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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.
I was wondering if anyone has ever considered adding support to Android or Android's music app for replay gain. I've noticed that when playing music on my Nexus One, the volume tends to jump all over the place as I go from song to song due to individual tracks being mastered/encoded at different volumes. It can be quite jarring to go from a quiet track to a loud one and to have to quickly dive for the volume rocker on my phone.
I know it's possible to store replay gain values in the metadata of most digital audio files, so I don't think it'd be necessary to do the actual replay gain computations on the phone itself (and, in fact, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to as it could take a loooong time depending on how many music files are stored on your sd card). I think all that would really be necessary is to have the music app read those values for each file and adjust the playback volume accordingly. If I'm not mistaken, this is kind of how the "sound check" feature works in apple's ios.
Only thing is, I really don't know how involved it would be for a skilled developer to make this feature a reality. I suppose it might even involve some kernel modifications. In that case, I realize this idea might be a long shot.
Anyway, it's just an idea I had that I think would make using your Nexus One that much better as a quality portable media player. Feel free to chime in with thoughts/suggestions/reasons why this idea is or isn't feasible/etc.
If you want QUALITY audio you should start with ripping your CD's to a lossless format and avoid Normalization. You can Gain your audiofiles before putting them on your phone, but I strongly recommend to use Pro software and to be conservative as most recordings today are of a high standard.... (analyze the audio to get max peak level and gain acordingly to not exceed 0dB)
If you prefer to use MP3 or other lossy compression, well theres no point in discussing quality
cyberspaced said:
If you want QUALITY audio you should start with ripping your CD's to a lossless format and avoid Normalization. You can Gain your audiofiles before putting them on your phone, but I strongly recommend to use Pro software and to be conservative as most recordings today are of a high standard.... (analyze the audio to get max peak level and gain acordingly to not exceed 0dB)
If you prefer to use MP3 or other lossy compression, well theres no point in discussing quality
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this would be nice, if all the various music download services offered well and identically authored tracks. unfortunately, they do not. so, the OP's is still an interesting and valid request.
cyberspaced said:
If you want QUALITY audio you should start with ripping your CD's to a lossless format and avoid Normalization. You can Gain your audiofiles before putting them on your phone, but I strongly recommend to use Pro software and to be conservative as most recordings today are of a high standard.... (analyze the audio to get max peak level and gain acordingly to not exceed 0dB)
If you prefer to use MP3 or other lossy compression, well theres no point in discussing quality
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I definitely agree with you there and I appreciate the suggestions. Only thing is, I really don't buy CDs anymore. I don't pirate music either though. Instead, when I want a song or an album, it's just a lot more convenient to go and buy it online. I have a lot of stuff I bought from itunes a while back, but now I mostly buy from Amazon (since the Amazon MP3 app on the Nexus makes it so convenient).
Thing is, I'm not even talking about the QUALITY of the audio files. The music itself sounds fine to me (Not trying to start any audio file format wars. I realize some people can't stand the lower quality of lossy file formats like mp3 and that's fine. But even if lossy formats sounded noticeably worse to me, it really wouldn't matter since i usually use cheap headphones/speakers to listen to my music anyway ).
What causes problems for me is that since my music collection was all mastered at varying volume levels (again, not cause I ripped it myself and screwed it up cause I didn't know what I was doing; most of it was purchased from itunes or Amazon), as I skip from track to track (random tracks from varying albums by different artists all shuffled together) the volume tends to jump around, sometimes quite drastically. I may get to one song that's so quiet I can't hear it, so I turn it up. Once that song ends though, the music player might jump to another song that's kind of loud at a normal volume, but since I've already turned up the volume, now it's painfully loud.
I realize that the ideal solution would be to rip all of the tracks myself from their original lossless sources, but for me that's not an option. Additionally, I can say that using replay gain values to normalize the "loudness" of my music library works quite well in the software media players I've used in the past (such as Winamp and itunes). Even the "sound check" feature (which is just apple marketing for their glorified version of replay gain) built into the ipod touch's music player provides solid music playback of the same audio files without me having to constantly fiddle with the volume controls. If a 2 year old ipod touch can do it, I know my Nexus can.
Again, the basic idea itself isn't so complicated. While on a PC, a piece of software, such as Winamp, scans your music library, calculates the replay gain values (whether the "loudness" of each track/album is too loud or too quiet and what the proper offset should be in as a positive or negative db value) and stores them in a metadata tag in the audio file itself. From there, you load the media files (tagged with their new replay gain values) back onto your Nexus One. Then the music app would read the replay gain values for each track/album and apply them to the output volume.
The only thing I'm not sure of is how much work it would take to actually implement this idea in Android. But that's why I'm hoping to hear from others who might be interested in such a feature. Hopefully if there's enough interest, some of the devs with more knowledge about Android can chime in to let the rest of us know how feasible a replay gain feature would be.
This is definitely a feature I'd like to see as well, ReplayGain is practically essential for any music collection spanning more than a decade or so.
I hesitate to recommend this to anyone that ISN'T starting with lossless files, but it is possible (as a stopgap measure) to apply the gain stored in the tags directly to the audio data BEFORE encoding it for transfer to your device. Of course if you're starting from lossy sources this will cause a reduction in music QUALITY. My collection is largely lossless and I have done this for some time (the FLAC decoder has a useful --apply-replaygain-which-is-not-lossless switch) to create files for use on my phone.
Always glad to hear that there are others who would also be interested in a simple Replay Gain option for the stock Music app. It seems to be a common feature on portable music players these days. Certainly if apple can bundle it with their ipods, we can bundle it with our Androids. Right guys?
Mobiper.com
Thanks for the valuable discussion. Its very nice to read.
Hello Folks,
This is a problem that I had on the venerable HTC Touch Pro, and hoped I wouldn't have an issue with an HTC android phone - but have been sorely disappointed.
I've been trying to find a quality media player for audiobooks - but any media player I've tried has questionable bluetooth performance at best. Sometimes I'll be able to control playback via A2DP for a while - but eventually I'll find that pressing the button on my headset will kick off the stock HTC Music player and NOT the software I'm using.
I've tried removing the Music widget, and changing settings in the music player, clearing data - etc.
How can I prevent the stock music player from hogging the A2DP connection? To be honest - the only grief I have with the stock player is that if I use a lot of other apps at one time, the music player will lose it's spot within a file. Which is a pain for audiobooks. I'd greatly appreaciate any help.
Well - I never found a solution, but I have found a good work around that seems to fix the major issue I had.
I got rid of the music widget, and cleared out all data from the app. Then added a wav file that was just one second of silence. I created a new playlist - and added only that wav file. I played the playlist, then closed out of the app.
Now - I use Akimbo for audiobooks and enabled the bluetooth controls. This way, Akimbo responds to the A2DP controls as I wish - and I suspect the music player does so as well. But the Music player plays 1 second of silence and then stops.
It's not the most elegant of solutions - but it works. I can fully control Akimbo via my headset and don't have to worry that the Music player would play over it.
Hey all
I'm very much interested in being able to send my music/audio from my phone to a DLNA renderer on my home network. There are plenty of individual apps out there to do this, such as BubbleUPnP, Twonky, etc, or even indeed the music app built in to my HTC One X. However what I'm wondering is if there's a way to have all music/audio re-directed over WiFi to a DLNA renderer?
What I'm looking for would be something similar to when you plug in headphones or connect a Bluetooth audio device: any application that plays media has the audio directed to the headphones or bluetooth connection, instead of the internal phone speaker - that's exactly what I want, but with the audio being directed over WiFi to a DLNA renderer. I'd configure the app/service/whatever to send all audio over DLNA, and then it doesn't matter whether I'm using Dogcatcher, Spotify, the built-in Music app or Google Music - all audio automatically gets directed to the DLNA renderer.
Having to use yet another app on top of the various media applications I already use is a real pain; plus I highly doubt any of the existing applications will support Spotify streams (Twonky and BubbleUPnP don't), and I had little success when experimenting with Twonky yesterday. As mentioned my built-in music app already does this so I'm already part of the way there, but I'd like it to be system-wide rather than app specific.
The DLNA renderer I'll be using will either be a standard PC running XBMC, or a headless Raspberry Pi embedded Linux computer; either way they'll both be fully UPnP/DLNA compliant.
To be honest, I don't even know if this is possible; I have a feeling that it'll have to be on a per-application basis. But hey, no one ever learned anything by not asking questions
BLCollier said:
Hey all
I'm very much interested in being able to send my music/audio from my phone to a DLNA renderer on my home network. There are plenty of individual apps out there to do this, such as BubbleUPnP, Twonky, etc, or even indeed the music app built in to my HTC One X. However what I'm wondering is if there's a way to have all music/audio re-directed over WiFi to a DLNA renderer?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Capturing audio emitted by any app is not possible on Android. There's no API to do it. Probably because Google did not want apps to be able to do it.
Since capturing audio is perfectly possible on a PC, that's in line with the dumbing down of general computing.
bubbleguuum said:
Capturing audio emitted by any app is not possible on Android. There's no API to do it. Probably because Google did not want apps to be able to do it.
Since capturing audio is perfectly possible on a PC, that's in line with the dumbing down of general computing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cheers for the reply; at least I know there's no point in further googling!
Looks like it'll have to be on a per-app basis then.
It is possible, with root access
BLCollier said:
Hey all
I'm very much interested in being able to send my music/audio from my phone to a DLNA renderer on my home network. There are plenty of individual apps out there to do this, such as BubbleUPnP, Twonky, etc, or even indeed the music app built in to my HTC One X. However what I'm wondering is if there's a way to have all music/audio re-directed over WiFi to a DLNA renderer?
What I'm looking for would be something similar to when you plug in headphones or connect a Bluetooth audio device: any application that plays media has the audio directed to the headphones or bluetooth connection, instead of the internal phone speaker - that's exactly what I want, but with the audio being directed over WiFi to a DLNA renderer. I'd configure the app/service/whatever to send all audio over DLNA, and then it doesn't matter whether I'm using Dogcatcher, Spotify, the built-in Music app or Google Music - all audio automatically gets directed to the DLNA renderer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With root access you can get to the system audio, but as far as I know only apps that output this via airplay currently exist...
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.)