Does anyone know if there is more extensive documentation on Music Square, or what application its based on? (If it is at all, since several features of the phone are heavily based on other widely available apps)
I've never been able to get it to work with anything but MP3s. Tried so far FLAC and M4A - both were recognised by the music player and play just fine, but Music square never detects them.
I just updated to LFB and it STILL doesn't work, which makes me wonder if its only supposed to support MP3, but its not very well documented by Samsung.
Anyone have either of these working?
FLAC is even weirder, because it will scan it and then when the file is already playing, and place it on the grid where it thinks it belongs, but it will never select that file to play in an automatic playlist.
As far as I can tell, Samsung had the algorithm lying around to sort music by mood from when they first released their iTunes-like media player, known as Emodio. They took this nearly forgotten technology, modified it into a square, then stuck it into their new music app. I have yet to find anyone who claims that Music Square works for anything other than mp3s.
Pointless816 said:
As far as I can tell, Samsung had the algorithm lying around to sort music by mood from when they first released their iTunes-like media player, known as Emodio. They took this nearly forgotten technology, modified it into a square, then stuck it into their new music app. I have yet to find anyone who claims that Music Square works for anything other than mp3s.
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Click to collapse
It would be helpful if they at least said it somewhere.
I got a reply to an email I sent them today, saying just as much, and suggesting that I just use MP3. That's not ideal, and how would I even know to use MP3 in the first place since it doesn't say anywhere it only works with it?
Like I said though, FLAC half-works. It knows what category it falls into but it just doesn't ever put them in a list. Vorbis could be the same for all I know (or maybe it actually works).
Related
I'm a bit of an audiophile and for me the music side of things really is lacking in Android. Its absolutely fine for example if you come home in the evening and want to listen to a few albums, its 110% no problems at all.
I listen to music on my phone 8-9 hours a day at work and its a let down.
Getting songs on it for a start is a nightmare, sure you can plunk all in a music folder again fine for listening to an odd album or whatever but there is no sort of organisation, Say I want a playlist with song 2 from album E followed by song 1 from album C and so on this is a nightmare to create on the phone, this is where iTunes comes into its element. Sure we have things like Doubletwist, on paper it should be fantastic, but the reality is it duplicates songs and playlist and isn't even smart enough to recognize duplicates in your library, there is also things like Winamp and its wireless syncing, it takes forever and again duplicates.
Then we have the problem with MP4 files, My Galaxy S2 can recognize many files but has issues with MP4 files, you get song name but artist info etc all unknown, it can't read the tags.
Then general sound levels, I've tried 3 android phones over the years and all 3 are to low, they are about 70% that of an iPhone and this is fine for general listening but if your fave song comes on you like a bit of a boost and well you can't, I also work in quite a noisy environment and machinery can he heard over the top of the phone on full, there are apps like Volume+ which claim can boost the volume and well they can but it distorts so all rather pointless.
Then there is finding a player, I've notice volume differs between them all, and some can't read the playlists you've created so in the end i;ve had to stick to stock player, although crap its the best of a bad bunch.
A feature I also liked on iTunes was Genius, I could pick a song say a rock song, hit a button and it would create a playlist similar, even if this was possible on android it wouldn't work anyway as all the MP4 tags are fooked.
So as I say I take music seriously and I suspect 90% of people won't care about these issues but I do and am hoping for some good advise as don't want to go back to iPhone but at the moments its looking like the only solution as Android is so frustrating to use for music.
First off, look at Voodoo sound control from the android market. It's often times included in custom ROMs. It will allow you to pump the volume up far beyond the stock ROM's capabilities. There's quite a few other tweaks it offers that I'm sure you'll find. The only catch with Voodoo is that it's only compatible with certain Kernels.
As for media playback, "Music" by Google is pretty powerful. It's not the same program that many phones run stock. It has support for FLAC playback, Song info lookup, even lyric support.
I recommend you take a look at PowerAmp. I am a music nut like you and it does everything and more! There is a full featured trial version and to buy it is only a few bucks. Check it out.
Sent from my DROID X2 using XDA App
I have to use music by G but I wish it has some more useful features like 'query' or 'play after this song' such.
There will probably never be a mobile player that will do Replay Gain on the fly so i suggest your grab yourself a copy of mp3gain for your PC. Plug your phone in via USB, drag and drop your music from phone to program interface, set level to 92db, Scan Tracks and then Apply Gain.
92db may be higher than some of your tracks already are and may be lower than others. Find a level that gives you the audio boost you need. As all tracks are set to the same level you won't have to adjust volume between tracks during playback.
There are plenty of players with Playlist support so that's covered. Try one of the ones mentioned above.
I think i've found the answer by accident, I was using Media Monkey I noticed it has a feature to analyze the volume of tracks, so I got them all analyzed and noticed most were in or around -10db, I hit level which brought them up to 0 to +5db and I have noticed a good improvement, It also sorted out all my tagging and artwork issues and even synced my playlists perfectly to my phone.
What features would you like to see added/removed, and are you happy with it compared to the stock music app, or how do you feel it stacks up against another music app.
*This is a general topic, and I'm just curious to see the community's response.*
I don't use it. It doesn't have features I need.
Namely, ability to keep the screen from sleeping, and the ability to limit where it looks for music at.
i like gmusic. I dont use it daily (I use slacker daily) but gmusic works great when I do need it. Its far more reliable than when it first came out, so they're definitely making progress.
My only complaint is when I flash a new rom, it registers my phone as a new device so it adds it to gmusic (which is great) but google limits it to 8 devices. So occasionally I need to go into gmusic website and delete my old devices, which is all the same phone. Its not really a complaint for google but i wish there was a way for it to detect that its the same device/IMEI
I personally love google music I use it daily. I have a computer for school and don't want to cramp it up with music so I can stream everything. Also I use my phone in my truck for music and it is nice to have access to all my music when I need it.
Absolutely love it. I have my entire collection stored. My main problem lies when I'm doing file management and the media scanner starts while I'm playing music. Google Music stops streaming completely and I have to manually restart it. I turned caching off, so that the song being played is solely dependent on the connection, but it still does it. I suppose it stops to look for new songs that might have been added. I'd like it to at least resume playback when scanning stops.
The other thing is with optimization I guess. In my last billing cycle, I got throttled and streaming was impossible (as expected). However, Pandora was still able to stream entire songs, for long sessions without stutter (it just took longer between songs). I'm curious if it'd be possible for them to improve performance on slow networks, so that it's on par with Pandora.
Alucardis666 said:
*This is a general topic, and I'm just curious to see the community's response.*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
General is something related directly to the phone or an app that comes stock with the phone. GoogleMusic does not fit that description since it has to be installed by the user and not everyone uses it. This should have been in Themes and Apps. Just sayin'.
I wish it would sync with a folder on my phone with all my music, so that when it tries to play a song, it checks that folder on my phone first before downloading the song with a weird name in another random folder. That way, whenever I add a song on my computer to the Google Music Folder, it adds to my phone as well when I try to play it, keeping my music in sync.
yahoowizard said:
I wish it would sync with a folder on my phone with all my music, so that when it tries to play a song, it checks that folder on my phone first before downloading the song with a weird name in another random folder. That way, whenever I add a song on my computer to the Google Music Folder, it adds to my phone as well when I try to play it, keeping my music in sync.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That'd be boss. Maybe in a future update?
I love google music.
Especially after switching from iTunes and my iPhone 4. I really hated iTunes haha
i like it on my zoom and Google TV. But I wish it would sync playlist too. A good playlist takes time and it wouldn't be nice to listen to them on phone, tablet and TV. The main thing that make be go back to the Samsung music player is that while connected to my Bluetooth stereo it shows track info on the stereo but the Google music doesn't. Not a big thing, but enough to keep me using the samsung player. If those two were fixed it would be a perfect player.
K Rich said:
I love google music.
Especially after switching from iTunes and my iPhone 4. I really hated iTunes haha
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too converted, and couldn't be happier.
Absolutely love Google music. No complaints here, it works great. I'm really happy that Google came out with this app, I show everyone with an Android phone.
im using PowerAmp i think its better than gMusic
Not bad... Steaming better but still slower than other streaming apps.
My biggest complaint is music purchased can only be played in gmusic and can't be downloaded to phone or computer. Frustrating when I paid for something. if they keep prices at $4.99 album $.49 song I might get over it... Doubtful that will last.
Saw app in market that claims to make music portable though.
SHOstock
DD12/21 exp
Onepointsixingit
mjgspr95 said:
Not bad... Steaming better but still slower than other streaming apps.
My biggest complaint is music purchased can only be played in gmusic and can't be downloaded to phone or computer. Frustrating when I paid for something. if they keep prices at $4.99 album $.49 song I might get over it... Doubtful that will last.
Saw app in market that claims to make music portable though.
SHOstock
DD12/21 exp
Onepointsixingit
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just click on the song you purchased and click download. It will let you download it at 320k and no drm. Also the google music manager has an option to auto download any purchased songs to your pc automatically.
---------- Post added at 09:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:59 AM ----------
I would really like to be able to download my music that was uploaded to google music. I had everything in itunes also, and one day after it was all uploaded itunes moved everything without me knowing it and that file got deleted on accident. Of course i didn't care at the time because nothing should have been there. Thanks itunes.
benk016 said:
Also the google music manager has an option to auto download any purchased songs to your pc automatically.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Automagically? I missed that. Cool.
Sent from my Galaxy SII
My only complaint is the shuffle feature isnt very good at all, I only have a library of about 400 songs yet some songs I never hear when I use shuffle all n some songs I will hear twice in a 10 song span. I use gmusic daily n love it other than that.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
Love it!!!
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk
I wish there was a way to manage the songs on the server from the phone. I sent all my music to the server and now run across songs (when in shuffle) that I no longer want. Would like to delete the song off the server from my phone.
mjgspr95 said:
Not bad... Steaming better but still slower than other streaming apps.
My biggest complaint is music purchased can only be played in gmusic and can't be downloaded to phone or computer. Frustrating when I paid for something. if they keep prices at $4.99 album $.49 song I might get over it... Doubtful that will last.
Saw app in market that claims to make music portable though.
SHOstock
DD12/21 exp
Onepointsixingit
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
uhh, yes it can...
I'm new to Android, switching from iOS recently. I love it so far, but I have 2 problems with music that are minor but very annoying. Please note all my music was tagged perfectly in iTunes with correct artwork, etc, when I was on iOS and I simply copied my iTunes Music folder to my SD card on my Galaxy S3. Music Player/PlayerPro/PowerAmp/etc all find and play the music perfectly, except for these 2 issues:
1) All the albums that had Album Artist "Various Artists" in iTunes show on my S3 as being by whichever is the artist of track 1, so all my compilations show like that instead of "Various Artists".
2) Since my S3 plays FLAC files, I download some of my very favourite songs from certain albums in FLAC and replaced the mp3 on the SD card with the FLAC. I tried using iTag Pro and Audio Tagger Pro, etc, on the S3 to make the tags of the new mixed mp3/FLAC album exactly the same, but no matter what I do, Music Player/PlayerPro/PowerAmp/etc all display the album as 2 different albums.
For example, I now have 2 x Snow Patrol "Up To Now" albums showing - one mp3 with all tracks except Chasing Cars, and one with a single FLAC file (Chasing Cars). As I said, I've made all the tags for Album, Artist, Album Artist, Genre, Year, etc, the same, but the phone always sees them as 2 albums - how do I merge?
Many thanks
Easiest recommendation - get another audio player.
The stock one is fine for Joe Average but anything a tad more sophisticated does not work or at least not as intended.
There are a lot of free ones in the Play Store.
Lots of people recommend PowerAmp but I myself have not yet used it.
Remember, you're on Android; you can change every (well... most) aspects of the phone's behaviour to your choice. Use that power =)
I already tried PlayerPro and PowerAmp and n7Player, same problem.
stumbled on a fix
im better with computers than phone but am getting there slowly
Id thought id post this as it seems to have fixed it for me. I'm using Linux and i used sound converter and easy-tag applications to fix this. I expect there's other programs that will do exactly the same thing.
I spent hours adding pictures to my mp3 collection and editing the tags then copying them to my phone and only a few worked. All music players i tested still refused to recognize all tags and pictures embedded. That was right up till i noticed in easy-tags that the ones that did work were on a 320 insanely high bit-rate.
As a last resort effort i converted them all with sound-converter to a bit-rate of 320 and re-sampled them at 4400 MHz. Then i reopened them in easy-tag to fix any text errors and finally copied them all to the phone with crossed fingers. Well blow me down. it worked, all mp3 music files, pictures and tags were now recognized by all music players on the galaxy s3 i9300.
Hope this helps someone.
I use puddletag to tag all my music on llinux. Not for android though, google music.
Hey guys,
I've been using GMusic for a while now, but I always found it very limited and not exactly to my taste.
Does anybody know a better music player that can load songs from GMusic?
danielfiller said:
Hey guys,
I've been using GMusic for a while now, but I always found it very limited and not exactly to my taste.
Does anybody know a better music player that can load songs from GMusic?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not sure if google put the music you buy onto your device or its streaming the music but you might want to take a look at cyangenmods apollo.
Trozzul said:
not sure if google put the music you buy onto your device or its streaming the music but you might want to take a look at cyangenmods apollo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It streams all your library, and that's what special about it.
Apollo doesn't support Google Music streaming.
Any other suggestions?
danielfiller said:
It streams all your library, and that's what special about it.
Apollo doesn't support Google Music streaming.
Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think there is a way to get it onto your device thought, i got one of their free albums and it was on my device even though data and wifi was turned off. dig around in the files maybe?
The music that's cached is on your device, but digging through the files won't do anything unfortunately, each one deeply encrypted, believe I've tried
If you're responding to me, make sure to quote me so I get an immediate email
Trozzul said:
i think there is a way to get it onto your device thought, i got one of their free albums and it was on my device even though data and wifi was turned off. dig around in the files maybe?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a way to do that, but then I lose the whole point of streaming - not having the files taking up space on my device.
The files you found in Apollo were probably some temp cache files leftovers.
So no suggestions?
Maybe someone else knows about an app like the one I'm looking for?
Maybe even some plugin that enables players to stream from Google?
been trying to find something for a while with no luck... I think its a great service, and the app isn't even that bad, but sometimes I just need that music to stream through another music program for a certain feature or option... or just because I say so! lol
(Most of my music I uploaded to the cloud was flac, so it is played back as 320kbps... In some areas I get only 1 bar of 3g, and at worst music playback may pause for 5-10 seconds... but even this is a rare occurrence... Others have complained about the quality, but I think it's great considering I have the options set for high quality playback only and still don't have issues)
what I don't quite understand, is the talk of 'lack of an api' for Google Music streaming.....
However, Android app's for DLNA or other wireless streaming, such as Bubble UPnP, and this app which streams to 'Sonos'? wireless speakers: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.youtec.android.macronos&hl=en
They DO support streaming from google music - the actual CLOUD (sorry it bothers me that someone names an app Cloud Music Sniper and flaunts allowing access to google music, then turns out its for the OFFLINE available apps that you pin for offline access? Oh and shockingly there is an app called Offline Music Importer that works the same - except it doesn't piss me off by implying it can access anything associated with my music on the cloud!) /end rant
So why are these streaming apps like Bubble UPnP able to access my Google Play Music collection on the cloud so I can play it back through my home receiver - yet I can't get it to work with a 3rd party music player at all? Hell, all I honestly want is a stupid visualizer, preferably that I can set as a live wallpaper... but they only seem to work with 1 out of every 5 songs that plays.... regardless of offline or streaming... and that REALLY confuses me =/
purplekush said:
been trying to find something for a while with no luck... I think its a great service, and the app isn't even that bad, but sometimes I just need that music to stream through another music program for a certain feature or option... or just because I say so! lol
(Most of my music I uploaded to the cloud was flac, so it is played back as 320kbps... In some areas I get only 1 bar of 3g, and at worst music playback may pause for 5-10 seconds... but even this is a rare occurrence... Others have complained about the quality, but I think it's great considering I have the options set for high quality playback only and still don't have issues)
what I don't quite understand, is the talk of 'lack of an api' for Google Music streaming.....
However, Android app's for DLNA or other wireless streaming, such as Bubble UPnP, and this app which streams to 'Sonos'? wireless speakers: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.youtec.android.macronos&hl=en
They DO support streaming from google music - the actual CLOUD (sorry it bothers me that someone names an app Cloud Music Sniper and flaunts allowing access to google music, then turns out its for the OFFLINE available apps that you pin for offline access? Oh and shockingly there is an app called Offline Music Importer that works the same - except it doesn't piss me off by implying it can access anything associated with my music on the cloud!) /end rant
So why are these streaming apps like Bubble UPnP able to access my Google Play Music collection on the cloud so I can play it back through my home receiver - yet I can't get it to work with a 3rd party music player at all? Hell, all I honestly want is a stupid visualizer, preferably that I can set as a live wallpaper... but they only seem to work with 1 out of every 5 songs that plays.... regardless of offline or streaming... and that REALLY confuses me =/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
found this baby:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2169761
check it out
THANKS! Know a way to pick output device for the Web based version?
danielfiller said:
found this baby:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2169761
check it out
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WOW! thank you so much for letting me know about this! :good:
I'm definitely gonna check it out and see how the streaming quality compares...
[sometimes it makes the difference between playing and buffering when using the Google Play Music app's settings for mobile streaming - the High, Normal, and Low quality setting]
Regardless, this is a good step in a good direction... I know Bubble UPnP app and even some file explorer apps could access cloud storage, including the google music account - so I'm glad someone finally incorporated that in a way that let other music players on the device see the cloud storage as if they were local!
As exciting as it is, I'm also cautiously optimistic... While this means that Google's All Access music service will become much more attractive and viable for multiple device use compared to it's competitors --- there will, of course, be issues regarding protecting digital rights. Already I mentioned the 'misleading' programs that allowed ON DEVICE/'pinned' music from Google Music to be played in 3rd party players, and some convert the file to a properly labeled mp3. Considering Google Play Music already allows for All Access subscription users to do the same to songs within their entire catalog (that is, 'pin' it to the device for offline play - which was really a surprise to me), this means those same programs can now convert the All Access music that is pinned to allow offline play into proper mp3 files.... Thus with some coding to make the process faster, one can essentially download any song they want from All Access and keep it as an mp3 - altho it is only meant to be a subscription service and the option to pin music from all access is just supposed to allow access to the subscription service without signal or without eating up data from a data plan.
I guess that means if Google Music wants their music streaming service to succeed, rather than taking away support for 3rd party players - they must provide an official API and a better means of protecting the songs stored for offline playback using a database and/or file level encryption for the 'pinned' songs. I'd hate to see the ability to use the service on other players be stripped and locked down even more to a single player due to these kind of concerns that Google surely already sees as an issue and is likely brainstorming solutions.
Question:
On the topic of Google Play Music, does anyone happen to know of a similar solution regarding Google Music Streaming on a DESKTOP ??
I have found gmusic (not the iOS app), but a standalone program that sits in the system tray...
http://gmusic.codeplex.com/
Some of the chrome plugins actually offer better features (last.fm integration, lyrics, etc....), but the one I found that said it allowed use of media keys didn't work for me...
This is the only one I found that allows me to A) not get my music player lost in a massive field of tabs, and B) change songs while playing a game!
The Main Player window, although, is nothing more than a customized browser window (like the ability to view webpages within winamp and other programs). It is nice that it is a separate icon not mixed in among other browsers, supports media keys, can be minimized etc ----
The one major thing I'm still unable to find a solution for, is the ability to select (non-default) audio output device!!
I have always had my pc connected to my receiver/surround sound system since I got 'my own' computer, so being able to select the audio output is crucial for me when playing music, as I direct the music through digital output to the sound system, but still want to hear other audio through the output jack.
Many times I'll have -Music through digital optical output, -Game SFX through pc speaker output, and -Google Hangouts (for voice chat with teammates) through USB headset.
However it isn't as common for a game to have audio device options as it is for a music/media player.... and always remembering to alt-tab after the games started to change the the default device is a major pain!
(Not to mention even if I'm just listening to music, I don't want to hear audio from a random ad... esp when I can't track down the source of the ad among my tabs, and it is blaring loud out the sound system along with my music)
Many people have complained/requested this to be a feature of Google Chrome - of course the Google team reading these complaints are thinking from the perspective of a simple web browser, something that usually has no need for such a feature...
However, plenty have brought up the issue of Google's Music Service being web-based, and thus such a feature is needed.
I'm not quite sure it is an issue that needs to be addressed by the Chrome browser, but it should definitely be an option within the Google Music web app itself - similar to how one can choose their input and output device in Google Hangouts, which is also a web-app run within a browser.
Of course, the best solution for me would be to find someone that has created something similar to GMusicFS that allows the music to appear as if it is local (similar to google drive's client) or if one of the better music players (Winamp, Foobar, MusicBee, etc.) had an extension somewhere that allows adding cloud music services like Google Music.
Anyways,
@danielfiller Thanks so much for pointing me to that app!
(sorry to any mods about how this post isn't -exactly- a proper topic for its location. Its just that Google Music is cross platform, not limited to mobile devices. While my question does not relate to any mobile platform, it is regarding the exact same functions the android app provides for the exact same streaming service.)
So there are a few mentions of Google play music changing from mp3 to AAC. Not as many as I would expect given that this is a big deal imo.
I tested today using the web player on my mac and it was indeed AAC but I have no way of verifying if this also the case on mobile devices too. On android the files are hidden away and cannot be viewed without root. I can see no reason why they would vary it by device but you never know
Anybody have any idea how to verify on an android device?
Would be great if someone could throw light on this. Really want to know whether GPM is playing AAC on Android like their web player. If that's the case, it's indeed a big deal.