After talking to numerous people about how to improve the sound quality on their particular device, it seems this is an appropriate venue.
Maybe this can save some time for current and new developers. I wonder how many new developers attempt to "fix" an audio problem without knowing that a fix is either not necessary or futile. In particular, with Beats Audio being the new fad. This post is for everyone... newbies, moderate and advanced users/developers.
First, file format is the number one factor in sound quality. MP3s basically suck... and Apple's file format is not much better. So much audio information is lost due to compression that no matter how good the amp or headphones one uses, they do nothing to improve the inherent quality.
2. Always use .FLAC or .WAV for lossless and best sound possible.
3. Beats Audio is not much more than a gimmick. To hear the intention of the artist, one should listen to the music 'flat ' with no equalization at all. Otherwise, if you really like to enhance the bass, then just use the basic bass tone control on your favorite audio player.
4. I recommend the Sennhieser Headphones with the best frequency response you can afford. This is just a recommendation, so use what ever company you favor. Just look for frequency response to ensure you are hearing all the music is outputting. If you love bass, then the low end of frequency should be around 25 or 30 Hz. High end should not be below 15kHz. Optimally, your cans should reproduce 20Hz to 20kHz.
5. I use Power Amp app on my X2 because it plays all audio files... I don't know all the apps available that play WAV and FLAC, but ensure it does.
6. The headphone jack is the best quality save the HDMI port... unless someone finds a way to export audio from the USB port. This can be a legitimate goal for developers!
Bluetooth or any over-the-air method degrades the audio to at least some degree (Bluetooth is probably the worse).
7. For super audio files, get your music at www.hdtracks.com. This is the only place I've found that sells super audio files online.
Otherwise, rip directly from CD or DVD to WAV or FLAC. NEVER move from an MP3 (or other compressed format) to WAV or FLAC. Just remember, quality in = quality out.
I hope this helps those who care about music quality and inspires developers to improve upon the technology available. Thank you for your time!
Droid X2 CM7
Thanks for sharing. useful information!
These are some interesting ideas for the audiophiles, but many people can't notice a difference between a FLAC or an 320k MP3 file. Still i think all devices should come with FLAC codecs and other types that are becoming popular.
Using the USB to export audio it can eat a lot of battery imo. Supposing that you will connect a DAC to the device... But i agree with you on the Sennhieser headphones, if you want good sound go for it
Related
Hi all
I have read in another thread that you can use MP4 files as ringtones.
I have a couple of very nifty mp3 extractions from the turkish (kiss) song. When I convert these files using "Easy CD-DA extractor" program to mp4 I am unable to play these files for ringtones.
But when I convert these pesky 65k files into wav, they end up being 2mb!!! Anyone know of a good conversion program?
These files are attached. I think this would be a pretty funky tune (although some others might consider it ...sad) haha
*****WHOOPS.. looks like the firewall at work isnt allowing these files to be uploaded
Using windows sound recorder (sndrec32.exe) you can convert the WAV file:
File->Properties->Convert Now
Change the Format to PCM
Attributes: 11.025 kHz, 8Bit, Mono is about as basic as you would want to go (poor quality, only use for small clips).
This should reduce the size down to about 100Kb or so. You can change the attributes for a better quality but keep the format as PCM. Also note that better attributes mean more memory.
cdex
is pretty good i'm not sure about the xda playing mp4 but it does play wma
also you can make it mono insted of stereo and reduce the samplerate to 11Khz this will also dec the size of your tone
and the loss of quality dont really mean all that much when it's a ring tone anyway since the speaker itself is hardly THX surround quality to begin with and of cause not stereo
thanks to everyone who responded.
Easier yet - if you can get them to wav format, then do so at high quality.
Then simply use Windows Media Encoder (free from Microsoft if not alreay on your PC), to save them as 96K .wma files.
These can be used straight away on the phone, and take up only around 400-500K for a full 40 second tone/song, in high quality 96K format!
high quality dont matter when played by the tiny mono speaker of the xda
you can use wma better and smaller than wav..
read this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=6425&start=0
Rudegar, I agree with what you are saying, but only to a degree.
Because, like anything in life, whatever you put into something bad, will only but be worse when it comes out.
So using a poor quality tone, to be played through a speaker that is already poor, is just asking for trouble.
Why I suggest using a decent quality tone, is not to have a mozart like outcome. But on the contrary, simply to ensure that the poor speaker doesn't make too much of a dogs dinner of it any more than is necessary.
But I know what you are saying.
Hey guys!!
Just back my O2 Atom Exec and updated it to WM6. I have an extensive collection of loseless audio and i was curious as to which media player supports it. They are in a couple of format, with most of them being in .wv and .ape and the rest in .flac.
I have installed Coreplayer and Pocket Player 3.2 and tried .wv and .flac files.
Coreplayer plays .flac fine but the library kind of sucks and it ain't easy to browse through your collection of music. However, it wont detect the .wv file.
Pocket Player on the other hand simply wont work with either despite claiming on the website that it does. I have tried opening the .flac audio manually but the name of the song (time after time) becomes illegible (like with my chinese song) and when i try to play it, it doesnt work. It says the filetype is .mp3 but that is not true, it is actually .flac....what the?? Also tried to manually open .wv but doesn't work either
So i am confused as to which program actually does work with all the lossless format? Could someone enlgihten.
Btw i did find this link http://www.losslessaudioblog.com/2006/12/16/mobile-lossless-players/
that had all the supported player that claims to support loseless format.
Also, could someone explain why i cant read chinese/japanese filenames? Any fixs so i can see it properly on pocketplayer/coreplayer?
Common guys, as if no one prefers loseless over mp3..
Sorry mate, I used to play flac using TCPMP( free version of coreplayer) was impressed with the sound but not the size of the files. sticking to AACplus now, good luck
haha are you joking get a bigger memory card or one of those special mp3 player
the quality is just so much better
davidw89 said:
haha are you joking get a bigger memory card or one of those special mp3 player
the quality is just so much better
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Music file size ratio is generally a personal preference and you dont just go 'haha' on others preferences. If bigger memory card is not your problem, I'd guess you can always play the high quality lossless WAV on your WMPlayer
Anyway, not much help from me here, read on if you wish.
Anyway, as for lossless or not audio file format, I really wonder how much difference does it make. I personally can't really tell the difference as I'm using relatively low quality earphones and stuff, and consider I listen it when I'm on the move, where you get street noises and such (despite the noise isolation property of the earphones). So, it would be interesting if you were to do a blind test yourself on a relatively real environment. That, is to get a list of songs, say 10-20 songs, all both in the flac, and mp3 formats. Get a friend of you to play you these songs at random (using Coreplayer, which support both format), then you make a guess on which format the song is playing. Get a good number of samples and see if you score above 75%. If you score around 40-60%, chances are, you are thinking (mentally biased) that the sound is actually better than it is (e.g. due to the distortion of the A2D converter, crack in the shielding screen on your headphone, street noises, etc.). If you were to score 25% or lower, that's interestingly MP3 is better (much unlikely).
If you really do this, let me know the results Much eager to know it.
Problem for me is, I am the type who like to have just one device to rule "do" them all, that's why my lowly wizard does it all, my video player, music player, pda and telephone. I only got 2Gb but I got heaps of songs on it plus some movies.
AAc plus is good mate better than MP3 IMHO, I heard flac but the size is just not worth it.. and I don't clean my ears that often ;-) so why bother..
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.
hi all
i have a question
which android music player have a best sound quality?
which is the closest to audiophile sound?
poweramp sounds very natural if you ask me, but a bit noisy in idle. flac support and eq feature makes it even sweeter, worth the 5$ easily.
moto defy + akg k370
Most of them use system libraries starting from decoding input file to output, so there should be no difference in sound quality regardless of which is used. One of the notable exceptions from this rule is PowerAMP (no link to Android Market thanks to XDA rules, I'm to much of a n00b to post a link).
I don't believe you can reproduce anything even remotely close to audiophile sound on poor DACs which devices produced up-to-date have.
I really really wish Bose would get into the cell phone game. They need to start redesigning the internal audio systems for these smartphones asap! It has to be able to be done.
Try "RockBox for android" true best SQ for android
astron1985 said:
hi all
i have a question
which android music player have a best sound quality?
which is the closest to audiophile sound?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
TTPod all the way. The best music player I have used yet.
Remember to hit the thanks button if I helped! It only takes a second!
Ok, I know this isn't an audiophile forum per se, but I think we'd all agree that the Infuse coupled with Voodoo Control is a high-end portable music player.
I've recently been re-ripping all of my CDs to FLAC using MediaMonkey Gold. I thought I found the perfect audiophile quality format, albeit heavy on space. I uploaded them to Google Music and downloaded the same songs just to compare. What I've found is my music sounds flat, tinny, and dead whereas Google Music sounded lively and clear while the bass trembled cleanly with no distortion through my Shure E4Cs. The E4C's strong suit is clarity but kind of lacks in the lower frequencies. To hear bass thump and roll while still being able to hear Eminem pronounce every syllable as well as being able to discern every hi hat and snare all at the same time... its quite short of amazing!
So to save myself from having to re-buy every CD that I own through Google Music, what are some of the programs and methods you use to rip an audio CD? Also, am I wrong to believe that every CD drive should be able to produce the same quality file? If not, then I guess I'm just out of luck.
www.exactaudiocopy.de/
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_and_Flac
big ups on being an Eminem Fan also