[Q] Looking for an advanced Music Player - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey,
I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum for my question. In this case, please point me to where I should better post it.
I'm currently looking for a new music player. I've been using PowerAMP for quite a while and started to feel pretty unsatisfied, since there is no further development since at least 2 years. In particular I'm missing smart playlists and the ability to properly read multi-tagged genres/artists. Especially the multi-tag genres are a real pain, since I use MusicBee on my Desktop and organized my artists and genres very carefully. It was a shame to see everything completely messed up on my android device.
My requirements are pretty basic (at least in my opinion), and I'd be very grateful, if you guys could point me to any music player that supports them. The player should at least have:
5 Star Song Rating
Smart Playlists
be Adfree (at least with paid version)
in addition, I'm looking for a player that ...
has a clean UI (like Pulsar or PowerAMP) / good UX
supports multiple tags in artists / genres
has a dedicated library, since the media-browser from android crap
So far I have looked at at least 20 players with not a single one satisfying at least my basic criteria.
Pulsar Music Player: only supports "favorite"-Song Rating, no smart playlists
PlayerPro: Multi-Tag Genres are buggy, the library is pretty buggy (some songs aren't tagged properly), multi-tagged artists get simply cut-off (same with multi-tagged genres)
Neutron Music Player: very, very bad UX; multi-tagged artists/genres don't work; no smart playlists
n7player: only favorite-song rating; no smart playlists (however, I like the UI very much)
I'm kind of desparate. Could you point me to anything?
Every help appreciated; many thanks!

A sigh of sympathy. Why can't developers adhere to years-old standard (ID3v2 for mp3) or at least sit in the user's chair before starting development. I digress
Your bet may be MediaMonkey for Android. It respects the tags (for the type As among us), and has some higher end features. The UI can be more polished but it does not detract much from the experience and it is in active development. MMA has syncing between phones and syncing with desktop of statistics. You will have to use the MM rating field. This is nondestructive and mp3tag (on Windows) can copy between fields quite easily. I have not found another way for MMA to read other ratings—not sure about ID3v2 POPM field variant.
Poweramp is similar but it runs amuck of the standard which require nul termination between multiple genre and artists. Poweramp uses semicolon (I think). It will only concatenate the multiple terms to one long string. Also, Poweramp suffers heavily from the same problem with most audio apps—there is only one developer and that app is far from a full time effort.
PlayerPro does not support multiple genre/artists—I think it is on the to-do list. I don't share your assessment of it however. While there is no multiple field support, it accepts the nul as a terminator; it just does not store any other term after the first. Since my tracks have the primary genre first, I can tolerate the non-support. It is quite stable but not flashy or trendy. Just how I like it, function over form. It carries an additional audio DSP (free download) for those who want it. PlayerPro allows you to select the rating system with the following choices: PlayerPro; Windows Media; Winamp; or MediaMonkey.
Hope that helps.

There's development on PowerAMP.
http://forum.powerampapp.com/index.php?/forum/18-poweramp-v3-testing/

Test Phonograph
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kabouzeid.gramophone&hl=es_419

TTPod

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] Suggest a music player !

First, I'm not new to the subject. Over the years I've used GSPlayer, MortPlayer, Nitrogen, WMP and various flavors of TCPMP. However, two things happened recently:
- I've switched from Dell Axim X51v to Touch Pro 2 - so finger friendliness is a must.
- I started using WMP media sync on the desktop.
What it means... the WMP puts every album in its own folder. So say I have a dozen MP3s of same artist, from ten different albums. They will be arranged in ten different folders. And synced that way. In the past, I would manually rearrange the songs. But this is tedious, and really unneeded on PC - WMP makes it very easy to quickly play songs by an artist without worrying about folders. When I had a burned HD and had to restore my entire music collection, I just left them the way they are. When using a player with library support on the phone, it's easy to play all songs by an artist.
Well, here's the issues I had with players:
WMP - well, it does have an equalizer as I just found (silly me...) not that easy to get to but it will do.
Mort Player - great functionality, but relatively slow to start; most other players start up almost instantly. Since I use player mainly in the car, I don't want to wait for it to get up while I am driving.
GSPlayer - no big button finger friendly skin that I know of, otherwise great.
Nitrogen - love it, but no library support. And no recursive directory selection mode, so the songs have to be added individually. Would be the player of choice otherwise.
TCPMP - I did find a couple of builds that support skins with large buttons. The one that I ended up with is just a tad slower to start than Nitro, still fast. No library support but the recursive directory selection mode basically replaces "All songs" feature. However:
- there's no way that I know of to make recursive directory selection a default mode - does anyone know if there's a way to do it ?
- Instead of showing album art JPGs it plays them. I.e. if I hit the skip button it treats art as a file to be played. Is there a way/setting to fix it ?
- Also, which build would you suggest for TP2 with stock Sprint 6.5 ROM ? This is probably what I will end up with for now.
Any help / suggestions appreciated.
hi. have you tried AvianPlay and S2P ?
Hi,
I have used “AvianPlay” on my windows mobile. I am satisfied with it, you should also try AvianPlay.
If you have any problems regarding this player, do let me know.
Thanks. Installed it at lunch, still updating library. Is it normal for Avian to take relatively long time to load, or does it do it only when updating lib ?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=670209
That's the iMulator a forum member made. It's a little buggy but I don't think it was intended for my phone. I love the app though, give it a shot I guess.
I still use PocketMusic
I prefer Pocket Player by Conduits. It comes with a great library. In fact it's the only player for Windows Mobile known to me with a real library like desktop players (Winamp...) offer it.

For You Audiobook Listeners.

Just wanted to share my experience with Ambling Book Player Pro.
For the longest time now I've been using PowerAmp. It's wonderful, it is by far the best music player available. Impressive EQ support, folder and playlist support, and a VERY clean and slick UI. Highly recommend it. That being said, when listening to an audiobook I always had to remember my place if I wanted to listen to music or say, flash a ROM 3 or 10 times a day. It got relatively annoying, so I went searching for an alternative. Everything I found was ok, but nothing was great.
I finally decided to give Ambling Book Player Pro a shot (since a lot of the books I listen to are .m4a and .mp3, and you need pro to load files from your SD card). It's wonderful. Support for .mp3, .ogg, .mp4, .wav, .wma*, .3gp, and .m4a. You can create as many bookmarks you want for each book and they save to the sdcard so you never lose your place. It has options for using the button on a headset as well, including play/pause and set bookmark. Another problem I have is that I listen to books all the time while doing other things and often find myself missing a section of the book, trying to skip back to hear what I missed was frustrating. The app has forward and back at 15 and 60 second intervals, which made tracing my steps very easy. It's not the prettiest interface, but it's so incredibly functional that I don't even care. Now I have PowerAmp for my music and ABPP for my audiobooks. If you find yourself in a situation at all like my own, give it a shot. Music and Audiobooks are, for me, one of my favorite things about smartphones.
Does it have speed control? I really utilize the ability of Astro Player to speed up audio books, it's nice because it doesn't increase the pitch (chipmunk), just the speed. I download with Audiobooks by Traveling Classics and listen to them with Astro Player. The combo is perfect I've found.
No it doesn't.
Not my cup of tea, it's nice to be forced to listen at a slow pace where I can really take my time imagining what I'm reading. Nonetheless it's a feature it lacks that you enjoy.
I use Audbilbe and their own player obviously. I love their app. I, however, like getting stuff for free so where do you go to find your audiobooks? If you are not allowed to post it (i don't know the specific rules for those things here) just send me a pm, thanks guys. I'll let you know after you hook me up how I feel about the Penguins!

Music on Android

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.

[Q] [REQUEST] Music Lyrics Censor

I use my Galaxy Note as my daily music player. As a father of two young children, I have to be selective of what tunes I play when they are around.
It seems that many new albums now include some tracks that have swearing in.
I'm not sure if it is even a feasible suggestion, but my thinking was that it would be great if there was an app, or music player that somehow censored any swear words. With the ability to get song lyrics already, and with the vastly improving voice recognition on our devices these days we must be getting closer to having something like this.
I for one would certainly pay for such an app, and expect that many other parents out there would find this useful.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Could it be possible?

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