Database Users

HD2 Music player questions, suggestions needed.

Okay, so now that I'm committed to the HD2, I'm also committing to fix or remedy the issues I have with the device. I've gotten it to run smoothly, except for the Sense music player.
First, is it normal for it to scan for music every time it's powered on, or unplugged from USB? You would think it would save an "image" of your library to run off while it scans the SD card for new files, but no. Instead, it scans for several minutes, in which time it won't display any artists or albums and lags horribly. Am I missing a setting, or have my library sorted incorrectly? Right now it's setup as root/music/artist/album/mp3, fwiw.
Also, the gap between tracks is terribly annoying. It totally kills mix cd's that are cut into tracks, and ruins the flow of a lot of albums. Is there a way to get rid of this, like the "skip silence" function in iTunes? I knowIf not, is there an app that scans and removes silence from the beginning/end of my mp3's as a batch process? For example, point the app to my music folder, and let it scan/trim silence from each mp3 automatically?
Other than these problems, I really like the music player... but these things are serious dealbreakers for me. If there's no way around them, is there a music player you can suggest that does these things?
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I really don't think these things are a lot to ask from a music player, and I'm hoping there's a way to make it happen.

+1 i too has this same issue

Yes, this happens. People have suggested a music player called nitrogen, but I haven't really messed with it to know how good it is or not.

Yes the HTC Sense music player can be one of the problems with this phone, especially for larger music collections, and/or ones stored on the card....mostly due to the less-than-efficient way it indexes the music. The two cabs I have attached should help you with that somewhat. The first one adds indexing to the startup group, so it should be pre-indexed by the time you decide to open the music tab. The second one turns on caching on the card, which should also help speed up the indexing and access times on the music tab.
As for the gaps between tracks, I've never seen a solution for that other than manually trimming the files...but even that won't totally remove the gap. I listen to a lot of full-length mix CD's too and the way I get around this issue is to just rip the CD as one full-length mp3, instead of as individual tracks. EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the free utility I use for that

sirphunkee said:
Yes the HTC Sense music player can be one of the problems with this phone, especially for larger music collections, and/or ones stored on the card....mostly due to the less-than-efficient way it indexes the music. The two cabs I have attached should help you with that somewhat. The first one adds indexing to the startup group, so it should be pre-indexed by the time you decide to open the music tab. The second one turns on caching on the card, which should also help speed up the indexing and access times on the music tab.
As for the gaps between tracks, I've never seen a solution for that other than manually trimming the files...but even that won't totally remove the gap. I listen to a lot of full-length mix CD's too and the way I get around this issue is to just rip the CD as one full-length mp3, instead of as individual tracks. EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the free utility I use for that
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Hey, thanks for the help!
I have several mixes ripped as a single track, but it's hardly convenient. I just hope HTC is aware of this, and working on a solution for an upcoming ROM release. I definitely won't be holding my breath, though.

I've tried a bunch of different music players and the only one I have found that doesn't have the silences in between the songs is Pocket Player. Its a paid music player but if you have a large music library or listen to music a lot its by far the best solution out there.

speoples20 said:
I've tried a bunch of different music players and the only one I have found that doesn't have the silences in between the songs is Pocket Player. Its a paid music player but if you have a large music library or listen to music a lot its by far the best solution out there.
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I actually tried that out last night, v4.1, and I found it really clunky, with poor sound quality compared to the stock music player. Maybe I don't have the latest version, but I really didn't like it much.
Is there any other music players that have an interface similar to stock? Even if it doesn't have gapless playback, it's more likely that a dev would update the app more frequently than HTC.

gilla409 said:
I actually tried that out last night, v4.1, and I found it really clunky, with poor sound quality compared to the stock music player. Maybe I don't have the latest version, but I really didn't like it much.
Is there any other music players that have an interface similar to stock? Even if it doesn't have gapless playback, it's more likely that a dev would update the app more frequently than HTC.
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Next try nitrogen and TCPMP

Best way to copy music to phone

Does anyone have any suggested techniques for copying MP3 or WMA files to the phone (SD or Internal memory)?
What I've discovered is that synching with Media Player will transfer over these hidden files (album art, desktop.ini, and folder.jpg). These hidden files seem to mess with the way the Sense music player is picking up the music and what ends up happening is that in the music players details view, it does indeed break up the artists and the albums etc. HOWEVER, in the default view (the one that shows the album covers) it doesn't know what to do and only shows you the album cover of the particular album you are listening too. There's no way to get to the other album without going into the details menu and selecting it from there.
Whew - SO, all that being said; what I found is that if I delete the album art, desktop.ini and folder.jpg files BEFORE manually dragging and dropping the music over to the phone it seems to resolve the problem.
So is there a more streamlined approach to doing this?

Explorer
yatman60 said:
Does anyone have any suggested techniques for copying MP3 or WMA files to the phone (SD or Internal memory)?
What I've discovered is that synching with Media Player will transfer over these hidden files (album art, desktop.ini, and folder.jpg). These hidden files seem to mess with the way the Sense music player is picking up the music and what ends up happening is that in the music players details view, it does indeed break up the artists and the albums etc. HOWEVER, in the default view (the one that shows the album covers) it doesn't know what to do and only shows you the album cover of the particular album you are listening too. There's no way to get to the other album without going into the details menu and selecting it from there.
Whew - SO, all that being said; what I found is that if I delete the album art, desktop.ini and folder.jpg files BEFORE manually dragging and dropping the music over to the phone it seems to resolve the problem.
So is there a more streamlined approach to doing this?
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Put your INC in DISK DRIVE mode and copy your files to the SD card using Windows Explorer. You can also take out the SD card, put it in a reader, plug that into your PC's card reader, and put the files there via Windows Explorer.
Of course, all this presupposes that your MP3 files are correct (e.g., their ID3 tags are correct; and the album art was already integrated).

I use Tunesync, there're also isyncr, doubletwist, websharing....
The thing I like about these sync software is that they put your music in a playlist, which all the players can see.
First thing I would do is ditch the default android player though and stay away from Music PlayerPro too (just a skinned default player-same options same problems).
I am using bTunes, I think it's already abandon by the developer, but since it works and I already paid for it so might as well.
I recommend Mort Player if you don't look at it too much, Man!..that UI is just plain Ugly.

DoubleTwist is great. It also syncs your videos as well. Best part is it only syncs what you want. You create playlists and it syncs based on their contents
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Thanks...
Thanks for the info everyone. I guess the bottom line is that music software on Android is still in infancy stages with a lot of options but nothing that really just stands out. I hate to admit it but looks like Apple has a (+) in this department for now. My Incredible is a filler phone to hold me over until with WINMO7 stuff starts to hit Verizon so just looking for the best combinations of software on this thing.
I'm totally new to Android but I would have thought that the folks over at Google would have taken the media experience a little more seriously and spent some time on those aspects out of the box.

yatman60 said:
Thanks for the info everyone. I guess the bottom line is that music software on Android is still in infancy stages with a lot of options but nothing that really just stands out. I hate to admit it but looks like Apple has a (+) in this department for now. My Incredible is a filler phone to hold me over until with WINMO7 stuff starts to hit Verizon so just looking for the best combinations of software on this thing.
I'm totally new to Android but I would have thought that the folks over at Google would have taken the media experience a little more seriously and spent some time on those aspects out of the box.
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Google was doing fine, 2.1 was solid. It uses up battery like there's no tomorrow, but solid.
2.2 seem like it's coded by 5 year olds... in Mongolia...using Vtech's Vsmile system....during recess. Maybe that's why the battery last longer, nothing works. Could be a way to make us pay for third-party apps (free enterprise at work).

Bus, now that's just plan 'ol funny. Educational (for me) at the same time.

I use the free version of Media Monkey on my Win XP desktop and Meridian on my Dinc. Then I sync playlists (like I used to on my iPhone 3G). Works like a champ.

The iPhone is far superior in the music catagory (dsp, organization, genius) but u have to keep inmind it stemed from an ipod. That said the closest ive come to it is boomboxoid but its terribly slow and often unresponsive. Which is why i primarily use pandora now...an ipod like music player is the app i want most!
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

gimini said:
The iPhone is far superior in the music catagory (dsp, organization, genius) but u have to keep inmind it stemed from an ipod. That said the closest ive come to it is boomboxoid but its terribly slow and often unresponsive. Which is why i primarily use pandora now...an ipod like music player is the app i want most!
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
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I've mentioned bTunes above. It's the exact replica of the iPhone/iPod player.

Unknown Artist Problem

Just got my SGS2. Fired up iSyncr and iTunes and synced about 1600 songs to my new phone.
Media Scan then completed
I fired up powerAMP and PlayerPro and stock music player.
ALL of them showed 408 songs as unknown artist.
Yet on my Motorola Defy and in iTunes all the artists are perfect. I have formatted the sd card and resynced the music still no good.
Anyone else experienced this problem?

Yes, though I used TuneSync to move them over. I just removed album art from one album and had iTunes reload it automatically. Then I sync'ed again, now the music shows up. All of it, even the stuff that I didn't touch. Weird. (XWKE7, rooted)

How do you sync iTunes with this phone?
I haven't got the phone yet but it would be good to know

programs on the phone called isyncr or tune sync will do it.
though any m4a/acc music wont show artist names correctly.

Does it come pre installed?

no, they can be purchased from the market.

I'd suggest giving iTunes away, only gives you headaches if you aren't an iOS user. Better to have a properly curated tag collection...

NZtechfreak said:
I'd suggest giving iTunes away, only gives you headaches if you aren't an iOS user. Better to have a properly curated tag collection...
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itunes isnt a problem for me. in fact i love it. isyncr has always been brilliant at keeping my android and itunes libraries in sync. Its just this sgs bug that is causing trouble. Hope samsung fixes it soon.

Same here, NickChaplin. TuneSync worked flawlessly on Cyanogenmod.

The same here, all the songs i bought from iTunes my SGSII won't recognize the artist name.... On my Desire it works perfect.

Luinwethion said:
The same here, all the songs i bought from iTunes my SGSII won't recognize the artist name.... On my Desire it works perfect.
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i converted all mine to mp3. No problems any more.

NickChaplin said:
i converted all mine to mp3. No problems any more.
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What'd you use to convert your music?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

brandenk0 said:
What'd you use to convert your music?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
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iTunes
less than 10 characters

poweramp solves all problems. Better than any stock music player.

intruda119 said:
poweramp solves all problems. Better than any stock music player.
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nope, poweramp, player pro, winamp, double twist AND stock media player ALL have the same problem.
Thats because its a problem with the way the media scanner reads the ID3 tag of the m4a file and then adds it to the android music library that ALL the above media players read from.

What? I had the same issue with my vibrant. Poweramp automatically fetches album covers. Even random mixtape songs.
I agree it should work by default. But its hit or miss with devices. Poweramp solves this problem by fetching the album covers.
NickChaplin said:
nope, poweramp, player pro, winamp, double twist AND stock media player ALL have the same problem.
Thats because its a problem with the way the media scanner reads the ID3 tag of the m4a file and then adds it to the android music library that ALL the above media players read from.
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Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App

intruda119 said:
What? I had the same issue with my vibrant. Poweramp automatically fetches album covers. Even random mixtape songs.
I agree it should work by default. But its hit or miss with devices. Poweramp solves this problem by fetching the album covers.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
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sorry, all my music already has album art.

Try MediaFix from the Market.

Try MIUI Music APK. That always popped out artist info, lyrics, CD art, and everything else automatically for me. Well, 90% of the time at least.

There is a bug in Android's media indexing & storage service. Sometimes it doesn't get the artist. Some apps like Mediafix or TuneSync index the music themselves and put the correct artist in the service's database. Until the bug is fixed, the only way to solve the problem is to either use players that don't rely on the service or to fix database yourself with the appropriate applications. MIUI's player will only work better if it doesn't rely on Android's internal indexing. I'm pretty sure it does rely on it.

Windows media player questions

I'm not seeing questions dedicated to windows media player... So ill start it i guess.
Sent from an Apple killing JellyBean

How much does winmed player actually sync over web? Just album art or like say if i have song titles and artists, will it sync the albums?
Sent from an Apple killing JellyBean

it can attempt to pull album art as you have already said, it can also get other meta data like artist, titles, album, dates, genre
that's about your lot though and that's assuming it can ID it in the first place

Say if i already have muaic ive named the song and i know the artist, i dont know what order songs appear on an album will it separate the albums apart and put them in order? If not, how do i serperate a whole "unknown album" into sections and group songs by albun
Sent from an Apple killing JellyBean

Is there any other program that lets you edit the song name and stuff and it show it on a music playing device?
Sent from an Apple killing JellyBean

moparfreak426 said:
Is there any other program that lets you edit the song name and stuff and it show it on a music playing device?
Sent from an Apple killing JellyBean
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iTunes allows you to edit metadata of multiple songs at once and since their update to v11 it's a lot nicer to use and navigate.
If you choose this route then just right-click of the song you want to edit, click "Get Info" the click the Info tab and edit away

google it, your wanting to edit meta data on music files, there are literally thousands of programs over various operating systems that can do it, hell windows will let you do it too if you can be bothered doing one file at a time

How much data does this take up in windows8 doing this? Ive never been a big fan of apple anything but itunes alright now?
Sent from an Apple killing JellyBean

moparfreak426 said:
How much data does this take up in windows8 doing this? Ive never been a big fan of apple anything but itunes alright now?
Sent from an Apple killing JellyBean
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iTunes 11 takes 191MB when installed.
I hate apple too and used to despise iTunes until i saw the update for myself and it is far better than what it used to be. I still use the Xbox Music app for playing my songs but when i need to edit track or artist info i go with iTunes because how easy it is to use now.
Only drawback is that once you're done with the editing you need to copy over all the songs you edited back into your music folder from iTunes for the changes to take effect system wide instead of just in iTunes.

Music syncing software?

I am coming from an iPhone and boy boy BOY do I miss the seamless syncing between iTunes and my iPhone..
It was nothing short of great.....
Now that I am rocking an S4, I am definitely missing this feature. I am using Winamp right now, but its not very good at deciphering stuff..and Samsung Kies is a joke.
I am looking for a piece of software that would rock at syncing my music with my S4 in a nice fashion. Any suggestions as I am really REALLY missing my iPhone 5 now simply because of a very simple feature...

EpicMango said:
I am coming from an iPhone and boy boy BOY do I miss the seamless syncing between iTunes and my iPhone..
It was nothing short of great.....
Now that I am rocking an S4, I am definitely missing this feature. I am using Winamp right now, but its not very good at deciphering stuff..and Samsung Kies is a joke.
I am looking for a piece of software that would rock at syncing my music with my S4 in a nice fashion. Any suggestions as I am really REALLY missing my iPhone 5 now simply because of a very simple feature...
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Songbird for sure! Here's the Google Play link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.songbirdnest.mediaplayer&hl=en
and here's for the desktop client http://www.getsongbird.com/

Really? Plug in phone, copy Music folder on PC to phone.
Not sure why you would want to use crappy software like itunes when you can just drag and drop your whole music folder.

I'd recommend isyncr, it works flawlessly for me
Sent from my Nexus 4

MHousos said:
Songbird for sure! Here's the Google Play link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.songbirdnest.mediaplayer&hl=en
and here's for the desktop client http://www.getsongbird.com/
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I use poweramp. Will it still work seamlessly with it?

EpicMango said:
I use poweramp. Will it still work seamlessly with it?
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I know it will with the SongBird app, but not sure about PowerAmp...here's a thread on the subject though http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1562816

DoubleTwist works the best for me. Not sure about the other apps. It has a slight (but not very much) iTunes feel.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda app-developers app

iSyncr works great!

I'll also go for doubletwist. It has an integrated podcast manager as well.

geoldr said:
Really? Plug in phone, copy Music folder on PC to phone.
Not sure why you would want to use crappy software like itunes when you can just drag and drop your whole music folder.
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I agree, if you are plugging the phone in, just treat it as a drive and drag and drop. Syncing with iTunes is a big pain and a waste if you don't use song counts or any of that nonsense. If you already have your music organized by artist and album, then copy/paste is a lot faster.

alphadog00 said:
I agree, if you are plugging the phone in, just treat it as a drive and drag and drop. Syncing with iTunes is a big pain and a waste if you don't use song counts or any of that nonsense. If you already have your music organized by artist and album, then copy/paste is a lot faster.
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Exactly. Especially since Android runs a media scanner whenever you unplug, so all your Music apps like stock or Poweramp will see the changes instantly. And you can sort by folder so this is a great solution.

Reviving the topic, to see if anyone has a suggestion for PC software to sync music with the Galaxy S4.
I would prefer to have a program to handle this, so I don't have to manually build the folder structure (artist\album\file.mp3) and also, so I don't have to remember which new files I've gotten that need to be uploaded. Right now I'm using Windows Media Player, it worked reasonably well with my Xperia Ion, but with the Galaxy I have to stop and restart the sync and then stop it again, since it never reaches 100% even though all the mp3 files were uploaded. Also, it is not really syncing, if I change anything in already uploaded files, like tag or artwork, the changes don't go through, even if I manually delete the old file from my phone card.
I've tried Winamp, it doesn't recognize the SD card and wants to upload the files to the phone internal memory. Both Kies and Songbird never really connect to the device, they stay trying to connect for a long time. And Doubletwist Desktop does not update the music library when some files are added, deleted or changed.

SPOTIFY... 8 bucks a month for an unbelievable amount of music. The offline mode makes tracks accessible without and data and you can share music with your friends. You can also check out what they are jamming to and discover new music. I don't even know what people use iTunes anymore. Spotify also has a desktop interface so you can enjoy your music at the office on the Pc or Mac
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium

Thanks for the info. I'm not at all interested in all the "social" stuff, I just need an efficient way to sync my PC music library with my phone. I considered Google Music at some point, since it was offering 20,000 songs (double my library) for free, that you need to upload. Problem is that there is no easy way to tell the program to store it in a specific folder in the SD card. Also, I don't think you can just make the whole library offline, you have to do it track by track, or maybe album by album. How is Spotify in these two issues? Although, quite frankly, for almost $100 a year I'll probably stick with WMP for free.