Database Users

Sound (Audio) Issue

Has anyone noticed how the audio from the headphone jack sounds horrible unless an action is taken as in below examples?
1. In the original SE configuration (non-Manila), using the Media Xperience panel, when playing an MP3 for the first time, the audio quality is awful. When you trigger an event that causes a system sound to be played (e.g. raise the volume all the way up with the side volume buttons), suddenly the music sounds GREAT, or should I say normal.
2. With the Manila cabs installed (here), when you use the MP3 player the first time, the audio quality is awful. Trigger an event that causes the system sound (e.g. press the Hang-up /lock key), suddenly the music sounds great again. If you stay in the MP3 player, it sounds great. However, if you leave it (e.g. go to stocks view) and come back, broken again.
Anyone else encounter this or knows how to permanently fix it (registry setting?).
Thanks in advance.

Music playback issues: quality/noise, stutter

Hi all,
I got my Hero on Monday and I'm blown away by this phone so far!
The only not-so-great aspect I have found is the music playback:
1) There is a small amount of background noise when playing music, which is noticeable
in a quiet environment during low-volume parts of tracks. I don't always listen to Metal on the subway, so this is kind of a problem.
2) Sometimes, when listening to consecutive tracks of an album, there is a stutter when a new track starts. Haven't found a way to reproduce this reliably yet.
I was expecting to be able to ditch my iPod for the Hero, but I'm a little hesitant now. Does anyone else experience these issues?

I have the same issue with the jumping at the beginning of a new track, haven't noticed the background noise though probably because I do listen to metal.
Maybe it has something to do with standard sd card or how the mp3 was created? I hope someone knows the answer.

Also:
Does anyone know if there is a graphic equaliser somewhere? Music seams to be too trebley (using Seinnhauser earphones), but I haven't been able to find anyway to adjust it

Forgot to mention: I used 192 kbit/s MP3s encoded by iTunes and portable AKG headphones. I'm going to try out the included earbuds when I get home, to see if they "equalize" anthing.

I'm listening to Rufus Wainwright's Hallejuah on my Hero now over a set of Sony MDR-NC22 Noise Cancelling Earphones (in-ear type) with the noise cancelling switched off. No background hiss. Could it be from your MP3?

ghoonk said:
I'm listening to Rufus Wainwright's Hallejuah on my Hero now over a set of Sony MDR-NC22 Noise Cancelling Earphones (in-ear type) with the noise cancelling switched off. No background hiss. Could it be from your MP3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's possible of course, but I never noticed noise like this on my iPod. One other thing I'll try at home is listening to a WAV file and check for noise.

Send me the MP3 file and I'll load it up on my device now and let you know if I'm having any problems
my email address is my username @gmail.com

Ok, I tried the included earbuds, and the noise is much less pronounced than with my AKG headphones, but still audible. It starts as soon as the playback begins and stops about 2 seconds after I pause the music player. (I guess this is when the audio hardware shuts down.)
MP3 and WAV exhibit the same noise, so it's not encoding artefacts.

wossName said:
Ok, I tried the included earbuds, and the noise is much less pronounced than with my AKG headphones, but still audible. It starts as soon as the playback begins and stops about 2 seconds after I pause the music player. (I guess this is when the audio hardware shuts down.)
MP3 and WAV exhibit the same noise, so it's not encoding artefacts.
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Is it a buzzing noise?

I'd describe it more like a hissing sound.
Edit: I have attached a sample MP3 (hissingat5.mp3) in a ZIP file. I can clearly hear a hissing sound around 0:05 when the music gets quiet and I'm not using the included earphones. Anyone else? (I've checked the original CD with the same headphones, there's definitely no noise on the recording.)

wossName said:
2) Sometimes, when listening to consecutive tracks of an album, there is a stutter when a new track starts. Haven't found a way to reproduce this reliably yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My ipod touch does this sometimes. I have to reboot the ipod and its fine after. Maybe its because they are low on memory. Have you got lots of apps running? Try taskiller and try again?

I've found the music app struggles the most with low system resources and during the phones numerous "heavy lag" periods makes play back shutter or even stop altogether!
And god forbid you have more than five albums with bog standard 600x600 cover art... slow doesn't really describe it

mwatson said:
My ipod touch does this sometimes. I have to reboot the ipod and its fine after. Maybe its because they are low on memory. Have you got lots of apps running? Try taskiller and try again?
Click to expand...
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Good idea, that might be a reason.
I think I'll be sticking to my iPod for now, though. While the stuttering problem is probably fixable in software, I'm not so sure about the audio quality.

my music also lags(espacially in sleep mode.. it's ridicoulis)... it's so annoying.. something needs to be done about this... I've tryed to memory cards and the music lags on both.. one is fast and one is slow..

I've found that if I play music through the phone itself or my headphones, there's no problem. If i connect it to my little 2.1 speakers, songs stutter, jump, restart, skip etc CONSTANTLY. Any ideas why this could happen? The speakers work fine with everything else, afaik. And the Hero works fine with other stuff... guesses?
I also have the slight hiss for a few seconds. Sound quality is pretty average, but i have my awesome samsung P3 for that

Im using a Philips SHB9000 stereobluetooth headset, theres no hiss in that, maybee its bound to wired only? thoe i have some stutter.. i use a Class 4 4GB Microsdcard.

skee^ said:
Im using a Philips SHB9000 stereobluetooth headset, theres no hiss in that, maybee its bound to wired only?
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Yeah, since you're not using the Hero's audio hardware at all, I wouldn't expect there to be any noise.
BTW, how much does the bluetooth headset drain the battery? I was thinking of using one to solve this problem.

Lack of gapless playback is also a bummer for me. I might be going back to my Zune.

wossName said:
Hi all,
I got my Hero on Monday and I'm blown away by this phone so far!
The only not-so-great aspect I have found is the music playback:
1) There is a small amount of background noise when playing music, which is noticeable
in a quiet environment during low-volume parts of tracks. I don't always listen to Metal on the subway, so this is kind of a problem.
2) Sometimes, when listening to consecutive tracks of an album, there is a stutter when a new track starts. Haven't found a way to reproduce this reliably yet.
I was expecting to be able to ditch my iPod for the Hero, but I'm a little hesitant now. Does anyone else experience these issues?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly the same as on my phone. I'm on my fifth Hero now and knew about the hiss already but this is the first to stutter. Exactly the same files, exactly the same memory card, exactly the same apps installed and running on the system.
No idea why one Hero has difficulty and others don't.

My Hero stutters even in the middle of songs on playback. I tried an alternate music player (nswPlayer) and it didn't help. I'm using mp3s but I think they're 320kbps. Maybe a re-encode would help?

Problems with Music Playback on the HD2

Hello!
I have searched now for several hours in different forums and many threads, but I did not find my specific problems or any solutions to them. Therefore I want to start a new thread.
One thing in advance: I have my HD2 now for about 3 weeks and generally I am very happy with it. Unfortunately, I am experiencing some really bothering problems with music playback, and as this is the second most important feature to me (after telephony), I really hope, that there is some solution out there.
1. According to some Internet pages the integrated music player of the HD2 should be capable of gapless playback of MP3 files since a software update. Well, I have installed the latest 1.66.xx ROM for my device, and unfortunately gapless playback does not work at all. When I am listening to a concert and one track ends and another starts, I always hear a small interruption in the applause. When I play back the exact same tracks on my PC with Winamp everything works fine and both tracks play back to back without any interruption at all. As far as I know Winamp prebuffers approx. 2 seconds and in my opinion for gapless playback the integrated music player of the HD2 should too, but obviously does not.
2. Especially when I am listening to tracks with a quite low volume (e.g. instrumental Soundtrack), I always hear a short "crackling" sound at the transition from one track to the next (or at the beginning of the new track). One forum entry claimed, that this "crackling" sound is caused by the fact, that the HD2 disables the headphones output after approx. 2 seconds of silence and just reactivates it again when there is sound again. The reactivation of the headphones output seems to result in the "crackling" sound.
3. I thought that I can get rid of both problems just by using another player software as alternative, I even bought one of these. I tested "Microfi Nitrogen", "MortPlayer", "Slide 2 Play" and "PocketMusic".
Using the "Cross Fade" mode of "PocketMusic" in fact solved the first two problems effectively, so I got gapless playback without a "crackling" sound between two tracks.
Unfortunately, with all of these alternate players I experienced one even more bothering problem: Every now and then (approx. 1 to 2 times per minute of playback) a short "clicking" sound is audible during playback, which reminds of an scratched vinyl disc. If I rewind the track, the "clicking" sound does not occur at the same position, but at another at a later time. These "clicking" sounds do not occur at all with the integrated music player of the HD2, but with ALL of the mentioned alternate music players I tested. Of course, the "clicking" sounds are audible better, when you are listening to instrumental or classic music with a relatively low volume than with loud Rock or Heavy Metal music tracks.
To avoid the obvious suggestions:
- The problems were already present with the 1.48.xx ROM and are still present with the 1.66.xx ROM.
- I tested several different headphones (cheap and expensive ones) including the original HTC ones which shipped with the HD2.
- I can rule out the MP3s as cause of the problems: There are absolutely no problems with them when they are played back on the PC with Winamp, a Sony-Ericsson phone, an iPod or when played back with the mentioned alternate players on Pocket LOOX N110, N120 (Prototype), 420, N500 and N520.
- It does not matter whether the MP3s are located on the internal memory of the HD2 or the SD card.
- I already tried to disable all data connections on the HD2 and closed all other programs using the Task Manager to avoid any interferences.
- I even performed a Hard Reset without installing additional software or tweaks (except for one of the alternate players).
- I tested "PocketMusic" with all possible settings regarding Cache, Buffer Priority etc..
- It does not matter, whether any Equalizer (if available) are enabled or not.
- I also tested my brother's HD2, and both devices - my own HD2 and my brother's HD2 - show the same problems.
My questions now are:
a) Can anybody verify the "clicking" sounds when using an alternate music player software? If not, which music player software do you use at which settings?
b) Is it possible somehow to disable the interruptions between two tracks with the integrated music player of the HD2 and thus enable true gapless MP3 playback, for example by an undocumented registry setting regarding (pre-)buffer size or Caching?
c) Is it possible to disable the deactivation of the Headphones output after some seconds of silence (which is said to cause the "crackling" sound), so that the Headphones output is always enabled when there is playback using the integrated music player of the HD2, for example by a Registry setting?
Generally, I would love to continue using the integrated music player of the HD2 (which I am doing now anyway, and it looks really nice, by the way), but the missing gapless playback and the "crackling" sound during the transition of tracks is really bothering me very much.
Many thanks in advance for your help!
DotWin

I dont get the crackling sounds you speak of but it is a little off putting when I'm listening to a non stop mix CD thats broken up into tracks, when a track abruptly ends it's followed by a half second silence only to head right back into the music.
Is there some registry tweak that we can use to either eliminate this gap or even shorten it?

I use Coreplayer, and it seems they screwed up the standby keepalive at least on the HD2. With BT headphones, if I start music and then turn the screen off with the power button, I'll start getting random skips. With wired headphones ith completely stops playing music. So I've bound long press windows key to "turn screen off" in AEBPlus, and I now have no more problem with that (when I remember to press that one instead of the power button, that is...). Works perfectly, never heard a skip anymore (I have a set of Sennheiser PX200II, way good enough to make anything noticeable )
Your problems with 3rd-party players could be linked, no idea...

Not sure about the crackling, as I listen to music for at least 2 hours a day on the way to work and I use a pair of Sennheiser HD-25 headphones (http://www.sennheiser.co.uk/uk/home...onal_headphones-headsets_dj-headphones_502188) and I don't hear any crackling between tracks or in periods of silence. Only hear vinyl crackle where the source for the MP3 is vinyl.
The lack of gapless playback, as jmwarren85 mentioned is really annoying as I listen to a lot of mix albums... one solution I use is to take all the MP3's from that disc and splice them into a single track and then listen to that on the HD2.
Also finally I can't say I have heard any clicking noises on my HD2 but I know what sort of clicking you are referring to and that may be due to the encoder used and/or its settings when the MP3's were encoded. Some of the codecs that players use for decoding MP3's aren't the best (ie not well optimised, which can especially be a problem on a mobile device) and you occasionally get audio artifacts.
I use LAME with VBR-0 with quality 0 (highest) and the minimum bit rate of 128 and maximum bit rate of 320 using 44.1kHz instead of 48kHz for compatibility and I don't seem to get any problems.
Hope this helps...

Hi!
Thank you for your messages!
After extensive testing, I have finally bought "Pocket Player" which has solved all of my problems.
But I still think, that the integrated player (which at least looks great) has some bugs in the audio department that should be fixed.
DotWin

DotWin said:
Hi!
Thank you for your messages!
After extensive testing, I have finally bought "Pocket Player" which has solved all of my problems.
But I still think, that the integrated player (which at least looks great) has some bugs in the audio department that should be fixed.
DotWin
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello there.
The crackling you've described may be in relation to network use, for example every time my phone uses the 'net connection (HSDPA) to get weather, location or email, the audio stops for a brief second and continues; this is almost like the crackle you describe.
This in turn disables the graphic equalizer, so I am regularly re-enabling this between songs or in the middle of songs.
Test the theory by putting your phone in airplane mode or disabling all data reliant services to see if this is the issue. Even if it is I can't offer a fix, but at least you know what the issue is at least with the built in HD2 audio app.

I have the exact same issues as the OP. I contacted HTC about the gapless playback and they said they're testing...
I hear a soft/small pop between tracks too when I'm using headphones.
I also sometimes experience another issue where sometimes instead of going to the next song after finishing the current one, it just stops. Time remaining shows 0 secs, it's 'playing' (pause button is shown) but it doesn't move on.

I know it's a little late to reply to this post, but it was just to say that you can remove the gaps between the tracks using Ogg Vorbis encoding instead of MP3 encoding. Winamp for Android can read ogg tracks
About sound quality, there is always a quiet background interferences noise that bothers me. It is particularly annoying when listening quiet music (OST, classical...)

Headset blocker issue. the problem has come back...

Ok, I know there's a few posts around here about the crazy headset events being miscommunicated from headphones without controls.
(Just incase anyones unaware, some people are reporting that a regular pair of headphones with no mic or playback controls interferes with the music player and starts randomly skipping etc (extremely frustrating). This hasn't been fixed by HTC yet, but the app 'Headset Blocker' did the trick for me perfectly...)
...However it's back! But this time when playing video. It doesn't skip it just pauses and unpauses randomly.
So I'm on the train watching some tv shows through the stock video player and it pauses and unpauses all the time. When it pauses I just unpause it and maybe watch about 10-20 secs of video. but sometimes it unpauses by itself just before I try, so I end up pausing it again! This little game of silly buggers can get really annoying.
It's like the video player can see my thumb coming towards the screen to unpause it and then it unpauses just in time for me to pause it again......
AAAAArrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh the infuriating, frustratingly crazy madness....count to 10 ......and ....relax
Anyone (preferably HTC) with a solution will go straight to the top of my Christmas card list.

I have the same problem, when I connect the DHD to my auto radio!!! Anyone know if it is possible to disable the headset controls?
Thanks....

Your problem can be easily fixed with the app 'Headset Blocker' (as mentioned in my first post).
My problem is different from yours.

Thanks. Yes, it works.......should just read your post more carefull. Have you found a solution to the video playback?

Speaker started with crackling sound

Why when notification comes or even playing music games video etc I heard Sound like crackling?

Glad I'm the only one who noticed this too, I'm playing some rhythm games on this phone (in case you're wondering, it's Bang! Dream or Bandori) and sometimes there's a crackling sound coming from the speaker whenever I tap the notes (and it's making the tapping sound effect, aside from the music in the background). On top of that, sound effects from the tapping seemingly can't play while other sound effects (the song itself) play. This means that fast streams in songs pretty much always have note sounds missing and this really throws me off when I play, as I play with the sounds as an assistance in a way (which means getting full combo is a no go). The only way to temporarily fix it is by restarting the phone entirely and then the game works properly once - if you play it and then close the game and reopen it, the bug continues. Another way I recently found is just to keep playing longer, as in around 10 minutes and beyond and it gradually fix itself as in calibrating the sounds, however strange that sounds.

The problem is whether on hardware or software?

.hack//G.U. said:
Glad I'm the only one who noticed this too, I'm playing some rhythm games on this phone (in case you're wondering, it's Bang! Dream or Bandori) and sometimes there's a crackling sound coming from the speaker whenever I tap the notes (and it's making the tapping sound effect, aside from the music in the background). On top of that, sound effects from the tapping seemingly can't play while other sound effects (the song itself) play. This means that fast streams in songs pretty much always have note sounds missing and this really throws me off when I play, as I play with the sounds as an assistance in a way (which means getting full combo is a no go). The only way to temporarily fix it is by restarting the phone entirely and then the game works properly once - if you play it and then close the game and reopen it, the bug continues. Another way I recently found is just to keep playing longer, as in around 10 minutes and beyond and it gradually fix itself as in calibrating the sounds, however strange that sounds.
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I have also faced similar issue except I played CGSS when encounter this issue