Intl. Galaxy S3: Intermittent distortion in Audio played via stock music player - General Questions and Answers

On my international Galaxy S3 (stock everything), while playing music over headphones (tried several brands), I hear intermittent distortion, it's like a buzzzz or a spark. If you're a casual listener you could miss it. The duration of buzz/spark is for a fraction of a second. It occurs at least 2-3 times in every song. When I go back and play the part again, where the distortion occurred, I am not able to hear it. Oh well, I know the recording is clean.
I am not sure if it's got to do with the CPU cranking to cater to a different process. I tried keeping Wifi, bluetooth, data, ... all off. I also removed all processes via the task manager + cleared RAM.
Please help. I can't live with this issue since I am so much into music and very picky when it comes to audio quality.
Thanks a bunch.

not an earphone problem
i have the same problem precisely as you describe.the drop or interference
is so momentary that the first few times it happens i think its a hesitation
in speech or a minute pause inthe music.its enough to irritate or spoil the
full enjoyment of your listening.
i dont think its the earphones because ive tried a few different pairs that i know
work perfectly with other players including another Samsung.I think i may have
to request a replacement if it is a permanent feature.

Related

[BUG] Crackling sound on calls and music, can anyone help?

Hello,
I am a proud owner of a couple Android Phones since the HTC G1, the HTC Magic and so goes on.
Now I was very excited to get the Nexus S, but on the first day of use, after making all the updates to 2.3.2 and installing all my usual apps, I noticed a crackling sound when hearing music from the speakers.
I can not find the reason of this but would like to know if someone had a problem similar to mine, and if yes, if it was possible to solve it.
There are some facts about this crackling noise that I point as follow:
- The crackling sound is not present all the times. The phone works well when playing shorts sounds like ringtones and notifications. I can hear everything crystal clear;
- When I start to hear a song (tried many different players, all the same problem), or when I am playing a game that uses constant music or sound effects, the crackling sound starts after some minutes of perfect sound (usually between 01:00 and 01:30 of good playing);
- It seems like a irregular white noise, like playing a corrupted MP3 file, that gets in the middle of the media;
- It beguns with a low volume compared to the media and gets louder as time passes, until it gets more frequent and as louder as the music playing;
- At first I thought of a broken speaker, and checked the headphones, but the crackling sound appears when listening music on both headphones and external speakers;
- Then I noticed the crackling sound appears on long voice calls too.
Well... I thought it could be something related to the software, so tried the OEM recovery process (Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset), but it was not sucessfull.
[Q] Does anyone had a problem like mine?
[Q] Could someone point what could be the cause of it or a possible solutions?
Thanks in advance.
Jon
I noticed the same thing while listening to Pandora. Not sure what's going on. I'm on Modaco and don't know if its something in there or not.
I hear the noise after about 30 minutes of pandora.
I'm having the same issue running Modaco while listening to music via Spotify.
Just got back to the stock ROM, I'll see if it's any better and keep you guys posted.
I can now confirm that stock ROM is not affected by this issue.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Audio Crackling/Audio stutter when screen off after 3.1 Update

All,
I noticed a couple possible defects after upgrading to 3.1 manually.
1. When playing audio from certain applications (XMP for Android for instance) The Audio cuts out shortly after the screen turns off, and then halts for a period of time before coming back shortly, then cuts out again.
2. Once you turn the screen back on, there is a distinct crackling in the audio.
Workaround:
1. Turn screen back on (get the crackling)
2. Unplug the 3.5mm audio jack
3. Play music from the speakers
4. Plug back in the 3.5mm audio jack
Anyone else seeing these issues with other audio applications?
Yep, I had the crackling and long pauses start happening today after the FOTA update.
Seems to happen (more often?) when applications interrupt an audio stream. For instance, listening to music and get an IM or email.
Yeah I had issues with this as well afer updating to 3.1...I saw in another thread that doing a "hard reboot" will fix the issue and has seemed to work for me so far. Hold the power button down for 10-15 sec until the unit reboots.
same problem
I have the same problem as well. The audio stops functioning properly when the screen times out or when I lock the device with the power button. The weird thing is that this behaviour is not consistent for all apps.
For example, "Music" stops only at the end of the song. From the "3.1 ROM issues" thread, other users are experiencing this as well. In contrast, in the apps "Listen" and "Audible", almost as soon as the screen goes off or I lock it, the audio stops, starting after some 30 seconds, halting again after 10 seconds. It repeats this cycle a few times and then stops completely. If I lit the screen by hitting the power button, the audio resumes with crackling noises as mentioned in the original posts.
Also, hard reset didn't work. I am tempted to do a factory reset except that I don't really know what's going on and I don't know if that'd fix it!
UPDATE: I found the following workaround solutions:
1- Winamp works flawlessly for songs, not a peep or hitch!
2- BeyondPod is working fairly well for podcasts. (It has paused once after 11 minutes so far.)
I did the fota update.
and I've the the crackling. Sucky.
me too. Hope they get an update out to fix this asap. Extremely annoying bug.
Would like to add I am also experiencing this issue although mine didn't start till a couple days after the update to 3.1. A hard reset works for a little while but the issue eventually presents itself again. Might be due to a caching issue with the music player?
Anyone try another music player?
I discovered the crackling noise problem last night.
At first I thought the FLAC songs were recorded from a dirty vinyl record.
I also discovered the problem where the Music app does not continue to the next song when listening with the screen turned off. How stupid is that.
These are two big problems that ASUS needs to address ASAP.
I am already annoyed by the pop sound when turning the Transformer on and whenever any sound to the speaker (Headphones are fine) is played after a long pause.
They must have used a really cheap sound chip in the Transformer.
Yes I can confirm the same problems with google listen. Have tried the hard reset but it doesn't really help very much. Things worked fine after the restart, but as soon as the screen turned off, then the audio paused, and began to crackle, then more pauses. It is almost as if some part of the system is in some sort of low power mode and is not able to feed the data at the required data rate...
gloomyandy said:
... It is almost as if some part of the system is in some sort of low power mode and is not able to feed the data at the required data rate...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe this could be exactly the problem. I have not yet gotten my TF, but looking forward to one greatly. However, I get exactly this problem on my Galaxy Tab 7" WHEN using setCPU to add a profile that scales the CPU down when screen is off. It sounds to me as if ASUS has added some sort of governer/scaling that does this. I could be wrong of course This is just based on reading, and personal experience
corodius said:
I believe this could be exactly the problem. I have not yet gotten my TF, but looking forward to one greatly. However, I get exactly this problem on my Galaxy Tab 7" WHEN using setCPU to add a profile that scales the CPU down when screen is off. It sounds to me as if ASUS has added some sort of governer/scaling that does this. I could be wrong of course This is just based on reading, and personal experience
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. I get a lot of weird little problems with the Tab 7'' when setCPU scales clock speed down too far, including random reboots. I guess that's the sacrifice Asus made to give the TF such a tremendous battery life.
grainysand said:
I guess that's the sacrifice Asus made to give the TF such a tremendous battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know about "tremendous"
More like pretty good...
i can confirm that i have this issue using google music app. I previously purchased PowerAMP (arguably the best android music app) and no problems whatsoever when the screen goes off.
I do like the google music app as it seems like a truly lightweight player but its still in beta stage and needs a bit of work.
I just discovered something. The problem does not occur for my Transformer when the unit is plugged in!
So it must be power management problem, the question is how to fix it?
Hey guys, loving the xda forums btw, much love. I have a acer iconia a500 16gb, and same problem here:
Using Acer_a500_4.010.13_com_gen2
The default Music player is buggy and crashed fairly often, the audio stopping when screen turns off and stopping intermittently is also present on iconia with the default music player and the others as well.
The audio crackling is also present under same conditions.
To add insult to injury, sometimes when i connect a headphones the speakers dont turn off. And if i play with he "dolby mobile" settings, the sound on my headphones get really tinny untill i unplug the headphones and plug them back in, or i reboot the sys in some cases.
I just thought I should add to this thread that I have the same problems on my Acer Iconia A500. It consistently only finishes the song after I turn the screen off then it waits MINUTES to start the next song. I only occasionally have problems with the crackle sound. I had the crackling a lot when I first got it but it doesn't seem to happen as often any more. It doesn't seem to happen when I use doubleTwist but I really wish that the STOCK APPLICATION (which I like the best) would work...
Is there ANY way to fix this stuff? I mean even downgrading to like 3.0 or something. I like to use my tablet to play on my stereo system and I don't enjoy having to effing go back every time I want to play the next song. I also don't want to leave the screen on all the time and murder the battery.
I have the same thing happening on my A500 (running the ASUS PRIME ROM, though). When the screen turns off, anything audio related gets really skippy.
apparently there's some sort of setting build in for the cpu to underclock to the point of not being able to continue running the music application when the screen turns off. (that's me guessing it could be wrong) It always happens with stock music app though it didnt happen when in 3.0.
I installed winamp and doubletwist and both played nonstop.
Also i noticed that if you had music in your external sd and you open music app (also happened with winamp) and remove the sd the applications wont work anymore (thy always fc)unless you install the sd back (that is if you had your music library in the sd even if you also have it internally)
I tried moving the music to the internal storage but the error persist. the only way to get rid of it is formatting the tablet and passing the music to the tablet before running the apps. However if you install the sd and you happen to have music and music app open, youre screw again.
thats the error ive been having and im stuck with a 16gb sd in the tablet to hear music, (which i find it sucking cause my tablet is 32gb)
any suggestions?

Music Skipping And Voice Dialer Self-starting

I've noticed this since I bought my htc inspire 4G the phone (I had other issues before such as low battery life, vibration feedback simply not working, etc - I hard reset the phone and those went away, but this is back), and I'm wondering if it's my hardware, or the software.
Basically, if I'm listening to music (Pandora or the Music app), it'll randomly hit Next song - if it's the music app, it'll be a mish-mash of fast forward and next track. This is with the phone screen off or on. When it starts happening I turn the screen on and notice it jumping all over, and I've not touched anything. Additionally, while this is happening, voice dialer opens over and over after I close it, and sometimes it'll just start making a call to the last dialed/received number (which is making me a hit with all my friends).
Finally, I say possessed because this is not consistent. For example, I'm listening to Pandora now with no issues. However, the fact that I have to even worry about this happening again
You are using incompatible headphones. You didn't mention headphones but it explains everything. You need to use headphones that have a mic. These headphones have 4 gold contacts on the plug. Without a mic it only has 3. The big contact at the bottom is grounding out 2 connections causing your phone to switch tracks and make calls. Get correct headphones with a mic. You have to remember this is a phone and not a simple mp3 player.

[Q] ICS problem with music, podcast player and everything audio related

Hi all,
ICS 4.0.3
Ver. 3.32.707.10
I was wondering if anybody else is encountering similar problems.
Ever since the ICS update, my music player, podcast player (beyondPod) and e-book audio player have gone crazy.
I cannot understand the logic behind it, but the player either stops, skips, pauses, jumps... u name it. Not all the time, but (please do not laugh!) when the car door is slammed shut.
It got me thinking. Is it the shock or the vibration? Tapping or gently bashing the phone does not disrupt the player. Only door of the car closing. It happens every morning and every night when someone gets off the car before me.
Rebooting, taking battery out, clearing out some stuff from my Micro SD... simple stuff to eliminate causes have had no success.
Only rebooting the phone can solve the problem. Force closing the app does not help.
I was thinking that after a heavy days use, maybe the RAM was running out, bu the problem starts even within 20 min of reboot, with no other unnecessary apps running.
I am using Jays headset app since my headphone has that button that allows me to stop/play skip and volume control etc. This has nothing to do with it? I have had it for a while since Gingerbread...
If it were apps from the market that was problematic, i can understand. But since this affects the stock music player as well as other audio related features, I am baffled.
Anybody else? Suggestions?
Found the definitive cause. But still have no solution.
OK guys and gals...
I had my podcast player and stock sense music player do crazy stuff on me, ever since the ICS update.
Maybe the scratched paint is the cause of headache for some people, and covering/insulating it may relieve it of problems, but my feeling is that for quite a few that have posted on this thread, their reasons of malfunction differ, and in fact, are on the same boat as I am.
Please read my post which is the link below to understand the full symptom.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=24511005
I am not sure if ICS update from GS is related to this problem directly or indirecty. All I know is that I had a happy sensation until the update OTA.
Here is the reason why I know that neither the paint or back cover of sensation is the cause of skipping/jumping/stopping/calling last contacted....
I tried the experiment with the back cover off, but I could not replicate the problem, thus no paint chip, back cover or short circuit of any kind is the answer.
So, by method of deduction, with the cover off, I tried wriggling the headphone in the socket to see if that had any effect. None. I tried plugging and unplugging. None. I tried using the remote button to control the music app and the podcast player. No problem. The play/pause/vol up and down etc all worked fine. I even uninstalled the jays app and tried. Without the app, the button on my headset does play and stop, answer and end calls. It got me thinking, and the environment it caused the symptoms only could point to the mic on my headphones.
And guess what? It is the bloody Microphone on the headset. I bet you there are some of you with this problem using the stock headset supplied that have built in hands free.
Basically, the pressure spike caused by slamming of he car door, is the same effect as blowing into the mic of the headset. And once this is done, the only way you can stop is reboot.
Since there have been no posts on this thread, and while I was hunting desperately for answers, I came across a different thread. Similar symptoms. I posted there too, so u might want to take a peep.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=24668109#post24668109
Weird symptom. Possible solution? (Apart from using headsets without mic)
I have the same problem with my Sensation after i flashed the ICS. I have flashed two different custom ICS and with both i had the same problem. The music app goes crazy. I haven't find any pattern on what is that that cause the music app go crazy. When I touch the jack of the headphones (the original headphones of the Sensation) the app start forwarding, skipping track pause, etc. Also the same happens when i put the phone in my pocket. I haven't found any solution but maybe is the signal from the microphone as you said. When i shake the jack i think that signal noise i created and makes the app go crazy.
I hope someone will find a solution soon.
I just found a way to hear music in my ICS Sensation. I just disabled the default music app in the app settings that comes with the rom and i have installed the ESfile explorer which has its own music player. I am using ESFileExplorer's music player and i don't have problems till now...
Hope this is useful for someone.
I think issue is software related. Look here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1689440
NikosDim said:
I have the same problem with my Sensation after i flashed the ICS. I have flashed two different custom ICS and with both i had the same problem. The music app goes crazy. I haven't find any pattern on what is that that cause the music app go crazy. When I touch the jack of the headphones (the original headphones of the Sensation) the app start forwarding, skipping track pause, etc. Also the same happens when i put the phone in my pocket. I haven't found any solution but maybe is the signal from the microphone as you said. When i shake the jack i think that signal noise i created and makes the app go crazy.
I hope someone will find a solution soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does it happen ONLY when using headsets? I have the same problem, but is caused by the jack connector (only in ICS). It randomly sends signals that the phone understand as multimedia commands. If you remove the headsets and play the music with the speaker, no problem at all.
Crap.

More Pixel 2 Bluetooth Woes

I know Pixel 2 bluetooth problems have been discussed here and elsewhere ad nauseam, but I honestly haven't found anyone else experiencing the problem I'm having. Or really even close. None of this was an issue with my Nexus 6P, which I just replaced.
First problem: Audio programs mute between tracks. The phone thinks it's playing them, but it isn't. Take Pandora. A few songs will play fine, then one will end, and suddenly it'll go mute when the next song starts. I'll notice no sounds playing, and I'll look down to see it think it's playing, but with no sound. If I pause and hit play again, the sounds start up until the next song, when it does the same thing. This happens with every audio program I've tried EXCEPT Google Play Music, which works fine. It also sometimes works for 4-5 songs before tanking.
Second problem: notification noises suffer the same fate. I'll have Google Play Music going (which works), and it'll just cut out for a second). That's the notification buzz, which silences the music but doesn't actually play anything. Obviously I can't use the play/pause test to see if that fixes this.
I'm using Soundpeats Q16 true wireless. I unfortunately don't have much else with which to test this. I'd blame Soundpeats, but they worked great on my 6P, and the bluetooth problems with the P2 make me think it's not on Soundpeats here.
I've messed around with the Developer options, and I THINK that setting the Playback Quality to anything steady (330kbps, 660kpbs, or 990 kbps) fixes it. The problem is that that, and the other Bluetooth developer options, all reset on me almost immediately, so that's tough to prove. I have also tried messing around with Tasker, whose sounds also wind up muted.
So one question I'd have would be: is there a way to make those developer options stick?
Second question would be: anybody else in this boat?
I have tried both re-pairing and factory resetting the headphones, several times.

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