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
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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...)
Hi there, I have a little problem. During playback of some videos the audio stream is a little slower than normal.
In practice after 2 minutes of reproduction I seen 2 minutes of video but almost 1:45 minutes of audio. In fact voices are heavier and lower than normal.
Is there an alternative videoplayer to use? On my pc, in these cases I should have used vlc, now? Which program to install?
I can't find any vlc, coreplayer, mplayer....
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
I can be watching a tv episode, or a movie, doesn't matter. 75% through the file and the audio starts over at the beginning while the video continues to play through as normal. Making it impossible to finish a movie. I have tried wiping, trying different ROMS, different media players, and also different video converters. I am converting hdtv, bd, and regular avis into mp4 format with video at 600kb/s and audio from 96 to 128kbps keeping the framerate the same as source, and have also tried changing framerate to 23.97 and other fps settings to no avail. The video and audio play perfectly fine for the first hour or so then magically my problem happens, the audio starts over and the video plays as normal. What on earth is causing this? It's very frustrating. I have been dealing with this for months and had given up, but now that dexter season 5 is out, I MUST WATCH IT!
Any help is GREATLY appreciated. I am currently running Sparksmod 1.6.
Also I should probably note, when I watch these converted files on the PC they play perfectly fine all the way through.
Watching a movie that is h264 encoded while listening with bluetooth headphones causes a noticeable decrease in video quality. In slow panning scenes the amount of "judder", or stuttering is subtley increased. It gives the video a jerky feeling, as if the video is not quite smooth.
This effect is present across multiple video players in hardware decoding mode. The same videos play more smoothly when listening through wired headphones or the XOOM's built in speakers.
Again, I repeat this a somewhat subtle affect. I spent two days playing with video encoders and handbrake settings, driving myself crazy trying to smooth out my videos. Then, due to a battery failure in my samsung BT headset, I started watching movies with a wired headset and the cause finally dawned on me. I did multiple AB comparisons to confirm the problem.
So if your video doesn't seem quite right, and you are using BT audio, try wired audio or buit in speakers for a while, and compare.
I'm using moboplayer right now, and watching Top Chef masters that I encoded into h264 (via Handbrake).
I turned on soft-decoding option, it runs smoothly, and the audio works fine straight from the jack on the top and straight from the speakers.
EDIT: Oops didn't read the post all the way, Sorry.
overclock it a little and your problems will be solved.
patass said:
overclock it a little and your problems will be solved.
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Yeah, I was thinking that too. Overclocking might solve the problem.
But wow! Wouldn't you think a 1GHz dual core CPU with hardware acceleration for h264 would be enough already just to play BT audio with your video? I'm just surprised overclocking is even necessary.
Edit: Just to point out - the video I'm playing has already been encoded specifically for the XOOM and is being handled by the hardware. The CPU should hardly be taxed to begin with. Is playing BT audio such a processor-intensive task that it should require more than a dual core 1GHz?
Hey, peeps. I use my phone to follow some twitch streamers. Problem is that my battery won't last as long as the stream.
The solution is to just listen to the streamer instead of watching thr video (I watch it for the funny commentary).
I can do this with an app called Ace and any third party video player.
This is where my actual problem starts. I have audio lag when the screen is off. When it's turned on it is ok. When I turn it off the audio starts to stutter. I can't figure out why. I've tried different settings.
I'm running full performance settings on my phone.
I tried MX Player, BSPlayer and VLC Player. VLC doesn't seem to have the stuttering issue but it also doesn't allow me to fast forward or backward (on a past broadcast).
GDReaper said:
Hey, peeps. I use my phone to follow some twitch streamers. Problem is that my battery won't last as long as the stream.
The solution is to just listen to the streamer instead of watching thr video (I watch it for the funny commentary).
I can do this with an app called Ace and any third party video player.
This is where my actual problem starts. I have audio lag when the screen is off. When it's turned on it is ok. When I turn it off the audio starts to stutter. I can't figure out why. I've tried different settings.
I'm running full performance settings on my phone.
I tried MX Player, BSPlayer and VLC Player. VLC doesn't seem to have the stuttering issue but it also doesn't allow me to fast forward or backward (on a past broadcast).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you try different kernel/roms? It sounds to me like your cpu/gpu scales to low when screen is off.
Lennyz1988 said:
Did you try different kernel/roms? It sounds to me like your cpu/gpu scales to low when screen is off.
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Click to collapse
I am on Resurrection Remix with Alucard kernel running the extreme performance profile.
Videos stored on my device don't sutter (even with the screen off). It happens only when streaming. And it's not buffering lag, since it works well with the screen on.
I'll try turning cortexbrain off. Since it supposedly puts the phone into a battery friendly state when the screen is off.