Database Users

[Q] Audio Through USB

I'm currently aching to be able to play my own music through my car speakers, weird place for this yes.. if it's the wrong section to post this please let me know.
But, I was wondering if it's at all possible to feed the phone's audio through the USB.
For example, I have a USB port on my stero in my car, and when I plug it in..i'm able to feed off my SD card to play the music thats on it. But.. I'd like to be able to play pandora as well..which I'm currently unable to do.
Was wondering if this is possible. If i've confused you feel free to ask more questions
XtaC318 said:
Since it isn't possible.. what about an app that allows me to control the music played? I can stream music from the sd, but its got to mount to read therefore I don't have access to the stock music app. Only way to control what's played is the buttons on the stero and its pain staking..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I don't believe this is possible. As far as I know, when you use the usb the deck itself is decoding the mp3's (or whatever music files you're using) directly. It doesn't support playing music through the usb, it just uses the usb to get the files. I hope that makes sense...

So is that why I ca never plat music on my xbox whenever I have a phone hookedup to charge? I thought my xbox just didn't play nice with phones
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

XtaC318 said:
I'm currently aching to be able to play my own music through my car speakers, weird place for this yes.. if it's the wrong section to post this please let me know.
But, I was wondering if it's at all possible to feed the phone's audio through the USB.
For example, I have a USB port on my stero in my car, and when I plug it in..i'm able to feed off my SD card to play the music thats on it. But.. I'd like to be able to play pandora as well..which I'm currently unable to do.
Was wondering if this is possible. If i've confused you feel free to ask more questions
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So your car stereo has a USB input but no auxiliary? If so, your best bet would probably be to get an FM transmitter. Like the poster above said, your car's stereo is merely mounting your phone as a mass storage device and reading the mp3 files off the SD card and decoding and playing them locally.

It sees it as you do on the computer, just a drive. The only way to get what you want is to use a source from the phone that plays audio. Head phone jack or Blue Tooth. Your stereo... if it has USB should also have an AUX input or BT. Havn't come across to many that have USB and not an AUX or BT. Its nice though... having Pandora in the car.
If you tell me the Model of the Stereo I can help you out. I have seen a BT to FM Mod. Those are kinda cool. If your in a pinch with a stock stereo.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

a454nova said:
It sees it as you do on the computer, just a drive. The only way to get what you want is to use a source from the phone that plays audio. Head phone jack or Blue Tooth. Your stereo... if it has USB should also have an AUX input or BT. Havn't come across to many that have USB and not an AUX or BT. Its nice though... having Pandora in the car.
If you tell me the Model of the Stereo I can help you out. I have seen a BT to FM Mod. Those are kinda cool. If your in a pinch with a stock stereo.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Makes sense. My stero does have an auxiliary port on it, but due to recent events I'm really short on cash lol, was wondering if there was a work around so I'm not limited to my sd for music.
Since it isn't possible.. what about an app that allows me to control the music played? I can stream music from the sd, but its got to mount to read therefore I don't have access to the stock music app. Only way to control what's played is the buttons on the stero and its pain staking..

XtaC318 said:
Makes sense. My stero does have an auxiliary port on it, but due to recent events I'm really short on cash lol, was wondering if there was a work around so I'm not limited to my sd for music.
Since it isn't possible.. what about an app that allows me to control the music played? I can stream music from the sd, but its got to mount to read therefore I don't have access to the stock music app. Only way to control what's played is the buttons on the stero and its pain staking..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope... The phone isn't even connecting to your stereo. When you put it into USB mode so it can read the SD, it unmounted from the phone. Its as if you pulled the SD out and slid it into a card reader. When you pull the plug... It will remount to the phone. You'll notice it scanning for media at the top.
Now when you go BT... You can control it via the stereo or phone, using the Aux you can control it by the phone. "They" could make the phone controllable via USB like an Iphone but they would have to built that into the stereo like they do the Iphones/Ipods. Not likely to happen unless the Galaxy S takes off like IPOD did.

In theory, a rooted Epic with proper kernel support and hacked cable (since they don't exist commercially) can repurpose the data pins on its USB port for left and right analog audio thanks to the Fairchild FSA9480 USB switching chip inside the phone (the same chip enables the USB pins to be repurposed as a serial port with nonstandard voltage levels, enables the normally-unused fifth pin to be used as mic input, enables it to be used with a special "JIG" interface for JTAG reflashing without having to hand-solder anything to the microscopic internal pads, and apparently can also work its magic in conjunction with a chip by Silicon Imaging to use 5 pins to output a signal that can be transformed by a companion chip (embedded in the cable's connector shell) into valid HDCP-compliant HDMI. I'm pretty sure the 9480 can also repurpose the two data pins for external I2C, but don't quote me on it.
Check out the I9000 boards... they're about 2 months ahead of us. If you google for FSA9480, you can find a brief (but revealing) dialogue between a Samsung engineer and the Kernel.org folks regarding a kernel addition to support the chip. He had a few issues, because on one hand he's apparently not allowed to say much about how the chip works or what it does, but the kernel folks managed to wring much of it out of him one juicy detail at a time. If you check Fairchild's site, they don't even acknowledge that the chip EXISTS, but it's been photographed inside all the Galaxy S phones in various teardowns.
In English -- yes, the hardware exists today to connect your phone to a stereo's analog inputs via a cable that repurposes the USB port... but the official software to make it work from Samsung and Sprint doesn't exist, and the information needed to make it work ourselves on a rooted Epic with AOSP isn't quite available yet.
I'm personally quite happy about the uart, because that means we DO have an easy, low-ceremony way to do i/o between something like a gamepad built into a hardcase a-la-iphone-GameBone that doesn't require Bluetooth (note that if something IS using the USB port for UART purposes, the USB port is still active, but the phone sees it as having nothing connected because the signals from the D+ and D- pins are physically re-routed by the 9480 to the CPU's UART pins. Think of the 9480 as being like an old-fashioned telephone panel with cables that can be moved around to connect the USB port's 5 physical pins to different pins inside the phone.
I'm now pretty sure that this is why there are exactly 7 contacts on the microUSB connector inside the phone -- 5 are used to get the pre-HDMI signals out of the phone, and the other 2 (3, if you count the ground/anchor tabs and assume they carry a signal as well in addition to mechanically anchoring it in place) are used to supply +5v and ground, and possibly one wire for half-duplex signaling purposes.

Wow that was a lot of info... lol. I didn't know that about the usb tho. That's good to know. I was thinking of taking it apart to see.
But... I think he's wanting a UI via the USB like the way some players will do for the IPODs, not analog. To go throught all that when the Head Phone jack will do the same... I could only see that if it was broken or if you really really want only one cord to the phone.
; )
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

I've got an Alpine unit, I hook my USB up - turn on the TUNER. Mount the Drive and once the phone is done - swap back over to USB and i can get all my MP3S. sadly I get all of my ringtones too - odd when the radio is full blast and a track changes - none the less works well for me. Try it.

I purchased this Kensington LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit for my phone a few days ago. It works perfectly on my sister's iPod touch (no AVRCP [silly apple]) and an old WinMo 6.1 phone.
I just got my Epic in the mail today so I'll be testing it out soon.

WTF. AVRCP (bluetooth remote control) is really buggy with this phone. I used the LiquidAUX with an old Omnia for a week with no problems. The Epic connects and plays audio just fine. I can also pause and play music but the forward and back buttons don't work. When I first pair the phone with the device everything is fine, but after disconnecting and reconnecting the remote control stops working. I got it to work after un-paring and re-pairing but it only worked once.
The Moment I had before this had really choppy audio.
EDIT: I had the phone opened up in DDMS and the phone is receiving signals from the remote. But it only reacts to them when the media player is on the screen. Weird.

Trying to add an external hard drive to webtop

I have Rooted this phone and installed the custom Adeo (is that the name of the ROM or the hacker?) ROM. I also did the webtop-mod-without-a-dock because I was bored. I have the HD dock and think it would be great if I could have my external Drive show up in the file browser. I could play my music and videos from there. I don't know how hard this would be so I figured I'd ask you guys that have much more Android experience.
**SOLVED** see page 2
Also, I would really like to play music from my phone over USB in the deck in my truck. The deck is made for "ipods" or iPhones and won't see my Atrix as a media device. Is there a mod I could do to the phone to make my deck recognize it and let me play music? Thanks guys
EDIT
USB thumb drives work just fine, why won't it pick up my external hard drive? Does it need to be formatted a certain way?

seh6183 said:
I have Rooted this phone and installed the custom Adeo (is that the name of the ROM or the hacker?) ROM. I also did the webtop-mod-without-a-dock because I was bored. I have the HD dock and think it would be great if I could have my external Drive show up in the file browser. I could play my music and videos from there. I don't know how hard this would be so I figured I'd ask you guys that have much more Android experience.
Also, I would really like to play music from my phone over USB in the deck in my truck. The deck is made for "ipods" or iPhones and won't see my Atrix as a media device. Is there a mod I could do to the phone to make my deck recognize it and let me play music? Thanks guys
EDIT
USB thumb drives work just fine, why won't it pick up my external hard drive? Does it need to be formatted a certain way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your thumb drives are probably FAT32 and your external drive is likely NTFS. The webtop cannot read NTFS drives, they need to be FAT32 or some form of EXT

id hate to format it to find out it doesn't work lol

I use a FAT32 external drive and it works fine.

thank you very much sir

Any advice on how to get my deck to recognize the phone as an MP3 player?

seh6183 said:
Any advice on how to get my deck to recognize the phone as an MP3 player?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think you'll be able to. You can try setting the phone as mass storage, but I doubt it will work.

This is 2011, these car audio manufactures need to realize that an ipod is not the only mp3 player on the market.
This sucks.

seh6183 said:
This is 2011, these car audio manufactures need to realize that an ipod is not the only mp3 player on the market.
This sucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, but unfortunately it IS the mp3 player of the masses... and that's all they care about =\

There HAS to be a hack for this!!!!
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App

IMO this is the worst part about being an Android owner. Most consumer electronics are catered to iProduct.
My solution to the car stereo thing was to buy a deck that uses bluetooth audio.Works great that way.

booty hater said:
IMO this is the worst part about being an Android owner. Most consumer electronics are catered to iProduct.
My solution to the car stereo thing was to buy a deck that uses bluetooth audio.Works great that way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is definitely a solution, as is a standard headphone cable for the aux port. Problem is, bluetooth degrades quality and the aux cable doesn't charge. Also I like being able to change songs from the deck.
I think my solution will be to buy an old ass ipod on craigs and run the wire into my glovebox and just leave it in there.
That is of course unless someone figures out how to modify the usb certificate on the atrix to fake an ipod so I can just plug my phone in.
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App

Actually screw that.
I frequently use all my battery throughout a single work day. I need that usb port to charge my damn phone! This needs to be figured out
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App

seh6183 said:
I have Rooted this phone and installed the custom Adeo (is that the name of the ROM or the hacker?) ROM. I also did the webtop-mod-without-a-dock because I was bored. I have the HD dock and think it would be great if I could have my external Drive show up in the file browser. I could play my music and videos from there. I don't know how hard this would be so I figured I'd ask you guys that have much more Android experience.
Also, I would really like to play music from my phone over USB in the deck in my truck. The deck is made for "ipods" or iPhones and won't see my Atrix as a media device. Is there a mod I could do to the phone to make my deck recognize it and let me play music? Thanks guys
EDIT
USB thumb drives work just fine, why won't it pick up my external hard drive? Does it need to be formatted a certain way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't know if this has been answered but my WD "Mybook" took over 45mins to get "recognized" the USB thing popped up and it just said prepairing for like 30minutes or more.
Now whenever I plug it in it's basically instant on. I think it indexes it prior to using or something.

booty hater said:
IMO this is the worst part about being an Android owner. Most consumer electronics are catered to iProduct.
My solution to the car stereo thing was to buy a deck that uses bluetooth audio.Works great that way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SOLVED
When you plug the phone into the deck, pull down the notification bar and select usb, for the type select "mass storage". Works great.
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App

bringing this back. I finally got around to formatting my external drive to fat32 and every worked perfectly! excpet...
Fat32 has a severe limitation as it will not allow to me transfer any files onto the drive that are over 4gb. well most blu ray rips are at least 7gb. I know I can split the files up and recombine them, but that is extremely time consuming and clunky!
I then read that formatting the drive to an apple standard (hsp+ or something) would allow me to get passed the 4gb cap. while it may have, the webtop wont recognize the drive. so I'm back to square one.
not only that but I can't get the drive formatted back to a windows standard.
All im looking to do is have this drive be recognized by webtop and let me store all my media on it. If I can't get this figured out I'm buying an s2: (

Just an FYI, but the Atrix car dock provides audio out via USB. This means it will charge and play audio without having to do anything other than dock the phone. The included USB cable has a 3.5mm jack and includes the 3.5mm cable. The Car Dock app also provides a quick link to the music player.
The car dock is well worth the 40 bucks.

naplesbill said:
Just an FYI, but the Atrix car dock provides audio out via USB. This means it will charge and play audio without having to do anything other than dock the phone. The included USB cable has a 3.5mm jack and includes the 3.5mm cable. The Car Dock app also provides a quick link to the music player.
The car dock is well worth the 40 bucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This was already solved without a car dock earlier
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

seh6183 said:
This was already solved without a car dock earlier
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which is why I posted it as an FYI! The OP is not the only one who is reading this thread and it may be a valuable piece of information for anyone looking for a way to charge and play music with their Atrix.

Best way to repurpose G1

I switched to a Droid X for almost 6 months now, and my G1 just sits on my shelf. What's the best way to repurpose my old G1? I have considered donating it to a good dev so they can make good use of it, but what are other options?

Some of them just use it as the backup phone. Other pass it down to their familiy members (ie: kids, etc...) I got mine from my brother as a pass me down.
Some of the others users here using it to test the new ROM for G1. (bascially becoming the tester for the ROM).

Emulator machine. that's what I use my cliq for the d pad its great for nintendo rpgs
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

And of course a great backup I'd your phone takes a dump
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I use one of mine as a WiFi streaming audio player for the home sound system.
The other is my backup, sitting ready to take over should my Vibrant kick the bucket.
Sent from my G1 using XDA App.

phone backup is out of the question , moving from t-mobile to verizon :/
i have used my g1 for controlling my pc from my bed, which was convenient, but eventually just stopped
thanks for the suggestions, if anyone else got something, i'd be glad to hear it

I use mine as a dedicated handset for voip and to stop the kids stealing my galaxy to play stupid disney puzzles
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

you could donate to someone ... for example me hahah.

I just use mine as an alarm, lol.

you can surf the web via wifi soo uhhh yeah like blacra said stream music or uhhh fill it with apps to play and try... paperwieght..??? lol i could always use a spare G1 for testing lol

Turn it into a car music player. You'd need
-USB host drivers for the G1 (works on Android 2.2)
-mini-USB splitter/headphone adapter (it'd need a USB and headphone jack)
-AUX jack on the car radio
-3.5mm cable (goes from headphone adapter to AUX)
-mini-USB to USB cable
-powered USB hub and car adapter
-portable hard drive
Kind of a lot but you could get one heck of a music collection on a portable hard drive.

Maave said:
Turn it into a car music player. You'd need
-USB host drivers for the G1 (works on Android 2.2)
-mini-USB splitter/headphone adapter (it'd need a USB and headphone jack)
-AUX jack on the car radio
-3.5mm cable (goes from headphone adapter to AUX)
-mini-USB to USB cable
-powered USB hub and car adapter
-portable hard drive
Kind of a lot but you could get one heck of a music collection on a portable hard drive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second this
Its the best use for this thing if you dont use it, mines has been sitting on the shelf with my other old phones and hasnt been touched in months.

Hm, I not sure if both the audio adapter and the USB host drivers can work at the same time. Lots of people have done HDD mounting but nobody has tried using output at the same time.
Crap, what a time not to have my USB adapter. Maybe I can pick one up at the flea market.
Well if it does work, why stop there? Plug it into a home audio system. Find an app that allows you to control the music on the G1 from your other phone. Tada! Remote controlled 1TB stereo system. If the G1 wasn't such a weak phone you could turn it into an HTPC.

I used one of my old G1 to use as a walkie talkie. I can use the push to talk app to talk to my kids while there home on Wi-Fi.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App

Stereo thru usb?

Hey guys so I got my phone hooked up to the car stereo via usb and was wondering is there an app or a settings I can do make my phone play music?

Shinotheweevil said:
Hey guys so I got my phone hooked up to the car stereo via usb and was wondering is there an app or a settings I can do make my phone play music?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What kind of cable did you use for that? Did you use a mini USB to USB cable?

Tamhvm said:
What kind of cable did you use for that? Did you use a mini USB to USB cable?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes exactly what I am using.
Also I am using the ICS roms (though unstable) and I heard that ICS is able to play music through usb. Correct me if I'm wrong

Shinotheweevil said:
Yes exactly what I am using.
Also I am using the ICS roms (though unstable) and I heard that ICS is able to play music through usb. Correct me if I'm wrong
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm unaware if ICS is able to run Audio through USB.
I've found in several another threads here on XDADev that it doesn't work even on the most recent phones and even on Jelly Bean (4.1, 4.2).
(One of those threads: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1771834)
Also, I'm just shooting at the big globe in the sky right now, but you could try mounting the SD card as a Massive Storage Device and letting the car stereo read the MP3 out the SD card. I can't try it on my radio, as it is CD-era old. Just saying.

USB Mass Storage for Car Stereo

Just picked up the G2 a couple days ago. I've owned an Android before but never got into the rooting and rom flashing process. My problem is mostly that I used my iPhone in my car (a Kenwood head unit) for the stereo. I was able to control the music and sounds via the phone. However, the G2 doesn't work this way. Most I can get so far is the ability to select and play songs via the headunit, which with 1000+ songs is extremely inconvenient. I owned a Samsung Infuse years ago and that was able to work, but it was done by selecting USB Mass Storage I believe. I've done some research but I can't seem to find a straight answer on how to go about enabling that. Is there any way around this? It be awesome to be able to use my phone in the car.

What's the model of your car stereo? Maybe you can connect it with an AUX cable or Bluetooth, if your stereo supports it.

robogo1982 said:
What's the model of your car stereo? Maybe you can connect it with an AUX cable or Bluetooth, if your stereo supports it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a Kenwood MP345-U. It does have an aux cable, however there is sound quality loss with that. Bluetooth I'm honestly not sure whether or not it has, I've read somewhere I can purchase a Bluetooth USB that the phone can connect to. My main concern was I was able to charge my phone before along with it pausing the music during a phone call, etc.

chiefnwa said:
It's a Kenwood MP345-U. It does have an aux cable, however there is sound quality loss with that. Bluetooth I'm honestly not sure whether or not it has, I've read somewhere I can purchase a Bluetooth USB that the phone can connect to. My main concern was I was able to charge my phone before along with it pausing the music during a phone call, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since the phone can function only in media player mode (MTP), I don't think you can play it any other way than through the AUX cable. CWM recovery has the option of mounting internal storage as USB storage, but that's a highly, highly impractical solution.

You CAN do this but it is specific to CM ROMs. Probably 10.3. I don't know if its working on CM11 KitKat yet.
Its called USB Audio or something.
I'd also check out a Bluetooth solution if it would work. Then you could just plug in audio and use an NFC sticker to turn on BT and launch a music player. If you have a Verizon, you can also do wireless charging, so you can just drop your phone down on a mat and have everything just start working automatically.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

There is only quality loss with anything OTHER than AUX. The AUX and only the AUX on this phone is capable of delivering 24bit audio. The downside is, well, 2 cords.

Problem Using Bluetooth
The problem with using Bluetooth is that you can't use voice commands to pick tracks to play.

Danester said:
The problem with using Bluetooth is that you can't use voice commands to pick tracks to play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use multi- mount SD card from the play store...you need to be rooted
Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk

vivebatu said:
Use multi- mount SD card from the play store...you need to be rooted
Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I rooted my phone last night and downloaded multi-mount Sd but no luck, it won't mount the phone, what could be wrong?Do I need an OTG cable?I just want it to work USB to the Ford Sync System.

Danester said:
I rooted my phone last night and downloaded multi-mount Sd but no luck, it won't mount the phone, what could be wrong?Do I need an OTG cable?I just want it to work USB to the Ford Sync System.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to enabled mtp fix and then place the widget on the home screen...once you connect the normal USB cable just click on the widget
Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk

vivebatu said:
You need to enabled mtp fix and then place the widget on the home screen...once you connect the normal USB cable just click on the widget
Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did that. I enabled MTP fix rebooted and plugged in,what I did notice is that it seems to mount for a second or 2 sometimes and then it unmounts right away. I tried it on 2 work computers also and under my computer, the LG pops up as a drive for a quick second and then it un mounts. What the heck is going on.,I have screen shots of what is happening.It always pops up on the top of the screen with SD Card Unmounted when I tap the widget to mount. Something is causing it to Unmount it appears, any ideas?Since I Rooted the phone, when i hookup the usb cable it says that i am connected as installer, could that have anything to do with it?