Develop Bugs

Gapless playback in Zune??

Hi all
Had an HD7 for the last week, great phone. I've found a couple of little bugs (eg if your browsing in IE and go back to the home tab, use some other apps then go back to IE, theres no way of going back in the browser as the back button just takes you back to the home page or previous app?)
Anyway, onto my question, does the Zune player on the phone support gapless playback of tracks? I've got a lot of albums of live concerts etc that would normally playback seemlessly on my old iPhone but have gaps when played on the Zune. Couldnt find any options anywhere to change it. Does anyone know if this is supported or not?
Thanks!

I know gapless is supported on the ZuneHD. But I know even then some people had issues in getting it to work, and it is all based on how your albums are tagged in the ID3. Once I get my HD7 I can confirm if albums that played fine gapless on the ZuneHD do so on the HD7 and i'll inspect the ID3 to figure out what the appropriate tags are.

Thanks! All my music is imported into Zune from iTunes so maybe iTunes hasn't tagged the music properly? Or Zune can't read the itunes tags?

Gapless works on Zune HD as long as there is no DRM...thus, if you bring your own tracks with no DRM, gapless works perfectly...however, if you have a zune pass, funny enough, gapless does not work...
This is a known issue for many months but MS has no fixed it so far...(people seemed more upset at the lack of apps for the Zune HD than fixing core music related issues)...

Thanks. I seem to get this from my own ripped CD's as well as music bought from iTunes and music from my Zune subscription.
I might try re-ripping one of my CD's in Zune and see if it works.
Gapless playback seems to be a massive missing feature of an audio device?!

A big one for me is this. I've got 200 or so live/dj mix albums, so not having this feature has pretty much made my new HD7 worthless to me.
All my music is in .M4A format and was ripped/converted in iTunes. I also tried ripping a mix CD to .MP3 format, but got the same result.
I just don't understand why MS haven't implemented it. If there are no plans to add this, then my HD7 will have to be returned.

I know this is an old thread, but I've noticed something when using bluetooth and my music...
I use my HD2 (WinMo7) when I'm down the gym and a lot of my mix tracks often jump at the mix point, some even have some stuttering...
However I've noticed that when I'm streaming via bluetooth to my car stereo, the same tracks don't jump or stutter and play virtually continous. There is only the odd tiny space on some tracks...

Beatles USB gapless
My Beatles, Abbey Road Remastered 2nd side sounds great on Zune on WP7. Very slight breaks between songs, but nothing objectionable to me.
Make sure that when you select the music, you select the Play All or Play Album selection. Don't try to play the 1st track and expect things to go uninterrupted.
Definitely the Abbey Road playback is different than the first side, which has song-to-song gaps.
Enjoy Windows Phone 7!
-e

I've been digging around recently in trying to get some gapless in WP7.
I then finally notice that the Zune PC software doesn't even do gapless! The gap is shorter, I suspect due to the more powerful hardware, but it's still not gapless.
Windows Media Player seems to emit a slight click
Winamp and Foobar both seamlessly transition to the next song.
But, back to WP7. It's now apparent that either MS needs to fix this (they didn't in Mango, so they probably won't for a while, if at all), or a third party app that doesn't use Zune could be created, (or ported).

Audio Playback Variable Speed app

Hello,
There's one function on Android crucial to me that I have yet to find a perfect solution for, and that's variable speed audio playback. I'm a big audio podcast fan (using the excellent Pocket Casts app), and to get through hours upon hours of podcasts I like to play them back at a faster speed than normal. 2x speed, for example, sounds absolutely fine (not quite Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks fast) and as you would surmise cuts the normal podcast play time in half.
Pocket Casts uses an external app called Presto Sound Library to accomplish variable speed functionality, but this app appears to have been abandoned. The user forum, for example, hasn't been posted to since August, and the developer hasn't got back to my emails. Basically, the problem is that if you get a phone call when listening to something in Pocket Casts/Presto, upon completion of the call Pocket Casts force closes (although sometimes the audio just keeps on going uncontrollable). I've figured out via a helpful Play Store comment that force-closing Presto saves you from having to reboot, but needless to say this bug is extremely annoying. Problem started in Ice Cream Sandwich as I recall having it also on my CM9 Galaxy S II.
Anyone else out there have an alternative app for variable playback that works better on Jellybean? Cheers

kitecarl said:
Hello,
There's one function on Android crucial to me that I have yet to find a perfect solution for, and that's variable speed audio playback. I'm a big audio podcast fan (using the excellent Pocket Casts app), and to get through hours upon hours of podcasts I like to play them back at a faster speed than normal. 2x speed, for example, sounds absolutely fine (not quite Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks fast) and as you would surmise cuts the normal podcast play time in half.
Pocket Casts uses an external app called Presto Sound Library to accomplish variable speed functionality, but this app appears to have been abandoned. The user forum, for example, hasn't been posted to since August, and the developer hasn't got back to my emails. Basically, the problem is that if you get a phone call when listening to something in Pocket Casts/Presto, upon completion of the call Pocket Casts force closes (although sometimes the audio just keeps on going uncontrollable). I've figured out via a helpful Play Store comment that force-closing Presto saves you from having to reboot, but needless to say this bug is extremely annoying. Problem started in Ice Cream Sandwich as I recall having it also on my CM9 Galaxy S II.
Anyone else out there have an alternative app for variable playback that works better on Jellybean? Cheers
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I'm having the same problem!!
Have you found a better alternative? I especially have the problem when listening to my bluetooth headphones, lots of times the podcast just keeps playing uncontrollably. I've started rejecting calls just to quit the podcast, and then call people back, which is terrible! The whole program is quite glitchy and seems to freeze at the end of every podcast--for me at least.
I love the program interface, etc. I just wish it worked better.
I haven't been able to find anything else really. What was the tip about force quitting presto? It doesn't show up in my task manager, am I missing something?
Thanks!

I use Dice Player https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inisoft.mediaplayer.a to play lectures at increased playback speed. Works great for that purpose. I dont think it has a podcast downloader ability though, but if you have the files on your phone, this app works great for variable playback

Fire TV Remote Microphone - Helpful Anomaly?

I recently upgraded my Fire TV to the latest 4K model. I was delighted to find this model could be easily rooted (thanks to XDA devs), but was disappointed that the microphone on the remote control (which I otherwise love for its simplicity) is still rendered essentially useless outwith Amazon content. What a total waste of an opportunity, with Android TV etc expanding every day!
Anyway, I was testing out an app I recently purchased called SoundSeeder Music Player which allows you to play back audio via multiple devices around your home (like Sonos). I have installed the Play Store on my Fire TV (following the instructions laid out here and at AFTV News) so the SoundSeeder app installed and seemed to be working well (it didn't work prior to installing the Play Store). The odd thing I noticed, however, was this: There is a Mic/AUX Mode within the SoundSeeder player, which allows you to stream a live feed from your microphone. I didn't think it would do anything, of course, since the Fire TV doesn't have a built-in mic like a smartphone, but I started the service anyway and noticed that the graphical audio levels seemed to be registering incoming sounds, so I tried pressing the microphone button on the Fire TV remote and, amazingly, it registered my voice (with a faint echo) for as long as I pressed the microphone button down. I did this for about a minute before trying to stop the service, but doing so crashed the Fire TV and I had to restart.
Does the fact that this happened indicate that there may be a way to utilise the Fire TV remote as a microphone for other apps?
The only pertinent thread I could find on XDA - http://goo.gl/21crhi - identified that one of the files being utilised by the Fire TV to control the microphone was "com.amazon.vizzini.apk", but there was no final conclusion as to how it might be utilised. The developer provided a small RAR file (search.rar) for download, but I wasn't sure what to do with it (flash it?) and I'm not keen on disabling key Amazon services, which was also advised.
It would be fantastic if someone could develop an app or a simple method of registering the microphone as a regular smartphone mic so it could be used for Google Now or Android TV or even as a wireless microphone in an audio application. I'm sure a lot of people have been over this, but I thought it was worth mentioning in case this anomaly opens up any new options as regards making the built-in mic a thing of beauty rather than the irritating, pointless feature it is now (those of us in the UK can't even make use of Alexa).

Chromecast Audio Review from a Squeezebox User

As title says, this is going to be a Chromecast Audio review from the point of view of a Squeezebox user. As such, it will mostly be comparing CCA and Squeezebox. I'm also hoping some other CCA users see this and might be able to chime in on some of the shortcomings I'm having with CCA.
Overall, I'm liking CCA better than Squeezebox. CCA sync is dead on, and I have 6 rooms going. My squeezebox setup was a mix of PC and android devices running various squeezebox player software, and the sync would always be off for the first few seconds of a song. Occasionally, audio would get out of sync and starting and stopping playback was necessary. I listen to a lot of podcasts, some of which I pay for, and Squeezebox doesn't support HTTPS for podcasts. CCA is so easy to use for podcasts, it's increased my already high amount of podcast listening by quite a bit. Another benefit of CCA and podcasts, since I'm using the same app I listen to podcasts with on my phone, playback is synced. I used to listen to part of a podcast in the car on the way home from work, then have to scrub through podcast on squeezebox to find the spot I was at. Not the largest inconvenience in the world, but it's nice that I don't have to do it any more.
Now on to the shortcomings of CCA. Two things that worked with Squeezebox that are important features to me were mixing local files with tracks from Spotify and Last.fm Scrobbling. I have a large music library and quite a bit of it isn't available on most streaming services. Google Music let's you upload your local library and stream it, so I'm trying to match the Spotify/Local file functionality this way. So far, it's working pretty well, but that leads to the scrobbling issues. If I play music from my phone, the app seems to time out and stop live tracking what is playing, thus the scrobbling app I have also starts to miss playing tracks. This happens even when the phone is plugged in to charge. As a work around, I'll play music from my PC using Google Play music on chrome with a chrome extension to scrobble. This works great, except now the only thing I can control with my phone is play/pause and volume. If I want to add tracks to playlist, change songs, etc, gotta walk over to the PC. With squeezebox, I could control the music with any device, and switch between devices doing the controlling with no issue.
There are programs, like Kodi and Emby, that have the ability to cast music. I'm pretty sure they also have plugins for Last.fm. So they would seem to solve scrobbling and controlling with multiple devices. I'm not 100% clear on whether they can play local files as well as tracks from Spotify or Google Music (or any other streaming service for that matter) on the same playlist. I think my next project is going to be setting up Kodi or Emby and seeing if I can get the functionality I want.
Another minor thing about CCA I'm not liking is that you can't control volumes until after playback is started. If I'm playing music in the evening before heading out with friends, I'll turn the volume up. Then in the morning, if I want to play something to get me moving, I have to hit play and then pause as fast as possible so my eardrums aren't blown out. I'm going to have to start teaching myself to turn down the volume when I stop playing music...

I have my personal music library on a NAS and play it all through BubbleUPnP App on a range of android devices. Best option I have found for anybody in the family being able to control all the music collection from any device.

I'm trying to match the Spotify o download music from insta-downloader.online l file functionality this way. So far, it's working pretty well, but that leads to the scrobbling issues. If I play music from my phone and I heard very nice in my app the music

Yeah this is App https://insta-downloader.online/ on a range of android devices, In my opinion is very nice

Question Spotify wear os app Vs YouTube music

Hi guys,
I would like to know your opinion. I'm currently using YouTube music on my watch, which is pretty decent but I was wondering how Spotify performs in the pixel watch. I only tried it a couple of days and not sure which one is better in the wear os. I like Spotify but had the feeling that YouTube music wear os is better (I use the pixel watch to listen to music a lot when training).
What do you think?

Hi,
Both Spotify and YouTube Music are popular music streaming services that are available on the Wear OS platform. Both apps are functional on the Pixel Watch and offer similar features such as offline playback, the ability to create playlists and control playback using the watch. However, in terms of performance, it really comes down to personal preference. Spotify is known for its vast library of songs, while YouTube Music offers a large number of official music videos, live performances and covers. You may prefer one over the other depending on the type of music you listen to and the features that are most important to you. I suggest trying out both apps for a longer period of time to see which one better suits your needs.

Thanks for your reply. In terms of the service itself I like Spotify but I have the feeling that the YT music app for wear os perform better, not sure if Im right.

Sorry for the late reply, but I might be able to help here. Main differences that I have seen is spotify has more control, you can also change playlists on other devices while YT music. Also if you have now playing on your watch face, such as me, it will show the album art on the watch face while spotify does not do that. I personally like spotify more, and reply to me if you want screenshots.
(Edit): I haven't seen as much storage combustion with both, but spotify seems to be better with storage. That shouldnt be a problem though, I have the 500 song max for dynamic songs on yt music and every single playlist i have, adding up to around 400 songs. At the moment YT music takes up around 2Gb while spotify takes up around 1.3GB. I haven't noticed any music quality depreciation with my WF-1000XM4s and my WH-1000XM2s, but for some reason the Bluetooth isint the great with my WF-1000XM4s and it sounds kind of garbled. I have no idea if someone would be able to help me with this. It has recently gone away though.

I'll give you my experience with Spotify as I don't use YT music.
My issues with Spotify and the watch are:
Due to the Watch shutting down WiFi when connected to the phone, the app must be open on your phone or it will fail to find other playback devices you might be using or want to use unless they are in BT range.
Nearly impossible to search or create playlists due to the small keyboard which is almost impossible to use. Voice Command is you only real option.
If you pause a playlist from the watch it does sometimes resume playback on the watch instead of the device that was playing when you paused.
I think a lot of this has to do with the Watch shutting down WiFi whenever a BT connection is present. And I hope and wish Google will eventually allow us to override this battery saving feature when needed so that the Watch can control any device connected via WiFi without having to go through the phone to detect devices.

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Enough said!
-Regards: Badger50