After searching around about the Imageon coprocessor on the TyTN, I decided to experiment a little. If the TyTN can do .mp4 and .m4a files in hardware, I converted some audio files over to .m4a and see if there was any performance improvement (in Windows Media Player). And there definitely was! General device usage was very quick while playing; I couldn't even notice a difference with or without playing. So, I converted all my music over to .m4a's.
However, the story doesn't end here. My testing was using just the onboard speaker. When I got on the train for my commute to work, I started up my A2DP headset to listen to some tunes. Funny thing, though. They started playing through the onboard speaker! I could hear device sounds through the bluetooth, and if I played an mp3 or a wma, I could hear it through the headset too. But no go on the .m4a/.mp4 over A2DP. No matter what I did, it wouldn't play through anything but the onboard speaker (or wired headset, of course).
Thinking about this, it actually makes sense. If the playback is hardware accelerated, it's probably not designed to go through an A2DP process, which is complete software. The Imageon chip probably passes decoded sound and video directly to the hardware speaker, without going through a software sublayer. I imagine this is by design, as it keeps performance pretty high. MP3's and WMA's are decoded in software without the imageon, so it processes like any other windows sound, and can go through A2DP.
So, there's a bit of a tradeoff here. Do I give up A2DP and all the AVRCP goodness I've come to love at the cost of performance, or do I live with the performance hit of WMAs? Admittedly, audio was ok before, but i've never been happy with the video performance of the TyTN with WMVs. With MP4s, though, it works great. Hmm...decisions, decisions.
Oh, and I've tried TCPMP too. It plays through A2DP, but with the same slowdown. I suspect this is because it doesn't know how to use the Imageon correctly, and is decoding in software too.
cjohnson6965 said:
After searching around about the Imageon coprocessor on the TyTN, I decided to experiment a little. If the TyTN can do .mp4 and .m4a files in hardware, I converted some audio files over to .m4a and see if there was any performance improvement (in Windows Media Player). And there definitely was! General device usage was very quick while playing; I couldn't even notice a difference with or without playing. So, I converted all my music over to .m4a's.
However, the story doesn't end here. My testing was using just the onboard speaker. When I got on the train for my commute to work, I started up my A2DP headset to listen to some tunes. Funny thing, though. They started playing through the onboard speaker! I could hear device sounds through the bluetooth, and if I played an mp3 or a wma, I could hear it through the headset too. But no go on the .m4a/.mp4 over A2DP. No matter what I did, it wouldn't play through anything but the onboard speaker (or wired headset, of course).
Thinking about this, it actually makes sense. If the playback is hardware accelerated, it's probably not designed to go through an A2DP process, which is complete software. The Imageon chip probably passes decoded sound and video directly to the hardware speaker, without going through a software sublayer. I imagine this is by design, as it keeps performance pretty high. MP3's and WMA's are decoded in software without the imageon, so it processes like any other windows sound, and can go through A2DP.
So, there's a bit of a tradeoff here. Do I give up A2DP and all the AVRCP goodness I've come to love at the cost of performance, or do I live with the performance hit of WMAs? Admittedly, audio was ok before, but i've never been happy with the video performance of the TyTN with WMVs. With MP4s, though, it works great. Hmm...decisions, decisions.
Oh, and I've tried TCPMP too. It plays through A2DP, but with the same slowdown. I suspect this is because it doesn't know how to use the Imageon correctly, and is decoding in software too.
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Click to collapse
Very interesting post and findings. You may find the upcoming Coreplayer 1.0 from the devlopers of TCPMP and Betaplayer of interset to you, as they will be processing everything through software only and claim that they will be releasing the best multi- platform media player ever released: WM, Symbian, Palm etc, XP/Vista Desktop player and Mac Osx. I think you get my meaning. But I for one am looking forward to this as the Imageon 2282 Co-processor is limited in support for various fileformats anyway, and now with your findings, it appears the benefits of it hardware accelerated media cannot be enjoyed over A2DP...man this sucks!!
Anyway, check out this link & hopefully everything will look much brighter in the near future:
http://www.corecodec.com/forum/index.php?topic=3193.50
http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=139390
Interesting app...I'll definitely be looking forward to it. In the meantime, I found kind of a half-assed solution that works ok for me. I use the wired headset (spliced so I can use real headphones, of course) and I'm using my Itech clip. I pair it up with the Tytn, and AVRCP works within windows media player! So, I get the hardware benefit of the Imageon, and the AVRCP to pause, go forward and backward. Volume even works too! Certainly not the absolute optimum, but it was never the wires that bothered me so much. Works great for me!
Glad u found a workaround. Still, bloody ridiculous that we have to physically adapt things on what is supposed to be cutting edge technology!!
mackaby007 said:
Glad u found a workaround. Still, bloody ridiculous that we have to physically adapt things on what is supposed to be cutting edge technology!!
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BTW, with an alternate player (if you only need audio), you can have full AVRCP support without cables. (TCPMP isn't compatible with WM5 it seems; some other players are).
I've written a complete article on this at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=279459 ; it contains a LOT of never-before-published tips and tricks, AVRCP -wise.
Well, doesn't this thread just solve the "Why does WMP play some music out the speaker" question! Thanks, this was very aggravating to me. Most of my music is mp4a (AAC) encoded so I thought that it was a global bug (WMP won't stream music over A2DP). Imagine my surprise when I fired up an mp3 and the damn thing worked
Monday, this might all be moot, however, if CorePlayer actually can do AVRCP. I'm hoping this will be the case since Picard and I exchanged emails on AVRCP back in June. I pointed him to the mortplayer thread and hopefully he did some successful lurking there...
In a way though, CorePlayer will be a bit of a disappointment because their out-of-the-gate solution to the ATI Imageon dhilema will be "no Imageon support". ATI based acceleration is quite impressive when it actually works.
you think ati would bother with coding a player for support, they have the source code after all ,kinda like macromedia with their flash player for ppc, I don't get why they don't benefit from making a player and selling it, instead we're left with 3'rd party players from under developed companies.
Playing with the hardware acceleration has got me thinking, and I'm going to try some experimenting. As you know, mp4 is just a container format, and can house different video/audio codecs. I'm curious as to what exactly has been implemented. LE-AAC seems supported, but I'm going to try to convert some to HE-AAC and see if that has an effect on processor. With video, mpeg4 is probably supported, but what about h.264? I use my TyTN as kind of a PMP, so I'd like to get the best quality I can get out of it.
I'll start some experimenting tonight (watching CPU load on the TyTN) and post my results here!
tcpmp works fine on my universal so is compatable with wm05
Ok, Mpeg4 is definitely hardware accelerated, and h.264 is flat out not supported. A h.264 file encoded as an mp4 wouldn't play in windows media player. The .mp4 files take a while to load up (15-20sec or so), but once they do I could play at full speed, and jump around to any poing within the video with no slowdown. I encoded up to 768k video/128k audio. The higher bitrate I used, the longer it took to load up, but once they were loaded they played flawlessly.
AAC is a little different. If you've read up on types of AAC encoding, there's LE-AAC and HE-AAC. HE is the later standard, and gets better compression at similar bitrates. It's also backward compatible, so LE-AAC players can still play HE-AAC players, but it can't interpret the higher efficiency algorithm and quality is reduced. I can say with some confidence that the player only supports LE-AAC. Both types of files played, but the quality of HE-AAC files (both encoded at the same bitrate) was definitely reduced.
Now, with a proper version of Coreplayer that supports the Imageon, some interesting possibilities open up. The imageon chip does support h.264, and HE-AAC isn't much different either. Once we get version 1.1, or whatever, then we should be able to get the holy grail of Imageon acceleration in most codecs, plus the benefit of bluetooth A2DP streaming. I believe this will make the device much more usable during A2DP, as the only thing the CPU will have to do is A2DP; audio decoding will be left to the Imageon. I hope they can get this to work soon!
I hope I can get the video to forward/rewind/ fullscreen /back without going haywire soon
Hi, I have been looking for a discussions on HE-AAC in this forum for months and finally found yours! To bad though, it is on the Tytn, I am using the good old wizard and HE-AAC is playing well via TCPMP(with the AAC plugin), so well that I converted all my CDs to HE-AAC(in m4a containers).
Just some questions for you:
1) When playing in WMP, are the songs(in LE-AAC) playing in stereo? From what I know and experience, the songs only play in mono in the wizard... So, has the hardware acceleration in the Tytn enable playing in stereo? Cool!!
2) I encode my songs at 16kbps(HE-AAC) though and they are great but all the effort seems to be wasted as I cannot really use A2DP on the wizard as the codecs that I use(be it mp3 or HE-AAC) plays with distortion. The only solution I have now is to use MSI Blueplayer which gives superb quality via bluetooth BUT only MP3s, which I have "happily" dumped a few months ago... sigh...
BTW, is the bta2dp.dll on the Tytn the same files as the used for the Tornado hack?
Related
Any searches on audio quality return phone call quality.
What about the audio quality, judged against a stand-along mp3 player, using a good pair of headphones (e.g. Etymotic Research, Sennheiser 580's)?
(No comments about Bluetooth audio, please. The current choices aren't anywhere near the two phones listed above...)
Is the output powerful enough? Flat frequency response? Low noise?
I was hoping that, with an 8525 + 4GB microSD, I could dump my current phone AND my flash mp3 player...
What sounds good to you for a MP3 player? There is no way any phone in the market can sound as good as a standalone player.
Why not? It all depends on the choice of components. I can imagine that the analogue-to-digital convertor chip in the Hermes is better than that in many cheap and regular standalone mp3 players.
You have to test to make sure though, and then there's personal preference...
check SONY ERICSSON W800i
check SONY ERICSSON W800i
i think all mp3 players are just like the built in mp3 players on your phone. I'm using my xda trion with logitech headphones and the bass and audio is thumping man! I swear, i see no difference from my friend's ipod video, my logitech earphones give me all the bass and treble and whatever else u can think off, it's awesome! depending on the mp3 (quality etc), when i listen to really good downloaded songs, i feel like i'm hearing it live! it's a matter of earphones/headphones man! whatever ur mp3/ipod/whatever is, if they got crappy earphones/headphones, u'll get crappy sound, if u use ur hermes with good quality earphones/headphones, i swear u'll enjoy ur audio experience
Good application to use
A good application to use is pocket player by conduits. Costs a couple of bucks off handango, but with the skin of version 2.8(available on their sight) it is soooo easy to use. I can use it with out a stylus. You can't listen to more than 100 mp3s in a week. Sure you probably won't be able to store your entire library on the pda, but it is so convienient. Plus, if you have a pda/phone, you won't miss a call at the gym!
Check out conduits pocket player though... make sure to get the skin of version 2.8 or 2.0 on their website.
Short answer.. No
I have a few different sets of decent headphones (Shure e2c and e3c, and Grado's SR80's) and the phone doesn't sound anywhere near as good as my iRiver.
I use my Jasjam as my music player and I find it great. When a call comes in the music pauses and then when your done it starts no stopping you MP3 player then answering your phone all just one simple operation. I find it great!
i also picked up the 8525 after my dell jukebox's headset jack started having problems and causing undesireable amounts of static. loved that player, had it for many years, replaced HD to give it a few more gigs of space, and i have absolutely no complaints about the 8525 as an mp3 player. i use headphones all the time and i havent had any problems with it.
the phone slows down a little bit when using BT and windows media, but a lot of the time i'll use the standard headphones and it runs fine. its real nice to be able to have the music pause automatically so you can take a call
4gig isnt as much as a lot of mp3 players, ie i used to have a 20g, but as long as your a little more selective in your songs you can still virtually have an endless supply of music (ie picking the songs you really like instead of just droppin full albums into it)
Hi,
I was hoping for a little advice from someone who has the Vario III. I am on T-mobile in the Uk and I am currently thinking of getting shut of my N95 and getting one of these. I primarily want a smartphone that has good music playback facilites as well as a good web browsing phone. The N95 can play Mp3's through headphones but the quality is noticebally not as good as on my Ipod.
Is the Vario III a good music player , it seems to have a high spec in all other areas. Also do you use the built in MP3 player or is there a better third party app that can play them. What's the battery life like when just playing back music and what is currently the largest memory card it takes.
Lastly, am I right in assuming the Vario III is the same as the Kaiser? Is it just rebranding?
Thanks for any help!
The Kaiser/TyTn II/Vario III/whatever else they want to call it has pretty decent audio out.
I personally use a stereo bluetooth headset for listening to music which is damn near perfect.
The hands free kit that comes with it has... well... what you expect from a hands free kit - fairly bad audio reproduction.
I haven't tried many of the audio adapters found in this http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=332164 thread but I'm thinking of buying one of them for when I connect it up to an external source.
Hope this helps..
I find the audio on the Kaiser to be excellent - a definate improvement over my old Blue Angel.
For example, when I have TomTom going as well as music, the voice directions mix in perfectly with the music - no crackles, no distortion etc. In fact, at times we miss the directions cause they mix in so well we think it is part of the song
I use Pocket Player as it plays WMA and has a much better interface than windows media player - all the functions can be controlled by keys, plus you do not need to make playlists, it will auto scan the tags and build a database from that.
I've got the tmobile MDA, it plays back AAC+ files great using TCPMP when not using bluetooth, but I recently got my first bluetooth stereo headset and I guess bluetooth must eat alot of cpu b/c AAC+ playback becomes choppy. Has anyone here been able to get smooth AAC+ playback using bluetooth on the HTC Wizard, and if so what did you do to make it happen? I tried another app called gsplayer but that made it even more choppy, and also tried fiddling with the buffer settings in TCPMP but made no difference.
Since I'm a bluetooth newb, I've got a couple more questions while I'm at it. Right now when I want to connect my bluetooth set to the phone I have to:
1) press comms manager button
2) click bluetooth settings
3) go to "devices" tab
4) rightclick my bluetooth headset and click "set as wireless stereo"
Now that's really a pain in ass in my opinion just to connect a headset. Is there an easier way?
BTW, is there a way to make Windows Media Player mobile to playback AAC+ files with the "+" settings? It plays them but sounds like 22 khz, I was wondering if someone has done a hack or something so it recognizes the full "spectrum" of aac+ files.
Sounds more like RFI interference to me.
Is there a wifi network nearby or is the wifi on the phone turned on at the time? Bluetooth uses the same frequency.
Pretty sure It's not an interference problem because it can pipe mp3 music over bluetooth just fine. I know aac is much more cpu intensive to decode compared with mp3. Are you able to listen to aac+ over bluetooth on this 200mhz smartphone?
FYI, there is a wifi network but I have wifi turned off on my phone.
My reason for saying that is that you said it plays back AAC just fine when not on Bluetooth. The other explanation I see being that transmitting data over bluetooth is also CPU intensive and that the two together are too much. But that's just a theory.
No, I've never tried AAC. The few AAC files I've ever gotten I immediately converted to MP3.
But you're right, mp3's play fine over bluetooth. Unless I get too close to my wireless router downstairs, then I get choppiness and skips like you mentioned. However, I do have my wifi signal strength amped up to increase the range.
I managed to solve the problem by overclocking the cpu as described in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=271012
I'm running at 252 mhz now and AAC+ playback is smooth over bluetooth and the system is stable, and feels overall snappier now. But still if anyone knows a solution w/o overclocking I'd like to hear it.
Evander said:
I managed to solve the problem by overclocking the cpu as described in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=271012
I'm running at 252 mhz now and AAC+ playback is smooth over bluetooth and the system is stable, and feels overall snappier now. But still if anyone knows a solution w/o overclocking I'd like to hear it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
switching to a player requiring less CPU for AAC+ decoding may be of help. If you followed my articles in the General forum, you already knew the answer: most importantly, Pocket Tunes. Kinoma Play may also turn out to be OK, but it consumes more CPU (but still less than TCPMP)
See http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=350786 for more info and, again, do follow my articles.
Not looking to spend the asking price for Pocket Tunes or Kinoma Play, but thanks anyway for the suggestion. In your first post you described mplayer's cpu usage as "17%(!) for HE-AAC" which seems low to me, but you also describe the player as useless. That post was dated from 2005 however, so I was wondering if things have improved in 3 years. And I think I read somewhere that the Windows Media Player mobile for WM6 has AAC+ support- is that true? I'm reasonably satisfied with TCPMP except that I can't use use the media control buttons on my bluetooth phones to control it, so I'm keeping an eye out for something better (preferably free, but I'd be willing to shell out $10 to $20 on a good app)
Heyho,
I noticed a really annoying problem the other day when I was watching an episode of The Mentalist on the bus.
First of all a list of what I used when the problem occured
- X1i flashed with Itje's Touch-IT Xperience 3.01.
- Sony Ericsson HBH-IS800 Bluetooth headset
- A 230mb 45-minute 800x480 h.264 video file, packed in an mp4 at 500kb/s.
The problem that occured is that when my bluetooth headset was connected (and playing the audio), the video would lag like hell, e.g. 1 fps or less.
When I disconnected the bluetooth headset and used my wired 3.5mm jack headset, there was not a problem at all!
How do I fix this!?
the same thing happens when i use my hbh-ds980 for watching videos..
what i did to resolve this issue was to use the Super video convertor by eRightSoft (freeware) and convert my videos to MP4 with the "Hi Quality" and "Top Quality" boxes checked in the Video options. so even if i convert videos at 23 fps at 800x480 resolution, video and audio play smoothly through A2DP.
Happens to me too, I use the Motorola SoundPilot S705 and with bluetooth headsets the video lags, while with wired headset quite smooth.
I watch Divx video encoded for PC playback with coreplayer...
update:
Does this has anything to do with the issue? the bluetooth audio bitpool:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3024995&postcount=7
i will try tonight when i get home.
I will test those advanced config settings and see what it does.
Sounds fine now, but doesn't fix my problem. Who can tell me more?
Angelusz said:
Sounds fine now, but doesn't fix my problem. Who can tell me more?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is "Fine" now? better sound? did you reduce o increase the bitpool?
I increased the bitpool and I feel the sound is better, less crackly. Still, it's not the answer to my prying question.
Hallo,
I have the same problem after download norti roms nX1i v1.03 and 1.03 Did you solve it?
czyno said:
Hallo,
I have the same problem after download norti roms nX1i v1.03 and 1.03 Did you solve it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, haven't found a fix yet. It's still too slow. Nobody had an answer..
did you ever figure this out?
i just bought a bluetooth headset (jabra bt3030) and i thought id give it a try with my x1a running the orignal rom, software version r1aa021 / customization version R2A.
As for my experience, i dont have any video lag using dvd movies converted at 640x320 768kbps/64 kbps audio and other videos converted at 480 x 320 500kbps/64 kpbs audio. movies were converted using super and also nero recode 2 and played using the media player and also the panel media player.
the only problem i have encountered once in while when starting a movie is the audio would be out of sync. the remedy that i found out for this is to pause the video and then push play again, then everything audio and video is synched up. i think it has more to do with the bluetooth, phone or headset, i dont know which but i figure this because when i start my movie, the movie starts before my bluetooth headset would like click on and start to play the audio.
i see you are using a customized rom, do you think that could be part of the problem? too high of a resolution? i didnt notice much of resolution difference between video converted at 800 x 400 and 640 x 320, 480 x ??? at the same kpbs. then again im not a big hd buff and my eyes arent as sharp as others. the smaller resolution played just as well in full screen mode. i think nero recode 2 does a pretty good job at converting videos, a lot quicker than using super and i got nero free with the cheap dvd writer i bought.
hope you got it figured out but if not, hope this helps others.
im using Nokia BH-503 stereoheadset im not having problems regarding to bluetooth and lags.
im using windows media player and of course i convert the video files to smaller resolution like 480x260.
also tried playing 800x600 but acceptable lags like every 15mins lags for lessthan 1 secs with bluetooth headset.
also try to end background task in your phone like antivirus, skype, etc... it might affect the performance of your phone.
U can use Core Player and there is an option to adjust the time synchronization between video and audio.
I've had these problems whilst playing x264 encoded files. I think that they just suck too much CPU power. It's not that the video and audio desynced or anything. It just had a really low fps! (like 3~4)
I use headphones or a Sound-freq speaker when watching movies and videos.When using BS player the video and sound do not sync up.If using the gallery player everything syncs up well on both headphones and speakers..Is there a way to sync up the bs player as well?It handles more formats and I like the extra volume and brightness controls on it. thanks
James-NC said:
I use headphones or a Sound-freq speaker when watching movies and videos.When using BS player the video and sound do not sync up.If using the gallery player everything syncs up well on both headphones and speakers..Is there a way to sync up the bs player as well?It handles more formats and I like the extra volume and brightness controls on it. thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i don't know what BS player is, but this is a common issues across multiple applications. it has to do with BT hardware, the application, BT priority and sound quality.
I have watched several streaming video types using my Potato Tunelink BT adapter. Netflix is by far the worst offender. Off by an entire half-second. Hulu streams great, YouTube has a slight delay. Crackle is about a split off.
If you want quality audio, use the audio port.
BTW, this is true of ANY device. My DROID3/4 both exhibited the same qualities. I thought it was a limitation of the phone. Faster devices do decrease latency, but if the latency exists, it's built into the application.
Maybe I could have been more clear on what I was asking. sorry
I know the problem is there but the BSplayer can be adjusted for audio offset to compensate for the lag.I just can't seem to find out how to do so.The gallery player seems to do it automatically because it always works whether playing files on the device or streaming from my computer or elsewhere. I would like someone to tell me how to adjust this in the BSplayer app. thanks
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsplayer.bspandroid.full