New Bluetooth stack announced. A2DP included - General Topics

New Widcomm Bluetooth stack brings audio and video enhancements
Broadcom Corporation announced the Widcomm BTW 4.0, a new release of its Bluetooth software, with enhanced security and adding advanced audio/video (A/V) capabilities to the industry's most widely adopted Bluetooth software. The new software was tested and qualified for native support and seamless operation with Microsoft's recently announced Service Pack 2 upgrade for the Windows XP operating system (Windows XP SP2).
Wireless, high quality stereo audio headsets and speakers enabled by the new WIDCOMM BTW (Bluetooth for Windows) 4.0 software is a new application expected to drive widespread Bluetooth adoption for consumers over the coming years. A/V enhancements built into BTW 4.0 software will bring a new level of audio quality to wireless headsets, enabling a generation of products capable of delivering CD-like stereo sound without the need for wires. The same A/V Bluetooth profile support can be expected to appear in upcoming consumer electronics products like MP3 players, cellular phones, PDAs, and other appliances.
The company sees wireless headsets or speakers enabled with this technology streaming high quality sound while also performing remote control functions such as pausing or stopping play, and selecting tracks. In addition, consumers can utilise wireless speakers, enabling enhanced sound and audio distribution for DVD and CD playback.
Broadcom's WIDCOMM BTW 4.0 incorporates the latest software "profiles," which ensure a common set of features between two Bluetooth devices. Bluetooth profiles are developed and standardized through the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). BTW 4.0 features many of the latest profiles, which provide advanced multimedia capabilities including:
GAVDP -- Generic Audio Video Distribution Profile
A2DP -- Advanced Audio Distribution Profile
AVRCP -- Audio Video Remote Control Profile
BTW 4.0 also supports the Basic Imaging Profile, which provides the ability to "push" and "pull" images wirelessly between a mobile phone or digital camera and a PC.
"BTW 4.0 answers two distinct needs in the Bluetooth space: enhanced security, and the ability to effectively stream high-quality audio to wireless headphones or speakers. It is changing the dynamics of how consumers will experience multimedia content on their PCs," said Ron Wong, Senior Product Line Manager for Broadcom's Bluetooth software products. "Broadcom's unique ability to design and deliver all the critical technology pieces for next-generation wireless electronic devices enables our partners to bring products to market quickly and with features that hold great appeal for consumer markets."
PC OEMs are already shipping Bluetooth in a large number of their commercial notebook PCs and are expecting continuous growth and accelerated adoption into 2005. With this rapid adoption, large enterprises have expressed growing concerns over security and software virus spreads. The new WIDCOMM BTW4.0 software incorporates enhanced security capability to help address these concerns
The software is currently shipping to Broadcom's early access partners.
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=3621

Related

TekSoft: "the MS BT stack can not be hacked to enable flawless call recording"

TekSoft: "the MS BT stack can not be hacked to enable flawless call recording"
TekSoft, one of the most excellent newcomers to the Windows Mobile developer scene but already being Bluetooth experts (see for example their excellent BlueMouse and BlueMusic applications), have just announced in THIS thread that it's, unfortunately, not possible to "hack" the Microsoft Bluetooth implementation of Windows Mobile to "capture" speech packets and record them:
"We had another attempt of making PhoneREC possible - by intercepting the voice flowing through the BT driver when a Bluetooth headset is connected:
1) when a call is established, the software would have enabled voice routing to Bluetooth headset
2) if a headset was not present, it would have been emulated (to be able to use the device without headsets with phonerec too)
3) voice data over Bluetooth would have been in the form of SCO packets
4) our software would have intercepted the SCO packets, extract the voice data, record it to a file, and play it on the device's speaker (so no need of using the headset to hear the other party in the call)
Unfortunately this failed too, as the SCO packets are handled in the hardware, so we found no way of capturing those from a software program.
The only remaining option is to use a custom made wired headset with PhoneREC. This works and assures high fidelity sound for both parties, but the phoneREC user can only record the phone call by using the special wired headset."
This is certainly very bad news for anyone not having a call recording-capable model.
For the time being, you have only few choices if you want to record your phone conversations. These are as follows:
If you want to stay with Pocket PC's, go for either the Gigabyte gSmart. According to the user comments HERE, the O2 Atom Exec and, HERE, the Asus P525 and P535 are also call recording-enabled. Unfortunately, the availability of (some of) these models can be restricted (for example, it's pretty hard to get the gSmart in the non-Asian / Australian region and when it's available at all - through, for example, ordering via Expansys -, it is pretty expensive.)
If you prefer MS Smartphones (in the Windows Mobile 6 parlance, WM6 Standard devices) or, are ready for returning to the two-device approach (one for phone calls and basic stuff like, say, playing emulated games via SmartGear / MasterAll's emulators or quickly browsing the Web via Opera Mobile or Opera Mini, another for anything other requiring a decent Pocket PC or Smartphone), with the HTC Oxygen (HTC s310). I'm absolutely sure it DOES support call recording - it makes excellent recordings, even when a BT headset is used. Note that I have an Orange rebranded Oxygen localized to Central-Eastern Europe (I've bought mine from a Slovakian guy to keep the costs down and it has Polish / Slovakian / Hungarian localization), SPV C100. However, I don't think the original HTC Oxygen wouldn't support call recording and it's just because the given countries' allowing for call recording that my Oxygen supports it. (To make sure HTC supports it in the "basic", non-localized models, I couldn't reflash it to a generic HTC ROM discussed HERE because there are no CID unlocking solutions for the model.)
Note that some? many? other Smartphone models do NOT support call recording. One of them, unfortunately, is the HTC Vox (s710), which is by far the best Smartphone available today. It does not, I repeat, NOT support recording the other party and yes, I've tested this VERY thoroughly.
If you don't want to get the above-listed PPC / Smartphone models but is ready to keep a non-Windows Mobile phone with you, you may want to read for example THIS article on the Symbian alternatives and what call recorder applications the platform has. Note that UIQ-based Sony-Ericsson phones, according to this thread, aren't capable of recording calls, only Nokia models. Also note that it's not with ALL Nokia models that you can get rid of the constant beeping.
If Symbian isn't your favorite, you may want to stick to "dumb" phones like the (Sony-)Ericsson t610/t618 (and, probably, later models). If you assign the call recording functionality to be started by quickly pushing the joystick to the left, you can easily emulate the (missing) auto-recording functionality. Unfortunately, the t610 doesn't support saving the other party's number / name along with the recording, unlike the call recording-capable predecessors of the t610. An example of the latter are the t68(i) and the, now, seven-year-old r520m. Note that the latter only supports recording one party and the former, while it stores both the timestamp and the other party's identity, doesn't let for transferring these recordings to anything via a cabled / IR / BT connection - that is, the recordings must be played back on the t68(i). Furthermore, on the t68(i), it takes slightly more button presses to start recording (there are no auto-recording capabilities either), unlike on the successor, the t610.
Siemens' old "dumb" models (for example, the SL-45) are also stated to be able to make flawless recordings. I don't know whether it's easy to make them automatic, whether the recordings are correctly timestamped or whether the other party's number / name is also stored along with the recording.
Finally, if always switching your phone to speakerphone mode is OK with you (and your environment: co-workers / family members etc.) and you never use wired / Bluetooth headsets (which would make recordings entirely impossible), make sure you always do so. It'll deliver definitely worse recording quality than recording with a phone that does support recording, but is still better than in the non-speakerphone mode. Note that if you need automatic speakerphone activation (as opposed to the manual one), you'll want to take a closer look at VITO AudioNotes - currently, it's the only audio / call recorder application to support auto speakerphone activation (and is, in general, an excellent call recorder for both the Pocket PC and the Smartphone).
Please DO read my related articles for more information on all these questions; they may answer all your questions.
Windows Mobile device manufacturers & Microsoft, we DO need phone recording capabilities!
Review: decent phone call (!) / note / MP3 recorder VITO AudioNotes 1.3 out!
How can I record phone conversations on my Pocket PC Phone Edition device?

MWC: iPhone, TV broadcasts, new multiplatform games etc.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
1. a cleaned-up, much improved version of this report will be published in the forthcoming iPhone Life (papermag) issue. As it'll be a joint effort on my and the mag's part (cleaning up the English, making the text as easy to digest as possible by adding additional references / explaining things etc.), I won't be able to post it online, unlike this (initial) version, which is (still) entirely my work. Sorry about this.
2. the article not only refers to the iPhone; for example, the games section (Gameloft) equally applies to Windows Mobile and Java (including Symbian and, probably, even BlackBerry) as Gameloft releases its games to all these platforms as well, not only the iPhone. The same stands for some hardware manufacturers (chargers, cases, or, Parrot with their car kits) and TV broadcast solution companies. That is, you might want to read it even if you don't have an iPhone or an iPod Touch.
3. as usual, a. you can click most shots to get a much bigger and higher-quality version; b. if you download the additional video clips I provide (outside YouTube) and your media player can't play it back, use the free and excellent Videolan VLC to play them. (They use the highest-quality H.264 for video.)
Several software companies developing for the iPhone have attended the Mobile World Conference this year; also, there have been some very nice hardware accessories for the device. First, I introduce some of the software and, then, the hardware news.
1. Generic software
1.1 Gaming
Thanks to the business model of Apple's AppStore and the more or less (the only problem is the lack of a directional pad) gaming-friendly, 3D accelerated hardware, the iPhone enjoys the most game releases with some really high-quality titles. At MWC, some of the gaming companies were also present.
1.1.1 Gameloft
Gameloft is one of the biggest players in the iPhone gaming industry. It’s they that published titles like Asphalt4, the racing game I recommend to everyone. The company has other, excellent titles like Guitar Rock Tour, Real Football 2009 (which has also been awarded a GSMA 2009 award) and CSI:NY (a detective game; not as sophisticated as real text/puzzle adventure games like those of Legend Entertainment or, as far as the iPhone is concerned, 1112 (AppStore link; quick review) a complete rewrite of the very popular, quality Windows Mobile title, Fade).
In addition to their recently released simple 2D shooter game "Wild west Guns”, they also showcased their forthcoming (it should hit the AppStore in early March) golf title "Let’s Golf!” Compared to the other golf title, RESETgame’s "Par 72 Golf”, I’ve played a bit ago, it was much-much faster. The game is excellent in other respects too; for example, it has nice, non-repetitive in-game music in stereo.
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(presskit screenshots; I wasn’t allowed to take direct shots / videos of the game as it's still a work-in-progress)
I’ve also played their Prince of Persia remake, POP HD, on the Windows Mobile platform (more precisely, the forthcoming Toshiba flagship and 3D powerhouse, the TG01). It turned out to be a really well done game, which, hopefully, is very soon ported to the iPhone. Please see our blogs for a game video.
As far as the Windows Mobile ports of Gameloft are concerned, as is explained HERE (the PocketGamer.org link is also worth checking out for David's additional thoughts on the issue), while the company does port its games to Windows Mobile (that is, this one will too be ported), it only offers them thorugh mobile operators, not via traditional, well-established channels like ClickGamer, Mobile2Day (or even Handango). I really hope they do change this as, for example, their forthcoming Prince of Persia HD really rocks on 3D hardware accelerated phones. (Their big hit on the iPhone, Asphalt4 Racing, wasn't accelerated on the Samsung Omnia, though - it used software rendering, meaning ugly, pixelizated and very slow graphics.)
1.2 Remote desktop control
iPhones can not only be used to play games and make phone calls, but also remote control any desktop computer to, for example, quickly look up data you’ve left on your office or home computer. (You might want to check out THIS Windows Mobile-specific roundup for more info.) There have already been some implementations of doing this - for example, VNC clients like Veency (in Cydia) or Mocha (in the AppStore) - or the RDP client Jaadu.
1.2.1 LogMeIn Ignition
LogmeIn Ignition is pretty similar to previous remote controller solutions: it makes it possible for you to remote control any desktop Windows PC. It, however, entirely builds on the LogMeIn framework, which has some advantages over "traditional” access methods like VNC or RDP; for example, it allows for gaining access to any desktop computer even through firewalls, without having to remember the Internet address of your computer – which is particularly useful when it’s dynamically changing. LogmeIn has a very easy-to-use interface you’ll quickly familiarize yourself with.
Some goodies, like file transfer, already implemented in the desktop (or the Windows Mobile) client are (still) missing from the current version; nevertheless, the developers promise they’d look into implementing at least file transfer.
1.3 Adobe Flash
One of the biggest problems with the Web browser of iPhone, Safari, is the lack of Flash support. While Adobe announced last November they have created an iPhone version of Flash and all they did was waiting for AppStore approval. At MWC, they have only announced support for alternative platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android). Many analysts consider this as a revenge on Apple for not allowing the official client to be entered in AppStore.
1.4 Viigo
One of the better RSS readers and podcatcher apps (please see THIS for more info on what the latter means), which, incidentally, has recently received a major update on the BlackBerry (also including podcasting and Twitter support), will also be ported to the iPhone.
1.5 Yahoo Mobile
Yahoo has also announced porting their all-in-one Yahoo Mobile solution to the iPhone. This AppStore-downloadable program (slated for release later this Spring) installs on the iPhone and lets the user access everything Yahoo (for example, Mail). This greatly speeds up for example accessing your personal mail account – no need to go through a Web interface any more.
Two videos I’ve made:
First (not that recommended; high-resolution/-quality original in H.264 HERE)
Second (much more recommended; high-resolution/-quality original in H.264 HERE)
2. Video streaming, TV
Unfortunately, the vast majority of current TV stations use Windows Media Video (WMV) for broadcasting, which can’t directly be played back on the iPhone. Third-party solutions highly popular on other mobile platforms (for example, CorePlayer) still don’t support these kinds of streams. Also, the iPhone (iPod) completely lacking TV receiver hardware, you can’t directly watch TV broadcasts available in your region. Fortunately, there are some just-announced solutions that, in the future, may fix these issue.
2.1 PacketVideo
While PacketVideo (just like all the other, similar companies at MWC), basically, is targeting mobile operators, their standalone offering may still be released for end users.
First, they have a dongle containing a DVB-H/T receiver. This receives digital TV broadcasts and transferring them via Wi-Fi to (also) iPhones and iPod Touch devices. Note that, currently, they only support DVB-H/T, which is only common outside the US. In the States, DVB-T is not at all used and DVB-H is very scarce, MediaFLO being the main method of mobile TV broadcasts. Hopefully, if PacketVideo indeed makes its product available to individual customers, they will also offer a MediaFLO-specific version for American users.
Another (and pretty much independent of the above-explained DVB receiver/Wi-Fi transmitter) of their new products is a complete TV transcoding solution they currently offer to mobile operators only. It allows operators to offer (paid-for, iPhone-compatible) versions of TV programs to their customers. What really makes this especially interesting is that the PacketVideo folks have managed to implement a WMV decoder for the iPhone, which, basically, opens up the huge inventory of existing TV streams to watch right on your iPhone – without having to pay anything extra for your mobile operator (if they at all offer the channels you’d like to watch). The importance of this is enormous for an iPhone user – after all, currently, very-very few TV stations / programs offer iPhone-compatible streams. Actually, I only know of the Finnish Web "video recorder” service "TV Kaista” that offers all the recordings of most Finnish TV channels from the last two weeks as iPhone-compatible streams.
(the PV booth)
(the DVB receiver & Wi-Fi transmitter next to my iPhone 3G [in a case, making it slightly larger])
Note that a lot has changed since the first announcements and demos of the service; this also means the currently available demos you can see on YouTube are outdated and no longer reflect the current user interface of the program. Now, they use a completely redesigned interface with the list of the available channels on the left and other goodies.
A YouTube video of a demo of the player in action is HERE
2.2 Qualcomm
Describing the dongle of PacketVideo, I’ve already mentioned MediaFLO, the US de facto standard for digital video broadcasts for mobile handhelds (not to be mistaken to ATSC, which is meant for non-mobile receivers). Qualcom, the main company behind the technology, has showcased a reference design of a MediaFLO receiver and transmitter based on their chipset. As It uses Wi-Fi to broadcast its transcoded contents, the iPhone is also compatible.
A video is HERE (YouTube version; high-quality/resolution original HERE)
The Qualcomm folks stated there still aren’t any retail products utilizing their chipset doing all this (they just showcased a concept device with it).
Also note that, as with most of the similar solutions, this isn't an iPhone-only transcoder - most? all? of the alternative smartphone operating systems will be able to access the same content.
Speaking of transcoding and playing back mobile digital broadcasts on handsets not having a built-in receiver, I’ve also asked the Nokia folks whether their Bluetooth DVB-H receiver will receive at least DVB-T compatibility (for non-American users) and support for significantly more and not only Nokia handsets. Unfortunately, the answer is no. See THIS for more info.
2.3 1cast and wit Software
I’ve also seen some other companies’ demo of their, similar solutions; for example, that of 1cast and wit Software. The latter has also demoed their mobile operator-side solution. It was low-resolution (QCIF) only because of the mobile operator’s restrictions. I’ve taken a video of it; it’s available HERE and HERE (YouTube; much higher-quality original of the former HERE). Note that, however, the quality of the reception severely suffers from the network congestion (at MWC, everybody is accessing mobile networks) – the service works far better in a far less stressed (congested) environment. That is, in real-world situations, wit software's solution fares far better.
3. Hardware accessories
3.1 Car kits
Parrot has come out with some new designs for controlling, docking and recharging the iPhone: the MKi9100 and the MKi9200. They have also come up with a pretty decently designed set of stereo speakers, along with an iPhone / iPod dock, the Zikmu by Philippe Starck (slated for Spring 2009 release). See product page HERE for more information on all this.
This is a decent addition to the T605, IHF1000 by Motorola and the Parrot CK3000 Evolution, CK3100 and the 3200LS Bluetooth car kits by Parrot.
3.2 Chargers and cases
There have been several companies offering chargers for the iPhone; for example, FreePlay (a company specializing in solar chargers and quick-to-recharge external chargers):
(their rapid charger and iPhone solar charger available to end users)
(the iPhone solar charger from the back)
(…and the bottom)
(their other products having very strong retro-feeling: two digital radios [without a shortwave tuner] and a stereo, battery-operated "audio box” with a built-in iPhone stand)
… and IDAPT-INOITULOS (homepage HERE; it’s still pretty basic; a CES article with video HERE), with their all-in-one solution: swappable charger sockets and a charger also functioning as a stand / cradle:
It’s already available for end users for US$ 50.
As with third party chargers, there have been several companies offering iPhone cases; for example, Trexta:
3.3 Audio enhancement, A2DP
3.3.1 Bluetooth stereo audio transfer
One of the biggest omissions of the iPhone (3G) is the lack of high-quality Bluetooth audio transfer (A2DP) and remote multimedia playback control (AVRCP). By using these, you could get rid of the cables while listening to music on either stereo headphones or external speakers; also, you gain a way to control (volume up/down, stop/restart, next/previous) the playback of your media.
There are two ways of fixing this problem. The easier and non-iPhone-specific one is getting a pair of A2DP headphones (for example, the Plantronics Pulsar 590A or the latest, just-released and astonishingly high-quality Altec 906 - see review HERE) coming with a Bluetooth adapter that plugs into the 3.5mm audio socket of the iPhone. This will make it possible to listen to music, but you won’t be able to remotely control the player with the headphones buttons. To allow for the latter, you’ll need an iPhone/iPod-specific dongle that plugs into the cable connector of the handset. (Technically, it’s there that the handset also allows for controlling playback.)
So far, only few dongles of the latter (AVRCP-capable) type have been released: the Infinxx Icombi AP21 and its enhanced, improved version, Infinxx AP23 iBluon Bluetooth Dongle Adapter (also known as iBluon TD02; review HERE). Another announced one, 8Bananas’s BD-906, doesn’t seem to be available and the homepage of the manufacturer is down.
Now, iSkin (webpage HERE) has announced another dongle that does the same, the CERULEAN TX ( homepage: http://www.iskin.com/ceruleantx/ ). They also offer a pair of Bluetooth speakers, CERULEAN RX. Note that there are several other similar Bluetooth A2DP loudspeakers – they have lately, become pretty common. That is, you don’t need to purchase the RX to listen to your tunes – as the TX utilizes the industry-standard A2DP and AVRCP protocols, any other set of speakers (or headphones) can be used.
3.3.2 SRS
SRS is a well-known company for its audio enhancement software and algorithm(s) – if you’re coming from Windows Mobile, you may already have heard of them as several WM handsets come with it preinstalled. They have come up with a headphones-only iPod / iPhone dongle (connecting to the system socket of the device) doing essentially the same.
4. The competition
There have been some remarkable, multimedia-capable phones comparable to the iPhone well worth mentioning.
On Windows Mobile, the WVGA (800*480 – the iPhone’s resolution is 320*480) 3D hardware accelerated Toshiba TG01 is worth mentioning. It has a whopping, new-generation 1 GHz processor, which greatly speeds things up. On the negative side, though, the device is huge, albeit leaner than the iPhone. Also, Toshiba has a pretty bad record of updates and bugfixes and the TG01 having no Start button, it’s questionable it’ll ever get the next operating system updates.
HTC, the biggest player in Windows Mobile, has also announced two new models. They are pretty nice but can go nowhere near the revolutionary TG01.
On the Symbian operating system, it’s mostly Samsung’s Omnia HD that is worth mentioning. It has an OLED screen capable of rendering colors far better than traditional handsets (including the iPhone), a high-resolution touchscreen and an excellent camera not only able to take 8 Mpixel shots, but also 720p (1280*720) videos. Its multimedia features are topped by allowing for 720p video playback and a pair of stereo(!) speakers.
Please see our blogs for more info on the competition: the last TG01-related article is HERE, the Symbian all-in-one one is HERE.

[Q] Integrate new version of bluez with AVRCP 1.3 into custom kernel?

Bluez development team is getting ready to release version 4.97 with new bluez version that implements AVRCP 1.3 profile. This is very important feature for anyone who uses the phone with any bluetooth enabled car audio system. Unfortunately, ICS doesn't suport it. Can this be integrated into one the custom kernels?
http://www.politreco.com/2011/10/avrcp-1-3-on-bluez/
AVRCP 1.3 on BlueZ
During the past weeks I’ve been working again on the BlueZ project and now we can finally announce that the AVRCP 1.3 profile is officially supported.
Technical background
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, here comes a little background for those buzzwords:
BlueZ is the user-space part of the Bluetooth® technology stack used on Linux and Android. It has support for several Bluetooth profiles such as RFCOMM, HID, PAN, PBAP, OBEX, HFP, A2DP (some of them are implemented as separate projects) that are defined by the Bluetooh SIG. In simpler terms, BlueZ is what allows your Linux device to do amazing things with Bluetooth technology such as stream stereo music, make phone calls and other wireless magics.
One of these profiles supported by BlueZ is AVRCP (Audio/Video Remote Control Profile), which allows two devices to communicate through Bluetooth technology and exchange commands/messages to control the music/video being played.
New features
Until some weeks ago BlueZ only had support for version 1.0 of the AVRCP protocol. This early version allows a Controller device (e.g. a Bluetooth technology-based car kit) to tell the Target device (e.g. a smartphone) to play, pause, go to next music and go to previous music. We’ve now upstreamed an implementation of AVRCP Version 1.3, which adds some nice features to the previously supported version, such as:
Transmitting metadata of the music being played;
Change Application Settings such as Equalizer, Repeat, Shuffle and Scan modes;
Set current status of media playback: playing, stopped, paused, forward-seeking, reverse-seeking.
Some time ago I bought a Bluetooth stereo car kit. How boring it was having the ability to stream music from my phone but not see any information regarding who was playing, which album, etc. This is no more. Now we have proper support for AVRCP 1.3 . Our ProFUSION team utilized the open source baseport for the OMAP™ processor-based Blaze™ mobile development platform from Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) to help achieve this milestone. Additionally, we worked together with TI on testing and debugging to make this AVRCP 1.3 support a reality. Below you can see yours truly holding a Blaze™ mobile development platform from TI, sending music metadata to a Bluetooth technology-enabled car kit.
Awesome!
This is great news! I am very eager to get this working in my Nexus S.
Any update on this? I would love to see a way to implement this in a rooted phone...
bumpity bump
will he a gooood thing, no other news? bye

Dev for Hire?

Hi, I hope I am not violating forum rules by posting this.
I am interested in hiring a developer to create a rom for a project related to a specific series of digital audio players that are all based on relatively the same hardware and software platform. The model numbers are Pioneer XDP-100R, XDP-300R, Onkyo DP-X1 and DP-X1a. These are all running an AOSP 5.1.1 and carry very similar hardware. They are made in the same plant, by the same parent company.
The main use case for a new ROM is that these devices all include specialty audio hardware that is currently only utilized when using the bundled music player. 3rd party music players, and streaming services like Spotify and Tidal, route audio through the integrated DAC on the Snapdragon chip. It would be preferable to use the higher quality ESS Sabre DAC(s) that is utilized by the onboard music player. I have no clue at how involved this would be, but LG has done it with the V10/V20.
Would also be interested in possibly incorporating other features, most likely based on disabling services that are not required for playing music. The idea is lean and light.
If you have any insight on what would be involved in a system level change to route audio through the Sabre chip please feel free to post here. If you are interested in working on the project, please PM me.
Thanks
YES!!!!
YES!!!!
I am absolutly interested in this !!!
Im willing to contribute $ as well
A Full featured audio oriented custom rom for my xdp-300r b personally that sounds like a dream come true
Currently i use (Athame) to download Tidal songs/playlists/Albums from my personal account
theres options in settings for MASTER quality audio files,,
Simply copy paste web address of the page you want to rip music from (sharebutton:url)
into athame and it will compile and click download
easy and simple and fast....
I just hosted it incase you or anyone wants access let me know ill send a download link
PCLOUD LINK BY REQUEST ONLY
MAKE SURE TO CONFIGURE SETTING FOR USER ACCOUNT
its simple just cut paste audio tracks onto SD card
use the integrated music player and enjoy your hifi dac in all its glory
I NEVER USE XDAP THE TRANSFER WILL FAIL!!!
also heres a different idea i recently had------->
although just to let you know, porting music apps through kodi is a much more user friendly approach......
on kodi just do some research and find the audio plugins you need and install them through repo's
HERES MY FAV BUILD REPO
http:angel:://kbully.:angel:esy.:angel:es
im thinking that its possible to design an APK for android that can monitor apps and create a profile for how they decode and encode data for audio and video data,,,,
a simple plugin and widget for android that intercepts and reroutes all app audio transmission through the integrated audio hardware thus your apps like Tidal,, even netflix and youtube would not have to be modified, the audio transmission paths would simply be rerouted as if it were playing through the integrated plugin's
so instead of modifying hardware plugins and to avoid modifications to copyrighted app's
simply create a middle man diskjocky to intercept and redistribute data transmissions by lane switching and protocol interception redirection
this idea is forked from an idea i had for a bluetooth app for transmitting audio to many different speakers at once sort of like (Airfoil) either by modulating transmission across many transmission lanes at once by splitting them into thousands of bits and cloning data transmission like dealing identical cards to all players very fast like refresh rates faster than the ear can distinguish so that every speaker system gets the same audio transmission at the same time and in sync,,,,
possibly helper plugins that you install on all your devices with bluetooth hardware,,, so that when not in use they could maintain a shared connection to the host player for sharing the BT hardware so that audio could be synced and distributed to different recievers locally at a decent sync level offloading cpu needs to devices that are not being used by owners,,,,
that is also forked from an idea i had about an open source application that people would use for extreme data crunching needs by utilizing unused hardware from other users globally, like a Social Global Cloud Computing Project the data is so small individually that it is secure in the nature of data size alone thus never needing additional security updates all data would flow through micro VPN's
there are times processing power is needed and others simply have a computer or mobile device running and not in use, or not completing processing tasks of significant hardware needs,,,, imagine if anyone on any device could instantly process complex operations by sharing unused power????
at the rate network speeds are increasing cloud computing is inevitable and that will be the end to custom roms and os development,,, how do you flash a mobile device that is only a peripheral device with streaming capabilities,,, the OS firmware would be operated virtually on servers and physical user hardware would become the past............
anyways i totally had szhit to do and got stuck on here for over 2 hours typing this up loll lmao
to infinity and beyond fellow human
~Killacam~
"don't wash their mouths with soap assuming it will clean their mistakes,
expose their mouths to Dirt so that they may taste and experience their faults"
I've rooted XDP-300R and just ported TWRP over to it tonight. Seems to be working! I've already had a working build.prop mod to skip android encoding and push directly to DAC. But this hopefully allows more work without fear of bricks
https://cdn.head-fi.org/a/10245543_thumb.jpg

ASHA

Hi all
can't remember where I 've read that ASHA ( stands for Android Streaming for hearing Aids ) shld be introduced with Pie Release...
Apple Iphone, since IOS 10 streams audio data to yr hearing aids and they heavily advertise that those are "Made for Iphone..."
Android is ( or was...) supposed to do the same in order to publicly announce "Made for Android" !!!
None of the custom roms I've tried ( RR,lightRom,Cosp ) support this "feature" ??
From what I remember, there was a specific protocol associated with BT Low Energy to provide streaming once yr hearing aids were recognized
Any info welcome
Tested Technology (tested.technology.co.uk) has ASHA up and running with LiNX Quattro hearing aids and a Pixel 3a phone updated to Android 10.
There's currently a very limited combination of hearing aids (just GN's I think, and Cochlear) and phones (Goggle's own Pixels and possibly the odd Samsung flagship) that can use ASHA.
LE Audio, the BT SIG Hearing Aid Working Group tells me, is something completely separate. It's intended to be a much wider application of audio over BLE that will roll out this year with BT 5.2. As I understand it, LE Audio and ASHA use different stacks. The two groups haven't even been in discussion. Don't expect any mutual compatibility.
–
Chris

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