Develop Bugs

Playback problems (music, inc. ringtone and video)

Hi.
My Desire is now a couple of weeks old, and so far I'm loving it. But I've bumped into a weird and really annoying problem. Occasionally it stops play any kind of music (ringtones, mp3s, etc). Videos stop working too. Unmounting/Remounting and/or powering off/on the phone SOMETIMES works, but not always, and before long, it returns to the state where no music can be played. It worked perfectly the first week or so, but then this happened.
I use a 8Gb Transcend MicroSD card in it. But it can't really be the card (at least 100%.) As it is ONLY the music (and video files), mp3 still show up on the player, all tags and album art show up properly. Camera works. and so does downloading and using different files (PDFs, roms for emulators etc.) everything else works, but when it's time to output something that makes a sound, it doesn't work. Not with built-in music player, not with 3rd party apps or widgets. (tried several Video Player, Ringdroid and MixZing come to mind).
Strangely, "Musical Lite" plays the piano sounds ok, but I'm assuming it has it's own playback engine/decoder.
I'm assuming anything that uses the internal APIs for sound does not work.
I can connect the phone to a computer, mount the SD card and play the videos/music just fine (and access all other card content).
I have an EU version of Desire:
Model A8181
firmware 2.1-update1
Kernel 2.6.29-97da29ed
Build 1.15.405.4 CL155070 release-keys
I'd appreciate any pointers or suggestions of what to try/test/tell.
EDIT: Just to clarify. It's only music. Sound effects (from keys for example) work all the time, calls work as supposed. It's only music (incl. ringtone) that doesn't work at all.

Anyone? I've tried removing and re-inserting the sd card, but it doesn't help. Also as built-in ringtones do not work either, it is probably not the card at fault.

have you checked the ringer volume and the media volume in settings. otherwise get it replaced or repaired under warranty

Every separate volume is set to full. I forgot to say that everytime I try to access a music file (player, ringdroid. But not in settings when selecting ringtone, or when the phone should actually ring) I get an error "unable to play this type of music file". Videos don't give that error, they just don't work. No errors.

[Q] Bluetooth streaming

Hi guys, I did a search and I can't find anything on this, if it's already been answered I do apologize. I've got a kenwood stereo in my car that connects to the phone and streams music over bluetooth. I've used this on my last 2 phones (Samsung Epic, and HTC EVO) with no problems. Now with the Galaxy SII, i can't stream music. It will connect and do voice calls no problem, but when i try to play music, it just skips through every song on the list and then freezes. The only time it worked was the first time I connected it to my stereo. Has anyone else had this problem? Since I use Google Music, all of my music is streamed and I have to do it through bluetooth, this has become quite a pain!

i'm on a clarion CZ 509 no problem streaming from my phone to the car
it does it automatically as soon as the car is in the phone range
which some times is kinda annoying, when you don't want it to auto stream

Yeah, mine will connect automatically and phone calls and dialing work with no issues. It's just streaming music. I'm going to try and delete my phone from the deck and re-connect it, hopefully that works. I'm trying to avoid having to replace my phone or do a hard reset.

my deck can save up to 5 phones pairing
so i just assigned a new profile to the SGS2 when i got it
the other ones registered are my old I9000, XT720 and Nexus S
there is another trick you can use
in the phone in the BT profile after pairing, hold the profile for 2 sec, it will pop up a sub menu, in which you can choose both option or only 1 of them
in which case it's BT audio, or BT phone
so play around with that and see
another thing which i don't know if your deck allows you to do is to Pair the phone as a Media device, or Phone device
so in my deck can can pair the phone to be only as a phone device, or only as a media device, or both

I tried messing around with those options, however it either disconnects the phone completely (unchecking the phone box) or just plays the music through the phone (unchecking the media box). I tried streaming another song through the stock music app, and that worked, so I think it may be google music itself. I had downloaded the ICS version, so now i'm trying to downgrade back to current. I'll have to check to see if works later, as now it won't connect to my account to grab all of my music. Thanks for the replies though, I'll keep this updated incase anyone else has the same issues.

now that you mention it, that might be it
the DRM license thing kicking in
i just found that was causing some random crash on my phone as well, removed music 4.0 and installed another music player, now everything is back to normal
i use jukefox to play music, it automatically creates everything that is necessary, like albums, auto get the missing album covers, etc, etc...
1 button does it all
then you just pick or randomly choose what you want to hear, easy music browsing for when you are driving

Yeah it's definitely a google music issue on my phone. The stock player works fine, but that doesn't help me, I keep all of my music uploaded to the google cloud, and have no way to access it right now. Even with the regular current apk I am having issues. I'll have to wait and see if they can update it for this drm issue I think. For now I'll just use the current stock player and fill up my sd card and play off of that

that's what i do
i play it off my SD card
get a 32 GB or 64 GB and you'll have plenty of space to load all your favourite albums
i keep several copies of 32 GB for different albums / movies

So just a followup to this, I did a hard reset today on my phone and it still doesn't help. Turns out, it only does this when connected through bluetooth, and it's a song that's been "made available offline". If i'm actually streaming a song, there are no issues, but any of my playlists or albums that are saved won't play through bluetooth (they will play normally however). Hopefully this can be fixed in an update through Google Music.

So, i've had this issue as well and it appears to be something to do with "shuffle".
At first I disconnected bluetooth and then started playing the music on my phone and made sure to turn ON shuffle..I then turned bluetooth back on in my radio and once it connected...all was well. I didn't like this solution and decided I needed to find an alternative.
I then downloaded the MIUI music app (which has always been my favorite) and the music streaming is working normally now

Was this an issue that you experienced with the google music beta app, or just the standard music player that came with the phone? Mine has only had issues on the music beta app, and it didn't matter if i had shuffle on or not. I've been using the standard music app that came installed on the phone and have had no issues since. On another note, does anyone know if you can see album art through bluetooth? I'm able to get song , artist, and album info, but I've never seen album art come through yet. I'm not sure if this is something bluetooth can handle or not.

Stock app. I just installed music beta and it seems to work fine like miui music
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA App

I take that back, music "beta" just did it to me too. Back to miui
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA App

[Q] GSM 4.0.4 Stock - Bluetooth audio delay

Hi,
Since upgrading via OTA to 4.0.4, I have noticed that bluetooth audio is terribly delayed - by up to second or so. This makes watching films over bluetooth very offputting to say the least, and the same for playing games.
This does appear to be new to 4.0.4 - since updating I hadn't used my headset for a bit, so have only just noticed it, but I have tested with a game I used extensively (Dead Space) that pre-update was fine, and now appears to suffer considerable delay. I have tested via two different bluetooth audio systems too.
I have not yet tried a factory reset - is this the next step, or have others noticed the issue despite this? Has anyone else noticed this issue at all?

As a follow up to this, a factory reset hasn't helped.
Curiously, youtube vids seem ok, but nothing else...

It depends I have to laptops when I connect to one there seems to be a delay. On the other one the delay is barely noticeable.. it depends really
Sent from my Samsung GNexus <3

Ok, just to add to the confusion, YouTube vids are fine, but games/DVD rips aren't.
I'm now wondering if this is a load-related issue?

Ok, still more information;
Whan playing a video using MXPlayer, if I use H/W decode, everything is fine. As soon as I switch to S/W decode I get the delay.
I have also tested in GTA3, Dead Space and SpeedX 3D, all of which worked fine prior to 4.0.4, and all of which now have an audio lag.

This is almost certainly an issue with 4.0.4 as a friend has just upgraded his Xoom to 4.0.4 and now has the exact same behaviour I do.
As such, I can't imagine this will get a quick fix, but I do want to raise awareness of the issue.

Same here
Does sound like a 4.0 problem.
I have been getting the same thing since upgrading my Sony Tablet.

[Q] Sound stops working intermittently

T-mobile stock lollipop ROM
when I listen to music or play video it works for some time then suddenly sound stops working, when I close app and restart the app, it works fine for some time.
when I look at the player it's not frozen I can see the timer working and in the case of video, I can see the video fine just no sound.
it does not matter where the music/video is stored, it happens to files on both internal memory or MicroSD card.
it's gotten worse after lollipop update. it happened on kitkat rom but didn't happen frequently.
it's like it ran out of memory because, when I play music, it plays longer if I don't do web browsing. if i do web browsing, it stops working a lot sooner. but when I check memory usage, it says it got 1.3gb free.
anyone else have problem like this? and know solution?

Yes, I have the same problem ( LG G3 AT&T ) and the same temporary fixes. Headphone output however seems immune, or at least much less afflicted. No permanent solution found so far. Since stopping and restarting the audio source app (YouTube etc) is a temporary cure, I infer that this is a software, not a hardware, problem.

MP3 VBR and ABR playback problems

Hi there,
I noticed problems with some of my podcasts. They would restart from the beginning when I tried to skip within the track or the player would crash and skip to the next track. I discovered that this only happens with MP3s that are encoded with either VBR (variable bitrate) or ABR (average bitrate) settings, and it is happening with every player (play music, music, pocketcasts) I tried. I converted some of those podcasts using constant bitrate (CBR) and everything worked fine then. I found an old thread (https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8154) describing pretty much exactly my problem.
I tried the same MP3 on my old S4, and that seems to be able to deal with the variable bitrate just fine.
Can anyone try to verify this? There is an ABR MP3 here which gives me those problems. If you skip towards the end it will start playing from the beginning ("Hey everybody this is Sam")
Cheers.

I just played your mp3 straight from the default Files app on my (stock) OP3 and tested two players: the default Music player and Google Play Music. Both were able to skip around just fine. Are you playing the file from a music player or from a podcast app? (Edit: I see where you said which players you tested. Hmm.)

The problem seems to happen after skipping to somewhere past the halfway mark of the file. I just tested it on a colleague's OP3 (3.2.4, all stock) and it happens there as well.
Funnily enough, I just listened to a podcast today when the host mentioned that one of the listeners wrote in with this exact same problem. A quick look into their backcatalog revealed them switching from CBR to VBR a couple of episodes ago.

I don't know what I was doing the first time when I tested, but yeah, now that I'm looking for it, I definitely see the issue. The very first time I played it this time, it auto skipped to the end and would have played the next track in the queue if one existed. From that point on, skipping around did a variety of things. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it played the audio from the very beginning ("Hey everybody, this is Sam") but the slider indicated I was still like 66% of the way through - not at the beginning. Very strange. I'm on the latest 3.2.6, btw.
When you're encoding to VBR, are you using any switches / arguments (e.g. --alt-preset standard)? If so, maybe try something else?

I haven't done any encoding myself (but for back converting some VBR tracks to CBR), I only noticed it in a couple of podcasts I was following, and the thing they had in common was NOT using CBR. I don't know if a certain switch in the VBR/ABR encoding settings might be the problem, but what I find more worrying is that my former sony xperia z5c running marshmallow as well as my s4 active running lollipop do not have this problem. It would be interesting if someone with CM or another ROM but stock could try this to see if it is a ROM specific problem.

A podcast I listen to (The Bayesian Conspiracy) has some episodes as CBR and some as VBR. All of the VBR episodes have issues trying to seek past half-way. This happens on ALL methods of playback that I've tried (streaming, Pocket Cast, Google built-in player, Podcast Addict) on my OnePlus 3.
Found an article ("The First and last word on CBR vs VBR questions" - sorry can't create links yet) talks about why VBR is bad, in general and why podcasts shouldn't use it anymore, but it sure does suck that OxygenOS doesn't handle this properly (because not every podcast is encoded with CBR).

I have contacted the podcasts which I discovered used VBR and ABR and so far I was lucky in that they switched back to CBR, but that can't be the solution.

I have this problem with my config: DailyTechNewsShow with either BeyondPod or PodcastAddict, same problem when reaching 2/3 of the time.
Using OnePlus3 stock with rom 3.2.8.

2 years later, i have the same issue on a Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite. i guess it won't be fixed any time soon...
does anyone know a place where we could report this bug to Xiaomi?
AFAIU, the bug is in their playback code, not in Android. i listen to podcasts a lot, some of them use VBR, and it's annoying me to no end...