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Is it me or do none of the available mp3 players really cut it?
I'm no iPod fan, but it does seem to work well, the PDA MP3 players just seem 'clunky'. Now storage is soooo cheap, PDAs are really becoming sensible for use as such devices.
I use my PDA for everything so I want a media player to fit in with everything else, for example when I'm using the sat nav in the car, I want to be able to use it also for playing MP3s over an FM link to the car stereo. When a new track starts I'd like a window to pop up for 2 or 3 seconds telling me what it is, and giving me the chance to skip.
Anyone have more experience than me, and can suggest something?
Thanks!
personally, I use pocket music, but i dont listen to music often. I find its a nice player, really.
maybe the new pocket tunes 4.1 with its iTunes support is to your taste? I havent tried any others (only windows media player).
I'd like this too. I liked using the voice command function of WMP in the car too.
Mortplayer is probably the best I've used. It's free, skinable and very customizable.
It's things like this that makes me frustrated about Android. There is so much noise about hotspot, or tethering, or other geeky stuff that are pretty useless for regular users. But the music player, a standard feature for every phone nowadays, is really bad.
All I want is to transfer the damn songs with playlist and play on my phone!
Well, the stock player doesn't recognize playlist.
So I have to use other music apps.
I have tried doubleTwist. It doesn't recognize playlist created by its own desktop app. And also, you have to use its desktop app to sync music. And the syncing is not so good, lots of Artwork is missing.
I then turn to Cubed (superscript 3). It's cool. It reads my playlist. But it creates duplicated ones. In other words, every time you sync your music, it creates new playlist. I did a little research, it turns out it's the problem of the OS. If you copy your songs to external SD, the OS will scan them and then create duplicated list. Music players just read the list from the OS.
Another problem of Cubed is, if I manually copy music to SD card, all my artworks are gone.
I have tried other *free* music players on the market. None of them works perfectly. And I am so cheap that I don't want to pay for a feature that a smartphone should easily have.
mwxiao said:
It's things like this that makes me frustrated about Android. There is so much noise about hotspot, or tethering, or other geeky stuff that are pretty useless for regular users. But the music player, a standard feature for every phone nowadays, is really bad.
All I want is to transfer the damn songs with playlist and play on my phone!
Well, the stock player doesn't recognize playlist.
So I have to use other music apps.
I have tried doubleTwist. It doesn't recognize playlist created by its own desktop app. And also, you have to use its desktop app to sync music. And the syncing is not so good, lots of Artwork is missing.
I then turn to Cubed (superscript 3). It's cool. It reads my playlist. But it creates duplicated ones. In other words, every time you sync your music, it creates new playlist. I did a little research, it turns out it's the problem of the OS. If you copy your songs to external SD, the OS will scan them and then create duplicated list. Music players just read the list from the OS.
Another problem of Cubed is, if I manually copy music to SD card, all my artworks are gone.
I have tried other *free* music players on the market. None of them works perfectly. And I am so cheap that I don't want to pay for a feature that a smartphone should easily have.
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Click to collapse
Are you coming from an iTunes? Many of the problems with artwork deal with the way the artwork is embedded. AAC files do tags poorly and I had to rerip all my files to MP3 and make sure that the artwork was embedded in the tags and not in a folder. I used MediaMonkey to sync my music to my phone. I don't use playlists - I just put about 2GB of music on and pick what i want. The stock music player works great for me in this regard.
The stock music player allows local playlists, but so far doesn't import them. I think it is a matter of discovering name and format.
alphadog00 said:
Are you coming from an iTunes? Many of the problems with artwork deal with the way the artwork is embedded. AAC files do tags poorly and I had to rerip all my files to MP3 and make sure that the artwork was embedded in the tags and not in a folder. I used MediaMonkey to sync my music to my phone. I don't use playlists - I just put about 2GB of music on and pick what i want. The stock music player works great for me in this regard.
The stock music player allows local playlists, but so far doesn't import them. I think it is a matter of discovering name and format.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply. I have a relatively big library in iTunes so playlist is kinda of necessary for me. It really sucks that the stock music player can't do it.
I didn't know about the iTunes artworks problem. All my song files are .mp3. I thought artwork was embedded in the file.
I've had pretty good success using an app called "isynchr" available in the market. It's not free, though! But it allows you to take your playlists from iTunes, copy them (and the songs) over to your phone and play everything using the music player that came on the phone.
Try this:
hxxp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=751429
It works great for me and along with the mp3tagger pro app that lets you edit the ID3 tags and download artwork, its been a huge timesaver for me.
I feel your pain; I've had trouble finding a music player I really liked too. As of now, I'm just using the stock Samsung Music Player.
...which actually isn't that bad. It works well enough and the 5.1 feature is awesome.
check doubletwist. very good GUI and has itunes compatibility but I have not used that personally
DoubleTwist is a good music player and can export your playlists from itunes. They syncing is a bit slow tho.
I really had a hard time with doubletwist, and it took forever to start up on the pc.
I would recommend 'Songbird' on the desktop. It's built on top of a Mozilla Firefox framework, has great plug-ins and extensions, and via MTP can sync playlists with M3Us to the captivate, and then mixzing as the player on the captivate.
noidd said:
Try this:
hxxp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=751429
It works great for me and along with the mp3tagger pro app that lets you edit the ID3 tags and download artwork, its been a huge timesaver for me.
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Thanks a lot. The Android music player is much better than the Samsung one. Though I have a few bugs for just 10 min of try. Well, it's actually not a big of a deal. Playlist works fine, album art works fine. And that's all I am asking for.
closeshave2 said:
I've had pretty good success using an app called "isynchr" available in the market. It's not free, though! But it allows you to take your playlists from iTunes, copy them (and the songs) over to your phone and play everything using the music player that came on the phone.
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Click to collapse
+1 on this app, you can use the stock samsung player, and double twist recongizes the playlists as well. it was much easier and faster on my computer as well. syching around 6 gigs of music only took around 15 mintues as opposed to over 2 hours with double twist.
ANOTHER good and easy to use apps is called "itunes agent". All you have to do is plug in the phone as USB drive and use it to sync you songs. Check it out. I use it for my WinMo phone and it is probably one of the best tool for sync songs to my phne.
mwxiao said:
Thanks for your reply. I have a relatively big library in iTunes so playlist is kinda of necessary for me. It really sucks that the stock music player can't do it.
I didn't know about the iTunes artworks problem. All my song files are .mp3. I thought artwork was embedded in the file.
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Click to collapse
I had all my music in iTunes (many files were AAC - ripped that way before i knew better) and I learned the hardway that iTunes some funky things. I actually used MP3tag to fix the tags - lots of Android phones don't like the tags if some fields are empty - this has the effect of showing uknown artist and maybe empty album art. iTunes added some funky stuff to some of the tags, so once i got it all cleaned up and made sure the album artwork was embedded in the tags all was good.
As for playlists - you could try Samsung Kies - it does sync with the phone and allows you to make playlists. I have not tried it for syncing yet.
SO currently I use my ipod touch for music, and I also use itunes. However, I thought about using my TB as my music player, here are some questions:
1. How big of a pain is it to get music on
2. Rhapsody or iTunes (library is on itunes, never used rhapsody)?
3. Possibly my biggest question is quality. I have run Pandora on my TB and the quality is much lower than that of an iPod (understandable as its a radio frequency). However my point is, if I have to run songs on my TB at VOL 50 instead of VOL 40 in my car to adjust to the quality and get the bass up, then I am not sure the TB is the best music player. With that said, whats your experience with the quality?
I use my TB exclusively for music, thanks to Google Music. Haven't had an issue with quality with my Sennheisers, but YMMV.
Sent from my ThunderBolt using XDA App
CC268 said:
1. How big of a pain is it to get music on
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Simple, Connect your phone to your PC, and copy the music you want to your SD card.
CC268 said:
2. Rhapsody or iTunes (library is on itunes, never used rhapsody)?
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Click to collapse
You don't have to use a certain program to sync, you can if you choose to, there are many out there, I don't sync my music so I can't help there.
CC268 said:
3. Possibly my biggest question is quality. I have run Pandora on my TB and the quality is much lower than that of an iPod (understandable as its a radio frequency). However my point is, if I have to run songs on my TB at VOL 50 instead of VOL 40 in my car to adjust to the quality and get the bass up, then I am not sure the TB is the best music player. With that said, whats your experience with the quality?
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I connect it via the 3.5mm jack to the aux in 3.5mm jack in my 09 jeep with a monster audio cable. Things sound great to me, especially using the SRS enhancement with the stock music player. Bass is nice, not crackly like you would get with an FM transmitter, I would honestly say it is at least CD quality. But all my music is ripped at a high VBR or 320kbps.
There are apps that will let you sync your iTunes library to your Android device, do some Googling.
If you are used to using your iPod for music then I don't think you are going to like the interface.
I miss having my iPod Touch but I refuses to carry separate device just for music.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
All my music needs are fulfilled with slacker radios caching. It allows me to save 100's of songs on my phone and play them without needing a data connection. Bad part for some would be you can't pick what song to hear unless you have the higher paid account. For 4.99 a month I just cache my favorite stations for all my music needs.
ddgarcia05 said:
All my music needs are fulfilled with slacker radios caching. It allows me to save 100's of songs on my phone and play them without needing a data connection. Bad part for some would be you can't pick what song to hear unless you have the higher paid account. For 4.99 a month I just cache my favorite stations for all my music needs.
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Click to collapse
Subsonic can do that also, think it's a one time $10 donation for unlimited use. Can stream pretty much any type of media on your computer.
Check out Audiogalaxy. It's a free app that streams your *entire* music library from your desktop/media server to your phone. If you are in a 4G area, it streams without compressing. I have an ipod classic but I rarely use it anymore. Streaming via AG is more convenient & sounds just as good.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
If you are going to listen to your own music on the thunderbolt, i would strongly recommend buying power amp. That player will allow you to drive the actually good audio hardware to its limits, dropped my old mp3 player faster than a sack of rocks after i started using poweramp
Haven't used my iPod in forever... I use the following:
Slacker: When I want to stream and/or listen for new bands...
Subsonic/Google Music: When I want to listen to my personal music collection (which is too big to fit on any size device right now).
PowerAMP: For cahced music.
Now Google Music is not that great right now (Subsonic is better IMHO) because it is picky about some of the music I have and won't upload it. Subsonic turns your computer into the music server so you don't have to upload anything, you just have to asign your computer a static IP and keep it on.
I love PowerAMP for the quality of play so I will usually use Subsonic or GM to cache (or download) some songs and then play them with PowerAMP, since the Subsonic and GM players don't hold a candle to PowerAMP.
Deltaechoe said:
If you are going to listen to your own music on the thunderbolt, i would strongly recommend buying power amp. That player will allow you to drive the actually good audio hardware to its limits, dropped my old mp3 player faster than a sack of rocks after i started using poweramp
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Click to collapse
+!000000000000000000
I just installed PowerAmp...Holy Crap! This sounds great, I most definitely second this statement.
Deltaechoe said:
If you are going to listen to your own music on the thunderbolt, i would strongly recommend buying power amp. That player will allow you to drive the actually good audio hardware to its limits, dropped my old mp3 player faster than a sack of rocks after i started using poweramp
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Click to collapse
+1
After reading the last couple comments, I downloaded the trial, listened to 2 songs, tweaked the EQ and settings, and listened again, and then bought the unlocker, this is an amazing music player.
Don't forget that the thunderbolt is compatible with DHS enhancements
Thanks a lot for the responses guys, I will try your suggestions and test it out!
The srs in the htc music app is amazing, especially with in ear headphones
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
Just installed full version of power amp, how should I transfer my itunes music to my phone? I dont know that I would like to keep using itunes, waiting for google music beta invitation so I can start using that
I use the ipod only because there is no good way to connect it with my car radio that doesn't leave a bunch of wires all over the place... I've emailed HTC about a bottom connector but they weren't to receptive to it.
Again I know I could do it with the phone, but having that bottom connector on the ipod allows me to have it in my car and hidden without a bunch of wires all over the place.
+1 for subsonic, donated to that project and use it all the time... everywhere!
I use iTunes as well and use the Thunderbolt for my music player.
iSyncr (and/or iSyncr WiFi) syncs itunes music including playlists so it is very easy to set up. Use Bluetooth in my car; not missing anything from when I used an iPhone/iPod. It even syncs playcounts if you have Last.FM scrobbling.
06ms6 said:
I use iTunes as well and use the Thunderbolt for my music player.
iSyncr (and/or iSyncr WiFi) syncs itunes music including playlists so it is very easy to set up. Use Bluetooth in my car; not missing anything from when I used an iPhone/iPod. It even syncs playcounts if you have Last.FM scrobbling.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iSyncr is the way to go. It's what I use to get my music on the Bolt.
If you're not concerned about the battery, I wouldn't use your iPod anymore. PowerAmp does just fine as a music player.
I use Google Music and upload to the cloud
I think this is the one area Apple beats Android, you connect your iPhone it syncs no hassle, On android its all a bit of a nightmare.
I've tried Double Twist but the damn thing is painfully slow to sync, can't edit duplicates and whatever else, it looks good but thats about it.
Winamp looked good on the surface, I made my playlist went to sync it took forever, then when I added more songs to a particular playlist and went to sync again rather than adding to the original playlist on the phone it created another playlist, so you actually have 2 playlist of the same playlist old and new.
So basically I need a way to sync and a player on the phone. I appreciate you can just dump all your tracks on the music folder but its impossible to organise 1000+ MP3's this way, so they would need organised prior to going onto the phone.
Any advice?
Nothing easier than put the mp3's in the media folder. Why do you think, syncing with ITunes is easier. I hate that software.
I'm organising my mp3 with mp3tag!
em.20 said:
Nothing easier than put the mp3's in the media folder. Why do you think, syncing with ITunes is easier. I hate that software.
I'm organising my mp3 with mp3tag!
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Click to collapse
Lol same here, mp3tag owns.
Winamp works fine for me; no duplicate playlists. Maybe give that another shot? I love winamp on the PC though, so my perception may be skewed a bit by fanboyism. You could try the Google Music Beta as well. I thought I wouldn't like it, but having my entire 200 GB music library streamable is pretty handy. Personally, I prefer to manually sort and tag my tracks on my PC.
Combo Winamp + mp3tag.
But i do'nt sync with winamp, putting mp3 on the folders is much faster...
i've been using google's music beta service to stream music to me laptop/phone. works great. only issue is the new music app has no controls in the notification center or lockscreen.
slugger09 said:
its impossible to organise 1000+ MP3's this way
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I don't understand. Your music app will automatically find your mp3's and categorize them for you. Just put your MP3's anywhere on your SD card and you're done.
Make music folder, drag and drop
I hated how ipods have to sync, like if I go to my friends house want want some songs then delete my songs then put all of his songs grrr iTunes...
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App
drag and drop to SD card. never used 3rd party... seems silly.
em.20 said:
Nothing easier than put the mp3's in the media folder. Why do you think, syncing with ITunes is easier. I hate that software.
I'm organising my mp3 with mp3tag!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately and I can't speak about mp3tag, but dragging and dropping at least doesn't compress the audio file to save space at no reduction of quality. Itunes does this, and Itunes really isn't all that hard to use either.
Audio from Apple devices are better quality most times, but multimedia is one of Apple's strong parts.(Although also a lot of times you won't notice a difference) The original music app for Android is okay for just music, HTC's is okay, Miui is pretty nice, and the new music app from Google is pretty nice too. The audio support for Android is getting better.
I originally used doubletwist but it kept doubling, trippling, and even quadrupled the number of times a song was in my library. Finally went to ISYNCR &isyncrwifi. Works great, fast.
Sent from my SCH-I800 using XDA Premium App
rumblee1 said:
I originally used doubletwist but it kept doubling, trippling, and even quadrupled the number of times a song was in my library. Finally went to ISYNCR &isyncrwifi. Works great, fast.
Sent from my SCH-I800 using XDA Premium App
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Click to collapse
It did that to me as well and that's the problem with most of these syncing solutions, there is no common sense.
And as for putting all on 1 folder in the SD card, Now say I want song 3 from album A on a playlist followed by song 6 from Album E and so on there is no easy way of organizing this on the phone which is why I like it done on the PC, I have various genres of music, I don't want a hardcore trance song followed by country.
Google music doesn't work in the UK either
Great post and some really useful tips there. I love resource lists like this. Have social bookmarked it in the hope that others can also benefit.
thanks for the tips
I also do drag and drop, but yes apple is smoother in this area.
slugger09 said:
It did that to me as well and that's the problem with most of these syncing solutions, there is no common sense.
And as for putting all on 1 folder in the SD card, Now say I want song 3 from album A on a playlist followed by song 6 from Album E and so on there is no easy way of organizing this on the phone which is why I like it done on the PC, I have various genres of music, I don't want a hardcore trance song followed by country.
Google music doesn't work in the UK either
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Click to collapse
What you are describing here is what I do on "PowerAmp". I have folders (has option for folders or library), then if I want I use the built in "Que" to select songs from different folders. You can also edit tags in PowerAmp.
Wow. And here I thought I was the only one who uses mp3tag.
mp3tag , is a great
+ 1 mp3 tag
Sent from my GT-i9100 with MIUI 1.7.8 - xda premium app
Gorship said:
drag and drop to SD card. never used 3rd party... seems silly.
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Click to collapse
i use meridian only to play mp3 for a single directory
I don't think there is a lot of discussion about this, so I thought i would start one. Good evening, my name is Gregg and I am a recovering Ioser. It started out with just an ipod...you know it was convenient, it was shiny. It worked well. Buying music was a simple process. You clicked and could listen immediatly. At first it was just occasionally, but I got into the podcast scene and itseemed to fit me perfectly. Podcasts would let me listen to things while I was doing chores around the house. Eventually though podcasts on my ipod weren't enough for me. I also had to carry around a phone on the side, so I decided that maybe it would be OK to try a little iphone. The first click was awesome...phone and tunes...podcasts done well. I was hooked.
For two years I was doing a lot of Ios, but eventually the shiny IOS had me hooked. There were bills for apps that did nothing but make funny noises, their was music that I paid for but never listened to. I was hooked. I probably hit rock-bottom last year. My iosing was out of control and I thought I would go cold turkey. So I got my G2x.
Sorry for the goofy intro, but I though this would set me up a bit. Here's what I have itunes on the windows side. So getting music and podcasts from itunes to the g2X involves multiple layers.
1. Moving music to the machine.
2. Moving and managing podcasts
3. Playing and managing music (which includes playing, rating music and searchng through my music)
So I will start with the first question. From what I understand there are really two ways that I know of to move music and podcasts from itunes to your phone. One is doubletwist, the other is isyncr. There might be others, but these are the two that I worked with. of the two I went with iSyncr and here's why. Doubletwist has a lot going for it. Really a nice interface, and a nice music player on the android side. Its trying very hard to give me, an ex-ioser a bit of what I am missing. The sync app looks like itunes and allows me to sync my playlists. The app looks a lot like itunes. It plays music fine. The player struggled with my phone, though. Somehow it didn't cooperate with the cm7 ROM I am using. It wouldn't play well on the lock screen and seemed buggy. The syncing was buggy too. Genius podcasts wouldn't refresh when they changed on my itunes. There were workaround(relaunch itunes and doubletwist).
Isyncr is a 2.99 purchase. Its simple. You install the app on the android(you pretty much install and forget it) and it syncs when you launch the windows EXE on the memory card when the phone is docked to the computer. It works well. It syncs podcasts, and ratings. To me, that was important because I have this theory that I will rate my music into organization in itunes.Its flawless. I haven't tried the wifi setup, but I might in the future. It doesn't play your music, so its just a solution for syncing.
As for podcasts, I tried very hardto find a solution on the android side that will satisfy my needs right on the android. I bought the full version of pocketcasts. There are a lot of good things going for it, but there are bugs. One that was kind of a deal breaker was that if you try to advance the podcast in the player while its playing you lock up the app. Restart is the only solution. So, it was a good, pretty solution, but it had to go. I tried a couple other apps, but I wasn't sold.
So, ultimately, isyncr is my solution for podcasts too. It woks well, but it will require a daily sync. The advantage ultimatley of syncing from the desktop is also that I am able to make Mp3 CDs of podcasts as well as sync my podcasts from the same source. Simple, efficient and workable.
Which brings me to playing. I love google music(I have two more invites if anyone wants one), and it allows me to access my music when I am around wifi seamlessly. It allows me to make instant mixes based on a song. That's a killer feature. Combined with wireless access to all my music via the cloud its excellent. Advancing and moving within tracks and podcasts works well. Its not a full-feature app, but it works.
Almost there, there is one last aspect. I would like to rate music from my library while its playing. Isyncr has a nice widget that allows you to rate and see your playing apps and see the album art. Its part of the package. The ratings and playcounts go right back to itunes.
My preferences represent my unique quirks in terms of music and listening: I am a podcaster and a music listener and I prefer to rate my music. Because of this I am happy with: Isyncr and google music.
Long set-up, but ultimately I am asking you what your music listening setup is. Thoughts?
I use the standard music app since it has DTS for the g2x. Google music as well for some streaming music. Google Listen app for podcasts. I also like BeyondPod.
I drag and drop music. It's not fancy but I don't mind.
Power Amp with some EQ modifications and Voodoo Sound is how I enjoy my music. I used to use Doubletwist for syncing my music to my phone, but each update made more and more bloated, along with random freezes, so I just uninstalled it. Sony's Media Go software good is good for adding music, but I prefer to drag and drop into organized folders.
Sent from my T-Mobile G2x using XDA Premium App
If you're using a stock ROM, I'd recommend sticking to the stock player because of it's DTS feature. It greatly improves sound quality if you have it selected.