Hi there,
Google, please, would it be possible to solve Android audio latency problem in new Pixels by including a special "Audio mode" as a new app standard in future android versions? e.g. similar what Samsung has for battery saving so that everything switches off, the phone is totally unusable but saves battery. Audio mode would be something similar. Every service not necessary for the task would shut down, just the kernel and drivers would work, scheduler and CPU would be dedicated to single audio app that would only interact with few necessary components (Audio DAC, WIFI, USB..). This mode could also be enabled through restart I don't mind - I think musicians would appreciate it in the end knowing the phone is not just the "phone" for a while but a piece of hardware dedicated to audio. I'm curious how low the latency could go in this special case. 4ms max would be great. I would be happy if you comment this or forward it somehow to Google engineers if you know some I think it is a good idea and it could potentially be a significant advantage over iPhones...
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Hey all,
I've just recently received my OPO and it seems to me that things like listening to pocket casts/google play music are burning through my battery at a much faster rate than on my n5. I know one of the selling points of the n5 was the the use of the secondary low-power processor for audio tunneling, and I believed this functionality was included in the snapdragon 801- can anyone confirm that this functionality is enabled?
Edit- earlier blog posts regarding this here ; anything I might have done to disabled this or any reason cached music/podcasts would not take advantage of this?
Yes, the actual playback of media uses very little battery, it's the apps that are sucking juice.
My suggestion:
Go to Settings>Privacy>Privacy Guard>Advanced and set "Wake Up" and "Keep Awake" to "Disabled" on all your audio apps.
One catch, you'll need to have the audio app on screen before you turn the screen off, or playback will pause a couple minutes after the screen turns off.
I've found this saves a ton of battery.
Hi folks, I just started a new account today to post about this issue so hopefully I am posting in the right place.
I have noticed that when playing music back on the Pixel, Google Play Music (GPM) keeps the device fully awake and away from deep sleep regardless of what settings are selected. I previously owned a Nexus 5 and the DSP audio tunneling feature allowed for audio processing to be done through the phone's DSP, allowing the device to reach a deep sleep state through most of the audio playback. This greatly enhanced battery life and I believe was advertised as a feature of the Snapdragon 800 chipset in that device.
I know that when making voice calls with the pixel, the battery usage and associated wakelocks look very similar to my Nexus 5. It seems to do this audio processing with the DSP just fine, and the phone enters deep sleep intermittently despite the voice call, so long as the screen remains black. I also know that the Pixel has a more creative use of the DSP in the camera software, and it is part of the reason we get such beautiful photos with such small shutter lag.
However, I have found absolutely nothing online or otherwise related to the Pixel's distinct lack of DSP usage during audio playback. It would stand to reason that this device, using a chipset based on the Snapdragon 821, and including a DSP even more advanced than that of my Nexus 5, should also be taking advantage of this feature. Unless there are any drawbacks that I am aware of, it would only serve to improve the battery life even more.
If anyone knows something that I do not about this, or has any inclination to try it out and see if it works on your device, I'd love to know more! It could be a bug that nobody noticed, or they may have removed the ability for the device to do this for some reason. Or it could be a GPM related thing, I really don't know if this feature was enabled for other devices. I am using a play store purchased Pixel 32gb running stock 7.1.2. For the record, it is less of an issue on this phone than it would have been on the Nexus 5, because I get great battery life streaming music or otherwise.
The feature only ever worked without bluetooth, by the way, as streaming audio over bluetooth adds extra processing that requires the device to be kept awake as far as I know. Only playback through the phone's internal speaker or through the audio jack with EQ disabled allowed the feature to work for me on my Nexus 5.
This is the problem I'm having with my pixel's audio. It happens with headphones and external. Videos I play, become distorted in intervals. An echo and overall broken barely understandable audio. Some fixes I tried are installing audio control apps. Maybe a kernel is what I need or magisk. I what to know the best route before I do to much back peddling. Thanks
Edit: resolved, whatever it was went away with upgrading to Oreo.
alladinscastle said:
This is the problem I'm having with my pixel's audio. It happens with headphones and external. Videos I play, become distorted in intervals. An echo and overall broken barely understandable audio. Some fixes I tried are installing audio control apps. Maybe a kernel is what I need or magisk. I what to know the best route before I do to much back peddling. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
magisk (itself) wouldn't have any effect on audio at all... sometimes apps are badly written and don't use audio APIs correctly, which can cause glitches... I have a patch in my kernel that makes sure even stupid apps end up setting the correct sample rate and sample size... if it's happening in intervals, it sounds like there may be something on your system (an app?) that is interrupting audio and you might be getting buffer underruns (the odd glitch or popping sound?)...
it also could be that u have a hardware issue. hard to say, without hearing / seeing what u are talking about... you could try my kernel and see if it helps.... sometimes audio apps help, but mileage varies... and if it's a hardware problem they won't fix it, maybe just reduce it. (not saying u have that issue, no idea).
I'm not sure what you mean by distorted though? like the gain is too high, or does it sound grainy and like the sound is 'pulling apart'? ... what app are u playing videos in, where sound becomes glitchy?
Yeah, magisk coupled with one of its deeper access audio algorithm app things is what I mean. The kernel being another similarly capable audio software tweak. Some other thread was talking about hardware fixing pixels audio cheapness. But I have a lack of tools and experience with that. Maybe have someone do that for me in the end. They were changing headphone jacks and even motherboard components. The distortion is like the sound of slow motion audio, bassy, and obvious echo. Then also fine at the beginning of a video and half the rest of the time. In YouTube, boat browser so far. I shall try kernel first.
alladinscastle said:
Yeah, magisk coupled with one of its deeper access audio algorithm app things is what I mean. The kernel being another similarly capable audio software tweak. Some other thread was talking about hardware fixing pixels audio cheapness. But I have a lack of tools and experience with that. Maybe have someone do that for me in the end. They were changing headphone jacks and even motherboard components. The distortion is like the sound of slow motion audio, bassy, and obvious echo. Then also fine at the beginning of a video and half the rest of the time. In YouTube, boat browser so far. I shall try kernel first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not really following what you are saying about the deeper access algorithm or that being akin to any sort of kernel related audio tweak....afaik, those audio mods are just causing more buffering, which reduces the chance of buffer underruns. Stuff done in the kernel would be entirely different. not similar at all...
"sound of slow motion audio" ~ grainy then? like it's pulling apart, as I asked? ... it could be a hardware issue, it could be a software issue. Hard to say.
My description is some jibberish I know. I'm not intune with how some kernels, flash files, magisk modules exactly modify my device. I know to consult those threads for their ops and discussions. I made this thread to find answers for this problem.
Viper4Android still one of the reasons many people root. The incredibly powerful and popular audio modification... "
This example above. So you know how this could be a fix for me? What kernel do you suggest?
My car has a noise homie. It sounds like crap.
This is an example of my device's distortion. With distortion beginning at 45"
I will send it to you. Something is wrong with XDA
Went from nougat to Oreo. No more audio problem yet.
Hello to everyone
I've recently become an owner of a brand new HTC U11, mostly for it's playback capabilities. I even got new earbuds JBL reflect aware, but I'm still struggling with major, very known issue, lack of sufficient volume steps. I was trying to achieve this with some of the applications, but all the solutions were unsatisfying or were even worse, distorting the output sound. Finally I got myself to this forum and I've found, that there are ways to achieve this by adding a proper entry into the build.prop file.
I tried this, but final result also turned out to be unsatisfying. Why is that? Because when I add entry to build.prop, after reboot of the device, the amount of volume steps increases but something strange happens. Let's say I set it to be 30 steps. What it actually turns out is, that starting with a zero volume level, when I increase volume it reaches the highest possible at 15th step, then at the 16th step the sound gets significantly quieter and again increases to the maximum, when I reach the final 30th step.
Similar situation takes place, when I set the amount of steps to 50. Only this time those 50 steps become divided into the first casual 15 and another 35 additional steps, where at the beginning sound also gets quieter to reach its maximum at 35th step, which is actually the last 50th.
The entry looks like that: "ro.config.media_vol_steps=30"
It seems like it doesn't override the default setting, what is supposed to do from what I read.
I also tried other way. I found that decompilation of framework.jar file allows to modify AudioService.smali, to achieve the same result.
But this is demanding some serious knowledge, and I'm a total newbie to this, so I achieved nothing. Especially, that I couldn't find a proper framework.jar file, since it is probably in the different location, then described and probably compiled into the *.oat file.
If there's a way to solve my problem by editing the biuld.prop file or other *.prop files? I'd rather do it this way. If not, I think I will be persistent to achieve my goal, hopefully with some help. : ) Mostly because I find it really disturbing not getting possible a proper volume level over the remote control in the headphones, and getting it manually through some apps, equalizers is not what I meant by obtaining new headphones.
Hi viekowy
I understand your frustration totally as I have gone down the same road.
The build.prop thing works on AOSP ROMs, but not HTC Sense based ROMS.
I don't believe there is a solution, except I have found that the POWERAMP Player app has an option to increase volume steps that actually works on HTC Sense ROMs!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.maxmpz.audioplayer
USB Audio Player also has volume steps option, but it doesn't work on HTC Sense ROMs.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.extreamsd.usbaudioplayerpro
So I've stuck with Poweramp Player as it plays 24bit flacs and is a fully featured HD Audio player.
I would like to know how the programmers of Poweramp Player overcome this problem as I have other players that would benefit from 50+ volume steps.
I use Ainur Audio mod as it makes a vast improvement on sound-staging and fidelity. (I don't use Viper etc).
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software/soundmod-ainur-audio-t3450516
Give it a try and let us know how you get on.
I have mild to mod hearing loss. I have hearing aids but there are cases where wearing them is not possible or desirable, a key one being when using NC headphones. So to compensate I have searched high & low for an Equalizer app or any other audio amplification category type app that can boost on-board/streaming volume by frequency. Basically it "should" be as simple as an Equalizer app that has the abiity to boost up to say 30-40dB (or more) but the highest I've ever seen is 18dB. Most apps only run 6-10 band to max 10 or 15dB. Even Neutralizer that appears to sort of fit this need can only boost to 10!
There seems to be an abundance of apps that target hearing impaired but they are either hearing aid paired apps & just control the aides or they try to substitute for aides & amplify ambient sound - ie amplify microphone input. One of these Petralex goes to 30dB, which makes me think it is technically possible.
So bottom line is I have to wonder if it is technically just not possible; Android doesn't allow that level/power of amplification or is that there is just not enough perceived need for something along these lines. I could see it as an add for the headphone makes but again - eg: Sony MX headphones companion app has an Eq but only boost to 10dB - meant for taste not hearing loss.
I have a DEV background but have worked in sys admin for 10+ years now - IF it is possible I may entertain the idea of giving it a shot myself even if only for my own use.