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...)
Related
Hi All,
Just received my p3600 this morning and ive noticed some strange sound issues with it.
Rom Version : 1.23.405.2 - Date : 03/11/07
Radio Version : 1.38.00.11
Basically what happens is that when im playing back audio or video whether it be from windows media player or coreplayer, right at the beginning of the song i get a couple of low "blips". More like a very faint crackling, for example when we used to put the needle on old LP's. This happens pretty much everytime i play the song from the beginning. Also, when i use Coreplayer and select do benchmark, for the first couple of seconds i hear that same noise, then the video zooms past but no audio except for the very faint beeping crackling noise. Im just wondeirng if anyone else has come across this or if their Trinity does the same etc? Any fixes?
Thanks!
Ricardo
some more info
I listened to the sound it makes using headphones and it seems like to be the audio comes on, then goes off then comes back on suddenly and plays the music. This happens all very quickly, like within half a second. Also when i forward to the middle of the music video for example, it plays, then pauses as the sound kicks in, then plays normally after.
I though that it could have been the video but then i disabled the audio from within core player and then when playing the videos there was no pause or skip at all.
Does this sound like there is something wrong with the phone or a rom issue? thanks!
update
i know im posting alot about this, its just bugging me lol It seems like there is a delay with the audio system. For example, when using coreplayer, i try and lower the volume and there is about half a second delay from when i press the down button to when the volume actually drops. Same thing if i increase the volume. Also, when watching a video i have to adjust the manual A/V offset to -0.200 so that the audio is in sync with the video. Im just wondering if anyone else has this problem, if its normal for the rom or whether its a hardware fault? cheers
Ric
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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...
Click to collapse
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Hello,
I have read some posts about that, but I cannot find them right now...
I have problems sometime when playing music (with headset). As long as the screen is on, no problem. When the phone is in sleep mode (screen off), I have some short break... Or the player just stop. It seems the issues is just like if I remove the headset cable.
I have tried Soft and Hard Reset, I have tried two different Headset, I have tried with TouchFlo player Tab, Windows Media Player and Core Player... Some time it works for one hour with no problem, sometime it just play ugly one song and just stop.
Did any one has the same issue? Find a way to suppress this? Maybe just a registry tweak to disable the "Pause on cable off" ?
I have same issue and make ticket to HTC - but they answer is to perform Soft Reset. They can't reproduce this problem.
I'm having the same problem; short random breaks in the music. Did eith er of you install SRSwow by any chance? I may try uninstalling that and see if the issue continues.
Having exactly the same problem, short breaks in the music, and if i lock the screen, the music stops at the end of the song and doesnt go onto the next track
ClownShoes said:
I'm having the same problem; short random breaks in the music. Did eith er of you install SRSwow by any chance? I may try uninstalling that and see if the issue continues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't installed SRSwow. My last try was a Hard-Reset, and just after first start, I played music... And get the problem. My next try will be to use the #### headset I got with my Leo. But I have to go back home for this.
I had the problem using the Leo headset
All of you have a lock screen with "password"? (I have one due to my exchange policies). I tested a trick yesterday: I manually lock the phone before putting it into sleepmode... and no problem (two times).
My problem hasn't re-occurred since i did a soft reset
Maybe the short breaks have something to do with the update function of the music player? Once in a while, don't know when, but definitely when you use the music player the first couple of times, the player does some heavy working in the background. (indicated by the little merry-go-round in the left upper corner).
Anyway the player isn't any good when you have 100+ albums. Browsing through that many albums is a disaster (no scroll bar, no search function). Also the artist are grouped by "performing artist" and not by "album artist", a tear-breaker when you have many compilation albums. Also, and every player for the WM platform (in contrast to the ipod players) have this weird functionality, albums are sorted by album tiltle and not by artist. Who in heavens name knows all his/her album titles by heart? When a album pops in mind you want to play, you think in terms of .... (that wonderfull) album by Fleetwood Mac for example and /not/ in terms of that album, called "Rumours", by ...... (that crazy rockgroup... what's its name).
But that's "appelflap" talking.
I believe this is a very old problem witch occurs on allot of HTC phones.
I've had this problem on one of my 3 previous HTC phones, cant remember witch one, because I bought a decent mp3 player a long time ago
It's a damn shame really that HTC can't fix this thing.
I have this problem too, but also with the audio cable running to my car stereo. As long as the screen is on, there is no problem. If I turn it off, the music starts breaking up once in a while.
use Nitrogen people! been using that on my HD2 and have had zero music playing pauses / breaks / etc, even with screen off, regardless of whether headset is on or not.
Have a similar problem with another winmo phone. The problem was with listening music on microsdhc (i.e. larger than 2gb microsd card) card.
It seems the device just shut down card reader on standby (Screen Off), so when your buffer is empty (end of the song, as a rule) there is no music to play and it just stops.
And no, I dunno the reason for such behavior. And there was no problem with 2gb or less microsd cards.
P.S. I'll test my leo with 16gb card tonight (just bout it), to see, if there a similar problem.
I have the problem problem with my 8Gb card. I could try with the 2Gb too. This should be the reason for the "stop playing at the end of the track".
But for the playing "short break", I have another thinking: Nitrogen don't have the problem. The most important differences between Nitrogen and WMP/TF3D player is the rule that make the music to pause when removing the headset. And this really "sounds" like a problem of headset, as if the phone "loose" the headset connection. Try to remove and quickly re-plug your phone; you'll se the same issue.
Back to my first question: is there a way to disable the pause on unplug head-set? Maybe in the registry?
I still don't have HD2, but I have these problems on X1.
Nitrogen did not help, in fact it can't play some MP3 at all. It either skips it or crashes completely. But otherwise it is the best player I know.
What does work however, is to use Core player and set 'higher priority during music playback'. Also I tried to change priority to higher using task manager for Nitrogen and it seemed to help, but I did not test it that much to be sure.
I sent this to nitrogen bug tracker (suggestion that it should allow higher priority) but after month there is no reaction.
I fixed my issues by just cleaning up my music and making sure I didn't have more than 30 songs per folder(had ~1000 in one and it made the music player lag like crazy).
i've the problem, but only when receiving or doing a call. after that the lags start ... this is annoying -.-
Having issues as well with HTC music player, it stutters, there are sound artifacts where the song skips, and sometimes a song will stop playing after 2 seconds.
This is so annoying im prepared to send it back. I reformated my 8gb class 6 card, but it´s still the same.
Using another player is fine, no issues. This is classical HTC issues, they need to get the crap together and fix issues like this before the release. Had the same issues with my diamond until they fixed it.
hi everybody! I had the same problem but not in the sleep mode. My htc music will have little break when my Opera loading something.
It is had any way to fix it? thank you
In the settings for the display light there is also an option for "turn off my device if inactive in:" - I disabled that option and my music player (Pocket Player) is now running without problems.
The stock music player on the note, besides not being able to do gapless playback also has really annoying DRC - very noticable compressing going on if you use custom EQ - and a noise gate which chops out very quiet passages/the tail end of fades off.
Is there any music player out there that gets round these issues or is it Samsung thoughtfully building this into hardware?
I used to love the Note but the more time I spend with it the more I realise the only thing I like is the screen size
Music
My choice is power amp, flexible, has it's own eq & dvc limit facility + a free trial, I bought early days.
hope this helps
I like Winamp (paid) or Mortplayer (free).
Sent from my Galaxy Note running ICS
Do they still have Dynamic Range Compression and the noise gate on?
Good example of the noise gate kicking in is track 12 of The Feeling's Twelve Stops and Home when it drops to the pub noise and walkign home the sound cuts in and out as the (unwanted) noise gate kicks in. I can understand having it on phone calls but why the ferk does it need to be on in music player?
I don't think it's the stock music player. I've noticed this DRC/noise gate thing everywhere, in the flash plugin, in vplayer, stock music player, ...
Whenever a certain volume level is not reached, it gets muted. E.g. the heavy breathing of Tony Soprano in the Sopranos when he's at his shrink's are muted, and totally ruining the experience.. Doesn't matter if it's in vplayer or in the standard video player app.
smashmash said:
Do they still have Dynamic Range Compression and the noise gate on?
Good example of the noise gate kicking in is track 12 of The Feeling's Twelve Stops and Home when it drops to the pub noise and walkign home the sound cuts in and out as the (unwanted) noise gate kicks in. I can understand having it on phone calls but why the ferk does it need to be on in music player?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why don't you try? All three propositions (Mortplayer, Winamp, Poweramp) doesn't cost you a dime if you want to try them. There is a trial version of poweramp, a light version of Winamp and Mortplayer is generally free. So take a look at the players yourself in order to see whether they suit you or not.
Background noise
Well there's no point trying, the thing is hardware related - no equalizer or software player can cure it.
I'm coming from HD2 and it had the same problem, way more audible.
Basically every phone I've tried had this kind of backround noise, the one with lowest levels of it is HTC Desire S.
This noise is barely audible or not audible at all when you're using low quality phones, but when using good ones (Fischer Audio Eterna here) you can easily spot it..
Currently my player of choice is PowerAmp - it has the best quality of MP3 decoding libraries, sound stage is rich, wide and detailed, so I can live with a little amount of noise. When I can't, I'm using Desire S as a MP3 player
So that's what its called, noise gate
I have had this since I bought the Note, through Gingerbread now ICS, watching films with headphones or listening to music, the low quiet bits are cut and simply go silent, hate it, as I listen to lots of music and watch films, its constantly cutting sound out and back on...starting to think its a hardware fault, but others are obviously getting this too, so surely there is a fix
Got a Moto X Play a few days ago to replace my broken Nexus 5, and there's been a problem that's constantly messing with my podcast listening habits.
Regardless of what audio player is used (Google Music, BeyondPod, Podcast Addict...), there are problems with seeking to a position in audio files. For example: Jumping back 20 seconds to listen to a part I missed might result in jumping forward a few minutes instead. This happens maybe one in four times on average. All of the players' seek bars and timers show the position as being where the jump was intended, but the actual audio being played is from some other position. After 5-20 seconds the audio suddenly jumps to the correct position that the seek bar has been showing all along. Same thing happens when using the seek bar to jump around, so it seems to be about seeking in general.
Could it be a broken audio chip on my unit or is the implementation just messed up on this model? I don't know if there is a common factor like the files being MP3 VBR and the MediaPlayer implementation having problems with seeking audio streams that use variable bitrates. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks and the problem seems to occur with all of them, but they all might use encoding. I've tried to do a factory reset and disabling Audio Effects under Sound & notification, different players, etc. I'd guess the players all use the system provided MediaPlayer class under the hood instead of implementing their own, so changing the player app makes no difference.
Any ideas, or could someone do some testing on their unit? When testing, it might not happen instantly, or it might happen every other seek...