Audio book player - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi, I have tried load of music playes and a few "dedicated" audio book players and none of them seem to be able to catalog the music correctly. The best at it so far is the Sony music player which is hacked form a ROM, however I cant get the EQ to do anything on this and I find the controls a bit fiddly even on my tablet.
My main issue with other playes is the catalogging, I can find no player at all that will properly deal with chapters or have a system where you can properly choose who to sort the music / track definition by name / number etc. So, I end up with mp3 playing out of order so I end up having to create huge playlists just to be able to read a book, some have 30+audio chapters.
Does anyone else use audio books who can recommend something that just works?

Related

Will something be done about Android multimedia capabilites?

lack of decent mp3 player on android for several years now is getting really absurd
there is not one mp3 player that combines all the basic features of other multimedia devices
features like:
1) folder play + choosing which folders to scan (not the player deciding my whole SD card is one huge mp3 library thus listing video game and gps navigation music files..)
2) equalizer (+presets)
3) visualization (album art is fine, but kind of static..)
4) volume control
5) music streaming
1) organising my mp3 library of 4+gb by using ID3 tags is nearly impossible since it would be too time consuming
i know mortplayer allows for folder playing, but its sound quality is abysmal - i have 12mb 320kbps mp3 that sound like utter s*it when played in this player, but sound fine in music mod
i know of one other mp3 player that allows for folder play and will check it out, but by the looks of it, its nothing special
2) probably the most needed function of all, i mean how hard can it be? its been 2 years now and until now there has been only 1 player with this function - its in beta, and doesnt save your presets, so once you reboot you have to change it all over again...
you could have the best headsets in the world, but it wouldnt mean crap without proper equalizer to tune them with
3) a gimmick, but a nice one, and a standard for, what, 10 years now?
4) HOW HARD CAN IT BE? instead of using hardware buttons, to have software sliders for fine tuning the volume
5) internet/LAN support
these are all basic functions
i have top of the notch android device (HTC desire) but it gets overshadowed by my puny 50€ (at the time) 4 year old sony mp3 player which supports everything on that list except for streams
i wish winamp would make android port..
concerning video support
if there were not for 3rd party developed rockplayer all of the platform would be quite useless on the multimedia side of things..
i love android, i love my cellphone
but i find it odd that even with its open nature, there are still basic functions missing even after all the years and numerous devices on the market
any notions on googles part that things might change soon?
I agree with your frustration. Coming from win mobile and pocketplayer I was very disappointed. Am currently using a cyanogen rom and it does have a dsp/equalizer but have yet seen a player with a comprehensive feature list. It was also nice to make your own skins and have a larger font size to see outdoors.
Have you searched xda, some pretty good music apps have been spawn from here, well members...
The whole sd scan is annoying, but I believe if you drop a ".nomedia" file in folders you don't want scanned they should be skipped, you might want to look into that as I'm not 100% on it...
But yeah, out of the literally dozens of music/media apps they all have there flaws I guess.
Sent from my phone.
hello
Furma said:
lack of decent mp3 player on android for several years now is getting really absurd
there is not one mp3 player that combines all the basic features of other multimedia devices
features like:
1) folder play + choosing which folders to scan (not the player deciding my whole SD card is one huge mp3 library thus listing video game and gps navigation music files..)
2) equalizer (+presets)
3) visualization (album art is fine, but kind of static..)
4) volume control
5) music streaming
1) organising my mp3 library of 4+gb by using ID3 tags is nearly impossible since it would be too time consuming
i know mortplayer allows for folder playing, but its sound quality is abysmal - i have 12mb 320kbps mp3 that sound like utter s*it when played in this player, but sound fine in music mod
i know of one other mp3 player that allows for folder play and will check it out, but by the looks of it, its nothing special
2) probably the most needed function of all, i mean how hard can it be? its been 2 years now and until now there has been only 1 player with this function - its in beta, and doesnt save your presets, so once you reboot you have to change it all over again...
you could have the best headsets in the world, but it wouldnt mean crap without proper equalizer to tune them with
3) a gimmick, but a nice one, and a standard for, what, 10 years now?
4) HOW HARD CAN IT BE? instead of using hardware buttons, to have software sliders for fine tuning the volume
5) internet/LAN support
these are all basic functions
i have top of the notch android device (HTC desire) but it gets overshadowed by my puny 50€ (at the time) 4 year old sony mp3 player which supports everything on that list except for streams
i wish winamp would make android port..
concerning video support
if there were not for 3rd party developed rockplayer all of the platform would be quite useless on the multimedia side of things..
i love android, i love my cellphone
but i find it odd that even with its open nature, there are still basic functions missing even after all the years and numerous devices on the market
any notions on googles part that things might change soon?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
any notions on googles part that things might change soon?[
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-myplayer-lightweight-music-player-t2892233
Have a try with this music player. It's still in beta but it's my favorite music player out all the ones I've tried and has quite a bit of what you're asking for.
Power amp is still the best on the market.

[Q] Stupid question: Podcasts??

I apologize for the simple question, but the guides do NOT cover it. I can copy music to my "Music" folder and the music appears in the stock Music app (as well as DoubleTwist), for example. But if I copy a podcast file to "Podcasts" directory it does not appear in the default player.
How do i get this to work? The default player has no mechanism for downloading and it seems like the Podcasts directory would be the most logical place! DoubleTwist is great for playback and downloading, but in a perfect world I could use the podcasts in any player just like i can with music. Since the built-in Music app supports avrcp 1.3, I can see playback info on my BT head unit, so I'd love to have that.
Anybody figured this out? it feels like such a stupid question.
one last note: i am NOT stock, I am running Revolution HD 8.0, though this SHOULDN'T matter? Maybe something IS broken there, but in my searches elsewhere I don't see anybody else asking this question.
refresh the media library after you copy music to your device
OK, I finally got the podcasts to show up by creating a sub-directory "Podcasts" in the "Music" directory. I was hoping to get clever and create a symbolic link between the music player source and DoubleTwist (or another podcast app) so the default player would pick it up, but that doesn't seem to be an option on this phone
Thanks!

[Q] Best music player to work with 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.)

Google play music - has it changed from mp3 to AAC (Mobile devices)

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.

[Question] - Music/Audio book Advice

Hi!
I'm having trouble finding an app, or even two apps, that'll suit my needs. I've got music and audio books all locally on my phone in separate folders. I'd like to be able to play my audio books in order and also separately shuffle all the music I have. I think if I could find a music app that let me specifically point to a folder to shuffle that would help a lot! Also, streaming isn't really an option.
Right now I've got Play Music that mixes in all my audio books between my songs. Not ideal! I'm on an S8+ if that matters.
Thanks for anyone who has advice for me.
After lots of fiddling I found a solution.
I hid the Audio Book folder.
Basically what I did was use Astro File Manager to add a dot to the beginning of my audio book's folder's name (and gave it a slightly different name just to make sure), and that made it disappear out of Google Play. Then the audio book reader I use, Smart AudioBook Player, can read hidden folders. I've now successfully separated my audio books from my music. So whenever I feel like it, I can jump into a book where I left off, or go to a random song!!
I hope this helps someone else.

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