[Q] Music Player doesn't normalize volume? - Captivate General

I have normalized the volume on all of my mp3 files using the MP3Gain application on my PC. This applies a factor to the file telling the music player how to adjust the volume for each mp3 so that they will all play at the same level. Otherwise, you get the problem that every mp3 starts at a different volume and you have constantly adjust the level.
Most well-designed music players will use the gain settings and make the level adjustment, but the stock music player on the Captivate seems to ignore the settings.
So, my questions are:
1. Does anybody know how to make the stock music player play nice with the gain settings?
2. Otherwise, does anybody know if there are other players which will use the gain settings.
Also, is the Captivate player a skinned version of the standard Android player? If so, does the standard player pay attention to the gain settings? If so, then maybe there's a hidden setting that will make it work on the Captivate. Anybody who's knowledgeable about this, please jump in.

It would be nice if an Android music player supported ReplayGain, yeah; I'm not sure if any do. It certainly would have to be a third-party music player. The only way to make the stock music player respect this would be to actually normalize the files instead of having ReplayGain tags. The downside, of course, if that this irreversibly changes the actual music files, themselves.

Related

Using the Fuze for music; a few questions.

Hey, everyone!
So I've been using the Fuze for a while, and while I'm very impressed with how well it plays music (the last exposure I had to listening to music on a phone was not a good one...), I'm a bit bitter about the shortcomings I've run across on the simpler things. I wonder if anyone here could answer these questions:
* Does anyone know an app or background service that lets me adjust volume with the screen OFF? It's a bit inconvenient to have to unlock the phone every time I want to adjust the volume.
* Does anyone know of a lean and mean music player that supports gapless playback AND has at least a basic library that isn't slow? I tried Pocket Player (horrible library performance), Kinoma (no gapless and horribly laggy), S2P (great library, but graphics were distracting and no gapless), HTC's built-in player (pretty good, but no gapless) and Windows Media (need I say more?) and all of the other apps I've heard about don't catalog music.
Thanks!
cnunez1987 said:
Hey, everyone!
So I've been using the Fuze for a while, and while I'm very impressed with how well it plays music (the last exposure I had to listening to music on a phone was not a good one...), I'm a bit bitter about the shortcomings I've run across on the simpler things. I wonder if anyone here could answer these questions:
* Does anyone know an app or background service that lets me adjust volume with the screen OFF? It's a bit inconvenient to have to unlock the phone every time I want to adjust the volume.
* Does anyone know of a lean and mean music player that supports gapless playback AND has at least a basic library that isn't slow? I tried Pocket Player (horrible library performance), Kinoma (no gapless and horribly laggy), S2P (great library, but graphics were distracting and no gapless), HTC's built-in player (pretty good, but no gapless) and Windows Media (need I say more?) and all of the other apps I've heard about don't catalog music.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for ur first question i HIGHLY doubt theres an app unless u have S2U2 as an unlock app, then u can change the settings where u can change the volume without unlocking
for ur second question, try nitrogen player, never tried it but i heard alot of good reviews for it http://www.dewantoro.net/search/nitro+player+WM
the only i use on my TP for music was the TF3D player and i havent experienced any problems with it, but give nitrogen player a try...
Libraries are going to be slow if you have a large collection. Try TCPMP or mortplayer-they use a file explorer instead of a library. The downside is that you can't play genres or all your music. You need to make playlists.
PocketPlayer has gapless playback and many other features. The only problem is that it is not integrated into manila.

stock music player wont play in background

I have read on other forums where users report that their built-in default music player stops as soon as they switch away from the screen and others say the have no issue. So I guess this is a mysterious bug. It's driving me nuts. Any ideas in trouble shooting this?
no help here
Sorry mine won't turn off no matter what buttons I push. Matter of fact I can't figure out how to truly turn it off, all I get is pause. Without advanced task killer it just sits in the drop down menu, waiting.
I do have the other bug with it though, I can't sort by artist with a lot of music on there. 25gigs, hit artist and it crashes and says not enough memory. There is more than a gig free on both the internal and the external cards. Bummer.
As of today it now plays in the background. If I can figure out a rhyme or reason as to why it wouldn't before I'll report back.
jamespaulritter said:
As of today it now plays in the background. If I can figure out a rhyme or reason as to why it wouldn't before I'll report back.
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Click to collapse
Mine always played in the background. You must be confuse with stock video player which can't play in the background for obvious reasons.
foxbat121 said:
Mine always played in the background. You must be confuse with stock video player which can't play in the background for obvious reasons.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, no confusion. When the program "Music Player" is launched a task manager shows that it is running but if the companion program, (whos name I cant remember) is not also running then the music will not play in the background. The companion program is launched by Music Player when an audio file is started. It has a similar name to Music Player. I believe it is named Sound Player and it has the same icon as Music Player.
If you start a playlist or album or whatever in the stock player and hit the home key it will show the music player now playin in the notification bar (where you can pause or skip songs. If you go back into the program and use the back button all the way out the program closes.
jamespaulritter said:
Nope, no confusion. When the program "Music Player" is launched a task manager shows that it is running but if the companion program, (whos name I cant remember) is not also running then the music will not play in the background. The companion program is launched by Music Player when an audio file is started. It has a similar name to Music Player. I believe it is named Sound Player and it has the same icon as Music Player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, now I know how you get confused. Sound Player and Music Player are two different apps. No, Music Player does not require Sound Player in memory. Sound Player can't play in background while Music Player can.
The only way to launch Sound Player is to use My Files File Explorer and open mp3 or other sound files directly. On the other hand, Music Player can only be launched from app launcher and it offers following additional features:
1. Support albums and playlists.
2. Support 5.1ch playback on headphones
3. Support playback on the background.
foxbat121 said:
Ok, now I know how you get confused. Sound Player and Music Player are two different apps. No, Music Player does not require Sound Player in memory. Sound Player can't play in background while Music Player can.
The only way to launch Sound Player is to use My Files File Explorer and open mp3 or other sound files directly. On the other hand, Music Player can only be launched from app launcher and it offers following additional features:
1. Support albums and playlists.
2. Support 5.1ch playback on headphones
3. Support playback on the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was some odd notations I made while I had a task manager installed last week. I just tried what you said and you are 100% exactly right! Phweeeh thats a relief. I was worried it would go back to not working later. Thanks for the insight.
Mine skips a little bit when I use the stock camera app
waiting4gingerbread said:
Mine skips a little bit when I use the stock camera app
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Click to collapse
My music player shuts off when I launch the camera app. Gingerbread I think you found a legitimate bug.
Does anyone have a replacement for sound player (not music player) that can run in the background? I'm sick of having streaming podcasts end when I need to do something else with my phone.
BigJayDogg3 said:
Does anyone have a replacement for sound player (not music player) that can run in the background? I'm sick of having streaming podcasts end when I need to do something else with my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I listen to podcasts with Doubletwist. Heard good things about something catcher as whell (dog catcher maybe?)
jamespaulritter said:
My music player shuts off when I launch the camera app. Gingerbread I think you found a legitimate bug.
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Click to collapse
I think that people who have very large music collections will find that the player shuts off when they go into certain applications. My feeling is that this is Android's internal memory manager subroutine figuring that the audio player is eating up way too much memory, most likely due to the database being loaded the entire time the player is running, and deciding to close that one program rather than ten others to free up the same amount of space. How much memory does your player eat up while running?
The Sound Player is opening instead of the Music Player
On my Vibrant, a .mpga file used to open using the Music Player but now the Sound Player is opening instead. My phone is completely stock, never rooted and no aps downloaded, but I can tell which player is opening: after the player opens, I close it and then press and hold the home key to see which program just opened by noting the first program name in the list of the 6. (The two player's interfaces look almost identical so it is easy to think that the Music Player is opening when the Sound Player is the one actually opening.)
Some possible clues to the cause: I had just used the sound recorder for the first time. It creates .amr files. The .amr files showed up in the Music Player's playlist, but the file wouldn't play; so I browsed directly to the file using Files, clicked on the .amr file and the Sound Player opened the file. But now the Sound Player its opening .mpga files instead of the Music Player and my Music Player's playlist is now empty. (At least that is what I think the sequence of events were.)
I imagine that resetting the phone to factory default would fix it, but I'll have to learn how to backup my address book, web favorites, and goggle map starred items.)
I posted here because I believe I have detected accurately what is happening (maybe not the cause, but the fact that the wrong player is opening), and you experts might be able to suggest a workaround or get the bug fixed.
jamespaulritter said:
I have read on other forums where users report that their built-in default music player stops as soon as they switch away from the screen and others say the have no issue. So I guess this is a mysterious bug. It's driving me nuts. Any ideas in trouble shooting this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The mp3 must be in the music folder on the sdcard in order for music player to play in the background.
Not true. I've had music in other folders that got pulled into my music library.
Sent from my Samsung Captivate.
DnSl4 said:
On my Vibrant, a .mpga file used to open using the Music Player but now the Sound Player is opening instead. My phone is completely stock, never rooted and no aps downloaded, but I can tell which player is opening: after the player opens, I close it and then press and hold the home key to see which program just opened by noting the first program name in the list of the 6. (The two player's interfaces look almost identical so it is easy to think that the Music Player is opening when the Sound Player is the one actually opening.)
Some possible clues to the cause: I had just used the sound recorder for the first time. It creates .amr files. The .amr files showed up in the Music Player's playlist, but the file wouldn't play; so I browsed directly to the file using Files, clicked on the .amr file and the Sound Player opened the file. But now the Sound Player its opening .mpga files instead of the Music Player and my Music Player's playlist is now empty. (At least that is what I think the sequence of events were.)
I imagine that resetting the phone to factory default would fix it, but I'll have to learn how to backup my address book, web favorites, and goggle map starred items.)
I posted here because I believe I have detected accurately what is happening (maybe not the cause, but the fact that the wrong player is opening), and you experts might be able to suggest a workaround or get the bug fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try force a media scan to see if it fixes your Music Player playlist problem.

PowerAmp [HELP]!

Can someone tell me why in PowerAmp there is a 'Folders' button and 'Library' button.
I'm pretty confused by the interface and the app itself and how to use the folders/library and which is for what and how it should be used.
All my songs I put on the phone appear in the 'Folders' menu, but none of those songs appear in the 'Library' which really seems to be more of a sensible place for them to appear because the Library has all songs, artists, playlists etc and seems to be the normal area for the app to store its music.
I have no idea how to get the music in there which is where I want it.
When I am playing a song it shows the artist and title and below it a folder path location? But why? It's like a path of where it is on the phone's SD card and the path of where it was on the computer. I don't need this information in the player view.
Also, I have to have my volume on max to hear anything decently despite being told PowerAmp helps the issue of the low media volume with the default audio player. (Sennheiser CX870s). Anyone know why/how to get the volume working more 'normally'? (Desire HD)
Any tips are appreciated.
Any other good music player app suggestions are appreciated.
Never encountered this with the default music player (where the audio is not loud enough).
I use the full version of Power Amp (no difference from trial) and it works great for me because I find the stock music player sorely lacking, leaving a lot to be desired.
You could try messing with the equalizer, I don't have my phone on my person at the moment so my advice isn't as solid as I'd like...
Have you tried another music player such as DoubleTwist?
(look up on market place; i can't post links yet )
I use a pair of $50 Sony MDR EX85LP earbuds, they're great for the price and on my Droid X they are plenty loud for my tastes, could it possibly be the earbuds or specific piece of music you are listening to?
If what I mentioned doesn't help my last piece of advice would be to try and find some sort of digital amp that would amplify your music, or an actual pocket amp.
Sorry I forgot to say the volume issues is regarding the HTC Desire HD.
Thanks mithikx I'll check out DoubleTwist.
Anyone else who can answer my OP questions, that would be great
PowerAMP has both features for, well, convenience. A lot of people who're really into their music like to organise it themselves, with a folder structure of their choosing - eg. they might have it separated by genres, or by what mood the music reminds them of, or what place they like to play the music in. The 'Folders' tab gives you the same actual folder structure as is on the SD card, I find it quite handy myself, it makes a lot more sense to me because I can specify the structure any way I choose, much easier than making playlists.
The library, on the other hand, is just like PowerAMP tells you when you first tab to it - it's the default Android media library, and is managed by Android, not PowerAMP. It's the traditional media player structure, and sounds like that's what works best for you. If files aren't showing up in the library, you need to get the default Sense media player (Assuming you're on a stock DHD build) to scan that music, because in theory it shouldn't be showing up in the Sense player if it's not in the PowerAMP library. Try restarting the phone, unmounting/remounting the SD card, or downloading a widget that lets you trigger a media scan.
As for the volume, have you tried boosting the 'pre-amp' in the PowerAMP equalizer? The only other media player I'd recommend would be Winamp, don't like DoubleTwist myself.
Hope this helps.
Hi
I really do like powerAmp a lot. Specially the folder option, since I can play the music in the exactly order I put in the memory without needing to create a playlist. I tried the trial version an I was about to buy it , but then I found the SRS enhancement option on the default HTC Desire HD player and I really like how the music sounds with that option.
Does somebody know if this feature is or would be available on a future version of poweramp? Are these SRS enhancement and the other option Dolby mobile just digital equialization settings that maybe can be reproduce on the poweramp amplifier, or there is something more that is done by hardware or only possible to be done by HTC?
eperez said:
Hi
I really do like powerAmp a lot. Specially the folder option, since I can play the music in the exactly order I put in the memory without needing to create a playlist. I tried the trial version an I was about to buy it , but then I found the SRS enhancement option on the default HTC Desire HD player and I really like how the music sounds with that option.
Does somebody know if this feature is or would be available on a future version of poweramp? Are these SRS enhancement and the other option Dolby mobile just digital equialization settings that maybe can be reproduce on the poweramp amplifier, or there is something more that is done by hardware or only possible to be done by HTC?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't see it happening honestly. SRS Labs licenses their technologies, which would make PowerAMP more expensive than it already is. You can probably mess around with the EQ to make the sound similar to SRS I bet.

[Q] Android music player with replaygain?

Haven't found one yet and hoping someone could give an answer here.
I know PowerAMP has it on a roadmap. Rockbox is supposedly working on an app. Haven't found something that works.
Appreciate your help.
Something that works....
Mp3Gain for the PC. Simply add entire music collection, set level, run job and then copy to phone.
And the kludgy solution it is :/
Thx.
MP3Gain
Hi,
that is a possible workaround but no solution for people with a big database and sense of quality since reencoding means loss of quality and time.
I'm looking for a media player with Replaygain as well.
Ah, I would like this too!
measel said:
that is a possible workaround but no solution for people with a big database and sense of quality since reencoding means loss of quality and time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MP3Gain is only lossy in extreme cases, as it merely alters global gain, which is a parameter of the mp3 format. It also adds tags with info, so changes can be undone.
But yes, it's just a workaround and pretty annoying. A player with ReplayGain is needed - hopefully one that can kill the retarded inbuilt compression of many handsets.
mp3gain is a workaround just in cases in which all your collection is in mp3.
As ogg vorbis gives a better quality at same file size, most of my collection is in this format.
Just tried the latest build of rockbox, at
http://audio-life.co.uk/apps/rockbox_android/
Worked for my nexus s, and tried it does support replaygain!
The interface is really kludgy though.
poweramp seems to support replaygain now!
Motorola Defy CM72120121, german Froyo base
measel said:
poweramp seems to support replaygain now!
Motorola Defy CM72120121, german Froyo base
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is having this issue though:
http://forum.powerampapp.com/index....otificationtextringtone-and-playing-poweramp/
Just to clear up a misconception that seems to have arisen in the thread. Using MP3Gain is not at all detrimental to quality. It doesn't alter the music track at all but instead adds replaygain data to a tag.
There's no 'lossy' to it at all. As for 'kludgy'... in-app, on the fly replaygain will be shockingly bad in comparison to the MP3Gain method.
i just read about mp3gain and there are two methods. one of then does alter the mp3-file but losslessly! and it even creates tags to undo that process. but that only works for mp3. which really is an outdated format.
DirkGently said:
Just to clear up a misconception that seems to have arisen in the thread. Using MP3Gain is not at all detrimental to quality. It doesn't alter the music track at all but instead adds replaygain data to a tag.
There's no 'lossy' to it at all. As for 'kludgy'... in-app, on the fly replaygain will be shockingly bad in comparison to the MP3Gain method.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know this is an old thread, but after doing many months of researching, I would not advise using mp3gain, that is of course unless you're sure you want to permanently modify your mp3 files. The "lossless" method does not just simply write tags in the files. It does do that, but that's not all it does. All it writes to the tag is the UNDO information. What happens if you bork your APE metadata and you want to undo it? You're screwed.
Anyway, I'm reviving this thread because I've been struggling in all the years I've had an android device to find a suitable music solution.
Currently, the music player I use that supports ReplayGain is DeaDBeeF. And it's free. Unfortunately, it doesn't load album art correctly. The dev said months and months ago that he was working on it, but I haven't seen any updates. It now has a holo themed UI, but it's not the most attractive, though It's not necessarily ugly (imo).
Winamp supports RG, but only if you pay for the PRO version.
There were other free players on the market that supposedly support RG, but a couple of them had the exact same description while coming from different developers. Seemed shady to me. And most of them looked fairly ugly. The only one I tried had some weird option for controlling the strength of the RG. That seemed odd to me, as the value for RG itself determines the dB. So I had to question whether it was really using the RG values, or doing something kludgy with it.
I wonder how hard RG support is to actually code. If a small, simple player like DB has it built in for free, surely we can add it to Apollo?
measel said:
Hi,
that is a possible workaround but no solution for people with a big database and sense of quality since reencoding means loss of quality and time.
I'm looking for a media player with Replaygain as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even, 8 thousand sounds is time consuming with this. I have done each artist separately so far with what I got but to keep doing this because a player does not have same volume option on it, and especially 2 out of 3 players does not have this option, is stupid. Especially paid for the apps, and the devs do not even want to bother to add it. Actually, I only asked BlackPlayer dev to add it, and they won't even bother.
They rather spend more time on customizing looks, than adding audio features. It is a freaking audio player ffs. The 3 players I have paid for are Poweramp, Stellio, and BlackPlayer. Currently, using Stellio because the audio is comparable to Poweramp, but not using Poweramp because I was so called patiently waiting for v3 beta, but max is taking forever.
I love the look of Stellio and also the audio set to preset bass&treble is just awesome sounding on the builtin equalizer. With my Samsung Galaxy J3 Luna Pro, I got the media volume limiter set to where it is max volume without going more louder and hurting my ears, which is another nice feature, but the ones that are loud enough maxed are great sounding, until the lower tracks start, and they are not so great at lower volume.
That is why I am after this going to email Stellio dev and ask about adding replaygain or something like Spotify has in settings, under options for enabling same volume for all tracks or songs.
I was going to suggest jetAudio Plus and foobar2000 but don't bother. Those apps are too unstable.
There are a lot of Android players with ReplayGain support:
Omnia, GoneMad, Vanilla Music, foobar2000 Mobile, AIMP, Vinyl Music Player, Pulsar, Oto Music, Poweramp, Neutron Player, PlayerPro, jetAudio, MediaMonkey, FiiO Music, and probably a few more that I don't know of.
All of them can use per-album ReplayGain, those which don't have an option for it in the settings automatically choose it over per-track ReplayGain.
All but jetAudio, MediaMonkey and FiiO Music allow you to reduce loudness for tracks without ReplayGain metadata.
GuestX00320 said:
That is why I am after this going to email Stellio dev and ask about adding replaygain or something like Spotify has in settings, under options for enabling same volume for all tracks or songs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think you want what Spotify has in its settings, it ruins audio quality for many songs by raising their volume with the help of dyamic compression.
Because volume levels on Spotify are already quite similar the option is not that useful anyway. That's because Spotify, before reencoding, already does some normalizing. From what I've read they probably set the peaks of all albums to -2dB, then lower the loudness of all albums with a loudness above -14 LUFS to a loudness of -14 LUFS, which means only tracks with huge dynamic range should have non-optimal loudness relative to the other tracks.
I would leave that option off unless you're in a very noisy environment.

Music playback normalization

I have been using a new feature of the neutron music player that I wanted to point out to anyone interested. The player has the ability to volume normalize (like replay gain) but can do any type of encoding, aac, mp3 ogg, wma. In addition it takes into account the equalizer setting you have chosen for that album. I had been searching for this feature for many years and attempted to use mp3 gain on a PC to do this but that does not work with wma/aac/ogg files. I tested with some tracks that were ripped at very different volume outputs and indeed neutron handled the normalization well.
Here is the link to the description:
http://neutronmp.com/component/content/article/78-neutronmp/features/75-feature-normalization.html
Instructions on how to do this in the software are in the neutron forum discussions.
Hope this helps anyone who is tired of constantly adjusting the volume to keep a given desired volume (or not blowing out your eardrums if you listen at the high level edge as I do)

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