to remove this silence during playback, modern encoding tools write some additional data to the compressed audio file that says "remove x milliseconds at the beginning and y milliseconds at the end" to restore the tracks original length. Players need to look for such data and skip the additional parts accordingly.
If you take an album that has silence at the end of tracks on the CD and convert it to MP3/AAC/whatever, it will add some more silence to it. A player that supports gaplesss playback will remove this additional silence, but keep the original silence that was on the CD.
AFAIK, there is no official standard on how to write this gapless information to the compressed audio file, so different codecs do it in a different way and developers of audio players must take a look at files produced by popular codecs to understand how each codec handles it and implement support for it.
Android 4.2 along with the latest version of the music app supports the format used by Lame MP3, Vorbis and Quicktime AAC (and probably others, these are just the ones I tested). AAC files produced by Nero AAC, which do have gapless data and work fine on other players, are not supported at the moment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very nice explanation, thank you!
So I went ahead and listened to some of my lossy mixes, still .1 second gaps between songs... it hurts wish the player could analyze the spectrum and fix this... guess nobody at google listens to trance
On the plus side, I ran a local mix that was in FLAC, and it was truly gapless! Too bad that it every 30 seconds theres a .5 second pause.....
I remember not having these problems 2004, why do I have them in 2012
- sent from TW galaxy s3 4.1.1

Just use PowerAmp, you'll need to pay a few Euro's, but that player is just great! Gapless playback? Like that is a novelty! PowerAmp had Gapless playback 2 years ago already! Besides that, PowerAmp has a great Equalizer and a big deal of other settings to match it to your liking...

Just got Pixel XL how come it's not playing my M4a files?

I've been a long time android user but for the last 6 months went with the iPhone 7 plus just to try something different, long story short iPhone failed me so I decided to give the pixel XL a try. I love it but I acquired a lot of iTunes music over the past couple months and for some reason when I put them on the Pixel no matter what player I try it wont play them. I have tried Poweramp which was always a favorite, blackplayer, stock google player and nothing seems to work. Any ideas? I have googled the issue and it seems the Pixel can play M4a so what's going on?

rbtrucking said:
I've been a long time android user but for the last 6 months went with the iPhone 7 plus just to try something different, long story short iPhone failed me so I decided to give the pixel XL a try. I love it but I acquired a lot of iTunes music over the past couple months and for some reason when I put them on the Pixel no matter what player I try it wont play them. I have tried Poweramp which was always a favorite, blackplayer, stock google player and nothing seems to work. Any ideas? I have googled the issue and it seems the Pixel can play M4a so what's going on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi... Maybe a DRM issue? iTunes purchased music is protected and can only be played on a device having the same iTunes account no?
Good luck...

Ya, I thought they got rid of that years ago. I know Apple used to do that but the files work on all my other devices like computer, laptop, but I guess it's not the biggest deal. I converted them to MP3 and now they work fine.

I don't think Google Play Music (assuming that's what you're using) supports .M4a natively. You could upload them using the music manager or try a third party app. VLC tends to play just about everything.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1100462?hl=en

rbtrucking said:
Ya, I thought they got rid of that years ago. I know Apple used to do that but the files work on all my other devices like computer, laptop, but I guess it's not the biggest deal. I converted them to MP3 and now they work fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah... Strange. Still it would be better to get them working without the need of reencoding once again. It certainly kills the audio signal a bit more.
Hopefully you'll find a way to play the originals
AJZ12 said:
I don't think Google Play Music (assuming that's what you're using) supports .M4a natively. You could upload them using the music manager or try a third party app. VLC tends to play just about everything.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1100462?hl=en
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Strange, he alsp tried also Poweramp. Playstore description says it should play m4a. Apple certainly did something here...

5.1 said:
Hi... Maybe a DRM issue? iTunes purchased music is protected and can only be played on a device having the same iTunes account no?
Good luck...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In theory, only files downloaded from Apple Music streaming (.m4p files) should be affected by DRM protection. .m4a files should have no issue on Poweramp.
This doesn't mean Apple didn't do something to encrypt the .m4a files so they can only be played on Apple devices. It wouldn't surprise me. This is a big reason why I don't really like Apple products. Apple pretty much tells you how to use the device and almost force you to use it that way just to try to lock you in their ecosystem.

AJZ12 said:
In theory, only files downloaded from Apple Music streaming (.m4p files) should be affected by DRM protection. .m4a files should have no issue on Poweramp.
This doesn't mean Apple didn't do something to encrypt the .m4a files so they can only be played on Apple devices. It wouldn't surprise me. This is a big reason why I don't really like Apple products. Apple pretty much tells you how to use the device and almost force you to use it that way just to try to lock you in their ecosystem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's right boy am I getting sick of there crap! Honestly I am HUGE into music and consider myself an audiophile and get a lot of my music in either FLAC or WAV directly from CD and the iPhone was always very picky about what WAV files it would support and it doesn't support flac at all, wont even let you transfer it to the device. I've had instances where I would go to my music library and ALL the music that I hadn't bought from iTunes would just be GONE out of the blue. I googled it, and it turns out it's a very common issue and even the guys on macrumors suspect's it's a tactic by apple to get you to only use iTunes purchased music on their devices.

AJZ12 said:
In theory, only files downloaded from Apple Music streaming (.m4p files) should be affected by DRM protection. .m4a files should have no issue on Poweramp.
This doesn't mean Apple didn't do something to encrypt the .m4a files so they can only be played on Apple devices. It wouldn't surprise me. This is a big reason why I don't really like Apple products. Apple pretty much tells you how to use the device and almost force you to use it that way just to try to lock you in their ecosystem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not surprised at all. Since Poweramp is supposed to support m4a, it's definitely an issue with Apple. I remember 10 years ago when my wife had the first or second iPhone and i had to convert songs in mp3 or flac to aac or whatever format to play them. Now she uses my ex N6P :angel:
rbtrucking said:
That's right boy am I getting sick of there crap! Honestly I am HUGE into music and consider myself an audiophile and get a lot of my music in either FLAC or WAV directly from CD and the iPhone was always very picky about what WAV files it would support and it doesn't support flac at all, wont even let you transfer it to the device. I've had instances where I would go to my music library and ALL the music that I hadn't bought from iTunes would just be GONE out of the blue. I googled it, and it turns out it's a very common issue and even the guys on macrumors suspect's it's a tactic by apple to get you to only use iTunes purchased music on their devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now you're free to play whatever you want on your phone :good:
(Except original m4a Apple files <-- sarcasm )
Cheers...

rbtrucking said:
That's right boy am I getting sick of there crap! Honestly I am HUGE into music and consider myself an audiophile and get a lot of my music in either FLAC or WAV directly from CD and the iPhone was always very picky about what WAV files it would support and it doesn't support flac at all, wont even let you transfer it to the device. I've had instances where I would go to my music library and ALL the music that I hadn't bought from iTunes would just be GONE out of the blue. I googled it, and it turns out it's a very common issue and even the guys on macrumors suspect's it's a tactic by apple to get you to only use iTunes purchased music on their devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And with the development of USB-C and the state of modern hardware, lossless file formats will actually be lossless on phones instead of just a waste of space. Most apps converted lossless files to lower bitrates while playing and if the app didn't, the DAC did.
It's ridiculous. In my eyes, Apple looks like they are making desperate attempts to hold onto as many customers as possible by making it as inconvenient as possible to switch to a different platform. iOS is lagging behind Android now in settings menu organization and overall functionality, and I think they know it. I'd use to have to root a phone just to do some of the things an iPhone could do until the OG Moto X, which was the last phone I rooted and that was only for hotspot access when I had my original unlimited Verizon plan. I have lost interest in root access on my daily driver now that Android does everything I need plus more. I thought I'd root my 6P once I experienced a limitation but there wasn't ever a time with the 6P that Android let me down (besides a software-based noise canceling mic issue but Google replaced the phone for free because of it). I didn't even root the only Nexus phone I ever owned and still haven't seen the need to root the Pixel.
I was using my friend's old iPhone while I was waiting for my replacement 6P to arrive and ran into so many inconveniences that I kept asking my friend if I could jailbreak it. He didn't want me to so let's just say it was a horrible experience. You can't even put the cursor in the middle of a word to correct a typing mistake unless you use the magnifying glass long-click thing or the spacebar slide feature on the keyboard. On paper, the functionality of iOS and Android is "closer than ever" but the little things make a huge difference.
P.S. iTunes is absolute garbage. It's the modern day Windows Media Player. I feel bad that iPhone users are basically forced to use it to transfer music from a computer to the phone.