Music App Survey - Android Software Development

Hello, what's up and good morning,
we are a small project team from HTL Rennweg Vienna and like to develop an Music App for Android. The project will last a half year. We want to implement the following features:
play music from the SD card
control a MPD server remotely
a Widget and a Lockscreen Widget
Artist Information
Lyrics
Albumcover
subscribe to Podcasts
Last.fm Integration
We are asking at several Android forums, which other features are needed and used.
We are looking forward for many ideas and comments
basti & the project team

Auto-start play and stop on BT/wired headphone connect and disconnect.
Car-view with only 3/4 BIG buttons and huge album cover background.
High-quality file format support (FLAC, APE, ...).
Speed-based volume control (the faster you go, the louder it gets).
I may add some more in future...
EDIT: like I said...
HUD-like mode to have the screen reflected in windshield, maybe with actual speed and time indication... I mostly need that for car use, could you imagine? XD

I'm probably alone here, but the main thing I miss using my phone instead of my ipod as a car media player is that I can't have music videos and normal tracks in the same playlist. So if you could include support for music vids in the same playlists as other media, that'd be fantastic
Other than that - what teorouge said. Add gesture support to, so I can swipe to change tracks, and I'm sold

teorouge said:
Auto-start play and stop on BT/wired headphone connect and disconnect.
Car-view with only 3/4 BIG buttons and huge album cover background.
High-quality file format support (FLAC, APE, ...).
Speed-based volume control (the faster you go, the louder it gets).
I may add some more in future...
EDIT: like I said...
HUD-like mode to have the screen reflected in windshield, maybe with actual speed and time indication... I mostly need that for car use, could you imagine? XD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would also like to see a day/night switch to automatically change skin or at least color set from light to dark, based on actual time or luminosity or both (you decide!) also for car usage improvement.
EDIT: actually don't care about...
play music from the SD card
control a MPD server remotely
a Widget and a Lockscreen Widget
Artist Information
Lyrics
Albumcover
subscribe to Podcasts
Last.fm Integration
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I would love to be able to stream internet streams (over wifi)
like .m3u streams. The stock app doesn't recognise ones I have tried

Biggest issues for me would be the ability to add only specific folders to the library, a media player that scans the whole SD card and loads crap like ringtones into the list is unusable. And secondly very robust tag and album art support. I have many songs that display titles and artist fine in Foobar on my PC and all my tracks have the album art imbedded but many of these do not display correctly on my HTC Desire media player.

The feature I most need is to sort my music by "album artist" and not only by artists.

Related

AOL Music Subscription Works on Hermes!

..........
I've been wanting to get a subscription service that will stream to mobile devices (I mainly use Rhapsody on my pc, and it too will NOT work with mobile devices even though you have the option to use it through a browser-based interface) so I read your post and signed up for the 30 days trial, and sure enough it works over 3G as well.
The only problem I have is when I go to the main page through PIE on my Tytn, it automatically goes to a mobile version of the site, and I can only select certain artists that have been pre-selected based on my genre settings. There is a search line at the top where you can enter artist or album, but there is no Enter or Go button, and pressing Enter on the keyboard does nothing. In other words, I can't navigate to any specific artist, I can only listen to the pre-selected ones. Do you know how to get that search bar to work? If I go to the page on my desktop pc, the interface is totally different and getting to a specific artist is no problem.
I'm not sure what to tell you on the WMP thing... I have no issues with WMP thus far...
Neither of you have tried orb? I can't say enough about it...all of your mp3's on your PC at home are available to you on your phone 24/7. The only drawback is getting the mp3's and always leaving your PC on. It works the same way- you choose your song and it streams to WMP. This will also work for Videos and TV (with the proper setup, slinbox is far better though).
I haven't had any problems with this using wmp.
Patman,
Yes I do have Orb and use it quite a bit, and I do love it!! I stream my music and my recorded TV from my media center pc at home. BUT, the reason I wanted a subscription-based service on my phone is because you can stream any song, any artist any time. I own about 6,000 mp3's that are on my harddrive on my pc at home that I can stream on Orb, but with a subscription-based music service like AOL or Rhapsody, I have the choice of about 2.5 million songs, on-demand, at my fingertips.
stpete111 said:
Patman,
Yes I do have Orb and use it quite a bit, and I do love it!! I stream my music and my recorded TV from my media center pc at home. BUT, the reason I wanted a subscription-based service on my phone is because you can stream any song, any artist any time. I own about 6,000 mp3's that are on my harddrive on my pc at home that I can stream on Orb, but with a subscription-based music service like AOL or Rhapsody, I have the choice of about 2.5 million songs, on-demand, at my fingertips.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I figured there was a reason.
Does it cost anything per song, or is it a time-based ($xx.00/month) service?
I'm glad others are interested. Subscription music means you pay a flat fee per month (usually around $10) and you can listen to any artist, any album, any song in their entire library whenever and (hopefully soon) wherever you want. It's the holy grail IMO as far as portable music. Especially when you don't want an iPod/MP3 Player, but rather a convergence device like this. The problem is that the flash memory is very slow, and very space limited. Streaming music from a subscription service is the way to go. Orb is a great idea, but you still have to download the songs first. Me personally, I'm fed up with downloading organizing and managing music files. It's just become tedious. I'd rather have a jukebox available at all times with every artist in existence. In other words, I'm sick of collecting music. The new technology has made me look past that.
As I mentioned, AOL Music Now is the only web based service, thus the only one that can work on Windows Mobile (Rhapsody has a web browser plugin but it only works on certain desktop browsers).
Good news though. I just discovered (or is it brand new?) that Music Now supports RSS feeds. This could really be the answer to a having a solid experience using the streaming from a subscription music service on a PPC.
You can save an RSS feed of just about anything. All the artists in your library, your playlists, all the albums, all the songs, top 20 lists, etc.
I'm about to try and find an RSS reader for WM5 that might make this a reality. Even if one doesn't exist that works well, the RSS provides an open source for others to make a music browser type interface. Who knows what will happen. One could potentially make a program for WM that reads the RSS feeds and lets you browse, select, and play music much like the interface on an iPod or something. The difference being you have up to 2 million songs to choose from at any given time.
..........
...........

Playing Gapless Albums in Media Panel

Greetings all!
I have the entire collection of MDB's Beautiful Voices Compilations, which consists of 40 gapless albums - so far - of Chillout bliss of different genres; essential for driving down the crazy streets of Cairo. I recently lost my iPod so I gave my X1 a try as a music player in my car today; copied one of the albums to my memory card and I was all set. The sound quality through AUX was pretty much the same (if not slightly better when it comes to bass) as that of the lost gadget.
Moving on to the important point, I noticed when playing this gapless album while the phone was on the “Media Panel” (Bluetooth Headset connected) that the files don't switch smoothly; sound stops for almost two seconds between tracks. The freeze is also there if I play the album from the “On the Road Panel”. I didn’t experience any noise what so ever when both players would move on to the next track.
I used the search function and couldn't find any threads about this. Has anyone else encountered the same problem? Is it well known? Is there a fix?! It's something that I can live with but I have like a 100 gapless albums in my library so it would be nice if I can manage to fix it.
Running R3A Generic UK ROM, no junk, no cracked software!
Note: Gapless Albums:
I'm quite sure you're all familiar with the term but for those who are not gapless albums are supposed to sound like one long connected track with no breaks what so ever, like listening to a live concert, or an Electronic music set, e.g. Tiesto's In Search of Sunrise, etc...
I know only 2 players who play gapless : Pocket Music, and Pocket Player. I use Pocket Player, it's pretty as nice as my iPod nano 2G.
+1 for pocket player. The only thing I don't like about it is that it takes a few seconds to open and is a tad slow to redraw when switching orientation. Great player though. Media browser as nice and easy to use as an ipod. Download the free fully functional trial. To turn gapless on, turn crossfade on and drag the overlap slider to zero.
Thank you all!
Thanks for the tip. I purchased Pocket Player. It sure works its way around gapless albums. But I'm in love with SE's media panel. I hope someone may find a solution for that soon.

My search for a good TP2 music player.

Requirements:
1) Has the ability to use the "Album Artist" tag to organize its library and not just the "Artist" tag. For those many who do not understand the importance of this let me say it makes a huge difference with CD's such as movie soundtracks, classical music CD's and other compilations that have one or more guest artists contributing on a particular track.
For example, take the soundtrack for "O Brother, Where Art Thou". There are 19 tracks and nearly every one by a different artist. If that one CD was the only CD on your TP2 and you opened the library of one of the current mobile media players and selected the "Artist" view you would see 19 different artists listed each owning the CD "O Brother, Where Art Thou". If instead the media player was able to organize its library by the "Album Artist" tag there would only be a single entry for "Various Artists" or "Original Soundtrack".
On a 16 GB SD card with several hundred ripped CD's this can be the difference between a managable artist list 200 long versus one that is 1000+ long and totally unmanagable.
2) Proper alphabetization; Ignores the words "A" and "The" if they begin an artist name. For example, "The Black Crowes" should be in the B's not the T's. It's OK that "Bob Dylan" be listed in the B's since there is no way to distinguish first and last names. I don't know of any media player on any platform that does this.
3) Uses a library Db created from tags and not just a folder/file structure. Can open a detailed properties view that gives extended info culled from tags and file data. (Genre, Audio format, etc.)
4) Has a "Finger-friendly" GUI and ideally can replace the HTC media player on the TF3D music tab.
Apps tested (so far)
1) HTC Media Player:
It's big plus is that it has a tab in TF3D so it is well integrated and easy to get to. It is also finger friendly. Unfortunately it does not utilize the "Album Artist" tag for organizing it's library (even though it does read the tag and display it when you view a music files properties). It also does not ignore "A" and "The" and places "The Black Crowes" under the T's. In addition I have found a bug that causes it to play tracks out of order. On most of the albums I've put on my SD card tracks 1 and 6 are switched (i.e. it shows and plays the tracks in the following order 6,2,3,4,5,1,7,8,9. On some albums the track order is even more random.
2) Windows Mobile Media Player:
"The Black Crowes" is properly listed in the B's but it also does not organize its library by the "Album Artist" tag (even though the full PC version of WMP does). Its default GUI is not very finger friendly, the buttons are a bit small and the library text is too small to be selected accurately with fingers. It is skinnable so I'm looking for one that fits the TP2's TF3D style and better suited to fingers versus a stylus. I'm also trying to put it on the TF3D music tab instead of the HTC media player.
3) Nitrogen:
Does not seem to utilize tags at all and instead relies on the folder structure and file names to organize music. It does have nice big buttons and is very finger friendly and the skin fits well in TF3D even though it is black text/buttons on a white background instead of TF3D's white on a black background.
4) S2P (Slide to Play):
Like Nitrogen it does not utilize tags at all and relies on the folder structure and file names to organize music. It is designed to be finger friendly and has an interesting GUI that makes good use of finger swipes and sliding panels.
5) ? Suggestions:
Most important is the album artist tag issue followed by the proper alphabetization. So far I prefer to use Windows Media Player but am still looking.
I've heard that Microsoft will be incorporating its Zune interface for the Windows mobile media player. I've never seen the Zune interface up close but I'm hoping it addresses the above shortcomings and, if so, bacomes avaiable to the TP2 soon.
S
Reserved for future media player reviews.
S
+1 !!!!
I have exactly the same problem !
I past 3 hours to manage my music PC library of WMP to finaly have a very poor result on my phone :'(
The Music Player integrate on the touchflow looks pretty, but it miss a lot of utilities, WMP looks more complet, but uggly and too small :'(
Both of theme have the problem of the "listing tag"
I'm also seeking for a complet music player with a good listin and if it's possible a "cover flow".
(Sorry for my poor english).
You have tested the core player 1.3.5 or 1.3.6?
I have a nice skin for this player...
mike2nl said:
You have tested the core player 1.3.5 or 1.3.6?
I have a nice skin for this player...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not but I want to. Unfortunately, it does not look like it has a trial edition so it will cost me $30 to find out if it has what I need. Can you tell me if it can make use of the "Album Artist" tag for library organization and/or if it properly alphabetizes "The Band" under the B's not the T's?
S
I'm currently using S2P.
It's the most feature complete of all the players I've tried. It's almost perfect.
I'd recommend giving S2P a try.
http://s2p.ac-s2.com/
Maverick777 said:
I'm currently using S2P.
It's the most feature complete of all the players I've tried. It's almost perfect.
I'd recommend giving S2P a try.
http://s2p.ac-s2.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I updated my OP with S2P info.
After using both Nitrogen and S2P I had 2nd thoughts on the tag vs. file/folder structure to organize a music library. As long as the artist folders are named correctly both the "Album Artist" and the alphabetization issues are solved.
Unfortunately that requires a lot of manual labor and also means there is no extended info available. I have put an enormous amount of work into properly tagging my music library on my media server at home and I would like to benefit from that work on my TP2 as well as any other playback devices I might use.
S
I asked CorePlayer support about the "Album Artist" tag and alpha issue last Saturday. Today I got an email saying that I haven't responded in 72 hrs and could they close the case. They never even tried to answer me. Simply ignored me for nearly a week and then asked if the issue was resolved and could they close the case!
I still don't know if CP will meet my needs but their support sure looks like crap.
S
I might as well chime in here, I'm looking for other media players like tcpmp that resume where you left off even after you close it fully. I listen to a lot of audio books and it's a pain to find your place again. Tcpmp is the only one I've seen but it's a bit unwieldy to use with fingers.
CorePlayer's support is TERRIBLE, they also promise frequent updates an seldom provide. A huge thumbs down to the company and product in general. They banned my office IP without explanation from their forums after I asked why no one had responded to my emails, support tickets, and phone calls, about a bug I found in their forum software that makes it unable to e-mail me at the .ws domain, preventing me from being unable to activate my account on their forum. Unfortunately it is also one of the better players out there in general. Though it is very UN finger friendly.
oldpueblo said:
I might as well chime in here, I'm looking for other media players like tcpmp that resume where you left off even after you close it fully. I listen to a lot of audio books and it's a pain to find your place again. Tcpmp is the only one I've seen but it's a bit unwieldy to use with fingers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try S2P links in posts above. It will do exactally what you need, I listen to alot of Podcasts in small portions and it does the trick. Its finger friendly too
It's a shame that S2P doesn't support gapless playback (I listen to primarily DJ compilations (mostly that I've ripped myself... kinda a stickler for quality)
Conduit's Pocket Player is also good, it supports streaming podcasts album art and gapless playback/cross-fading (you gotta set the cross-fade to "0" for gapless). It cost about $20 but if you can't afford that it can be obtained via other means as well.
Forgot to mention that sometimes pocket player will disable my hardware buttons >_<, this has only happened on my TP2 though, sucks none-the-less.
sleonard said:
I asked CorePlayer support about the "Album Artist" tag and alpha issue last Saturday. Today I got an email saying that I haven't responded in 72 hrs and could they close the case. They never even tried to answer me. Simply ignored me for nearly a week and then asked if the issue was resolved and could they close the case!
I still don't know if CP will meet my needs but their support sure looks like crap.
S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Protonus said:
CorePlayer's support is TERRIBLE, they also promise frequent updates an seldom provide. A huge thumbs down to the company and product in general. They banned my office IP without explanation from their forums after I asked why no one had responded to my emails, support tickets, and phone calls, about a bug I found in their forum software that makes it unable to e-mail me at the .ws domain, preventing me from being unable to activate my account on their forum. Unfortunately it is also one of the better players out there in general. Though it is very UN finger friendly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow. Their support is so bad it's almost comical. Almost.
After going a few rounds of them ignoring my questions and closing the ticket because there was no response and me re-opening the ticket in an apparently vain attempt to get my questions answered I joined their user forum and asked if I could get some help because official support was ignoring me. The next morning I had been permanently banned.
Absolutely amazing.
Needless to say I will not become a paying customer and I cannot review the product here as a result.
S
sleonard said:
Needless to say I will not become a paying customer and I cannot review the product here as a result.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can get the player through a less legal way:X Read this info and try it, it will stick with you
I'm having the same problems, I'm looking for the exact same things. Here my reviews:
Touch Flow 3D Player:
Pro's:
- Finger friendly
- Looks good
Con's:
- Ordering of songs FAIL ( when no track number is set, the whole list goes crazy )
- Slow ( It will need 2 secs to start-up a song )
- When you go back to the list you selected your current playing song from, it will go back to the top. Which is extremely enoying when your browsing 80+ albums or 2000+ songs, anyway, you get my point
Media Player:
con's
- Not finger friendly + Looks suck => Dropped it right away
S2P:
Pro's
- Best looking of all players
- Finger Friendly
con's
- SLOW
- No library => Dropped it right away
CorePlayer:
pro's:
- Best Library of all players
- Has an Alphabetic Vertical Scroll, when you press the 'B' it will go to all songs / albums ( depending on what your browsing ) that start with B. Extremely handy
- Browsing works well with fingers.
- After picking a good theme, the whole thing becomes more finger friendly and will look better ( for example my own theme: http://reb3lzrr.com/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=9&thread_id=27&pid=122#post_122 )
- BEST when it comes down to options / custimization
con's:
- Default theme is NOT finger friendly and looks terrible, but that can be fixed
when your looking for a player that;
- orders your music in a way you want it,
- has a lot of tweaks / customizations
- handles like a charm
go for CorePlayer!
Gz reb3lzrr
?
reb3lzrr, Is your skin for Pocket player or Core player? If it is able to work in Core player, how do you change the skin in core player
have you tried kinoma media player? Finger friend and very intuitive interface.
I just installed a 30-day trial of Pocket Media Player and reb3lzrr's skin.
Good news is that it understands the "Album Artist" tag as well as the "Contributing Artist" tag and many others as well. Very good sign.
Bad news is that it sorts "The Beatles" incorrectly under T instead of B I did see a setting in the options that might help with that. /crosses fingers
There is a ton of options that will take me some time to sort thru so it will be a good week or so playing around with it.
After this I'll take a look at Kinoma.
S
sleonard said:
I updated my OP with S2P info.
After using both Nitrogen and S2P I had 2nd thoughts on the tag vs. file/folder structure to organize a music library. As long as the artist folders are named correctly both the "Album Artist" and the alphabetization issues are solved.
Unfortunately that requires a lot of manual labor and also means there is no extended info available. I have put an enormous amount of work into properly tagging my music library on my media server at home and I would like to benefit from that work on my TP2 as well as any other playback devices I might use.
S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you sync your music to your phone via windows media player it automatically creates the mp3 files in an artist and album folder structure (completely based off of the info from the mp3s).
Does anyone know how to remove the 499 song limit from your WinMo/Touch Flo player library? I am dying here with my Rhapsody subscription... All the songs are transfered, but only 499 tracks show up in the library...
I have tried S2P: great but doesn't handle compliation albums (soundtracks) well... Pocket Player: same story on compliations... and a few other free ware ones, but seriously, I actually like the WMP with the Skins I have found.
Any ideas on removing it?
japper88 said:
If you sync your music to your phone via windows media player it automatically creates the mp3 files in an artist and album folder structure (completely based off of the info from the mp3s).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do use WMP to sync music to my phone and you're right it does create the proper folder structure and this is why I briefly reconsidered my position on having a library with support for the Album Artist tag but since it doesn't support any tags at all you lose access to all of the metadata.
zcarman said:
Does anyone know how to remove the 499 song limit from your WinMo/Touch Flo player library? I am dying here with my Rhapsody subscription... All the songs are transfered, but only 499 tracks show up in the library...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not noticed this limit. I have over 2000 songs synced to my phone and they all seem to show up. (I haven't counted but I can't find any missing)
zcarman said:
I have tried S2P: great but doesn't handle compliation albums (soundtracks) well... Pocket Player: same story on compliations... and a few other free ware ones, but seriously, I actually like the WMP with the Skins I have found.
Any ideas on removing it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found Pocket Player to be the only one to properly handle compilations because it is the only one to support the Album Artist tag. Use WMP on the PC to set the Album Artist to "Various Artists" or "Soundtrack" and Pocket Player will work perfectly. Their support has told me that in the next version they will also support proper alphbetization so the "The Beatles" will be listed in the library under B not T.
I also like WMP a lot and have found a skin that makes it more finger friendly. Now I am thinking about learning how to make my own skins for it.
Currently I am back to using the Music tab of TF3D. Despite it's very annoying bugs and design flaws having a TF3D tab is a BIG advantage. I just wish there was a way to create a tab for a 3rd party player such as Pocket Player.
S

Music Player question

I've jsut started to use the music player on my HD2 and have to say there's a few things that I'm disappointed in.
Firstly as already mentioned in another post, I don't like that there is no search function, or at least the alphabet down the side as in the contacts, to search through the albums/tracks much quicker. Instead I have to scroll endlessly through all of my music. Is there a fix for this?
Secondly, it isn't very easy to change the artwork (From hints and tips), and/or track title/artists. I had an iphone previously and it was much easier. You just clicked on what you wanted to change in itunes, change it and it automatically synced with the phone. I have a lot of albums where the artwork isn't automatically downloaded, and a lot of tracks where there are multiple artists and I would like to change it to just one. Is there a way to do this? I don't mind manipulating my files on the PC first, but to be honest I can't figure out how to do this on windows media once the CD has been ripped. I know how to change the track title/artists etc before ripping the CD, but I don't want to dig out all my CD's and re-rip them again. Perhaps someone knows how to change all this using windows media once it's ripped?
Alternatively is there a music player out there for my HD2 (preferably free) that allows you to do what I want, ie change artwork, artists etc? Preferably running the program from my PC so I can manipulate it on there.
Cheers
http://www.mediamonkey.com/
im using winamp on the pc for the artworks, and pocketplayer on my leo, it got searchfunction too, and awsome eq, and other settings, try it
Hi,
I've had the HD2 since before Christmas and generally it's great and for connectivity etc, it beats my lady's iphone, but to the subject in hand...
When i got the phone i put a 16Gb card in and stuck all 8Gb of music i had on my reluctantly let go N95 - i know they were looking dated, but it was sturdy as a brick, had GPS, good memory, battery life...
I immediately then had problems with the HD2, it couldn't play for more than 20 or 30 seconds, it was constantly trying to update the music etc, this is fairly easy to fix though, there is a free program for tag checking/fixing on this forum elsewhere. Once you run it on your files on your HD2s card, you'll find some do have errors, get it to fix tham and the HD2 will now stop endlessly trying to scan your music and play it.
Use MP3tag - free and easy to find on web - to correctly name your tracks and artists, this makes life alot easier in finding what you are after.
If you want the HD2 to display artwork - this took some working out - you can make it do so using the following steps:
1 - get the cover artwork you want, open it in Photoshop or equivalent, resize it to 256x256pixels, then save it out (resolution 72dpi, and save out at 6 in Photoshop, it's more than enough for tiny display covers) to the music album folder it needs to live in naming it hTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg
Once it's saved, go to the folder, right click on the file, click properites, uncheck 'archived' and check 'hidden'. Bingo, this will make sure the artwork you want will appear. It does work, I spent alot of time sorting out my music over Christmas, as music is what i do and this kind of thing bothers me.
You can use HTC's auto artwork function and it does work ok generally for well known stuff, but if you need to plug artwork gaps, use the above.
Glitches in playing... I've found that if you leave Wi-Fi and Data enabled then it does cause pauses generally in quite a few apps, not just the music player, though it is obviously bloody annoying having a 5 second break mid song. Simply switch off Wi-Fi & Data (i'm not 100% sure which is causing it, but it's when the handset is trying to sync out). You'll find then you don't get any interruptions in your music. And let's face it, going to Wireless Connections only takes 2 seconds to switch them on and off. Though granted, HTC should REALLY sort this out.
Main problems i have with the HTC built in music player is the following:
1 If you wizz the Touch Flow album covers too fast, it bugs out and flips to whichever end it is closest to. Annoying.
2 On contacts you get the A to Z slider to speed up finding who you are after, why in hell not on the music player for artists etc???
3 If you go to an artist, say Janis Joplin, play a track, if you then go 'back' to the artist list, are you at J still, NOPE, you are back at A. Annoying. Scroll, scroll, scroll.
4 Why no function for you to choose artwork from a specific folder, which would save all the above fuss, plus an MP3 tag editor/fixer, hardly rocket science in this day and age.
There are other points that will come back to mind once I hit submit I'm sure.
Not related to the music player, but does anyone know if there's a fix for the really annoying way the cursor jumps from where you are when writing a text and you click on 'add symbol'. It jumps to the start of the text, which if u are only briefly above ground on the tube, is really sodding annoying. The keyboard isn't quite as good as the iPhone as it is - a point i'm loathed only to admit to other HD2 users ;-)
Hope some of this helps.
Cheers
Thanks I will check these out. Is pocket player free?
Also try Nitrogen player .. it's free.
MandrakeMan said:
Hi,
I've had the HD2 since before Christmas and generally it's great and for connectivity etc, it beats my lady's iphone, but to the subject in hand...
When i got the phone i put a 16Gb card in and stuck all 8Gb of music i had on my reluctantly let go N95 - i know they were looking dated, but it was sturdy as a brick, had GPS, good memory, battery life...
I immediately then had problems with the HD2, it couldn't play for more than 20 or 30 seconds, it was constantly trying to update the music etc, this is fairly easy to fix though, there is a free program for tag checking/fixing on this forum elsewhere. Once you run it on your files on your HD2s card, you'll find some do have errors, get it to fix tham and the HD2 will now stop endlessly trying to scan your music and play it.
Use MP3tag - free and easy to find on web - to correctly name your tracks and artists, this makes life alot easier in finding what you are after.
If you want the HD2 to display artwork - this took some working out - you can make it do so using the following steps:
1 - get the cover artwork you want, open it in Photoshop or equivalent, resize it to 256x256pixels, then save it out (resolution 72dpi, and save out at 6 in Photoshop, it's more than enough for tiny display covers) to the music album folder it needs to live in naming it hTC_AM_AlbumArt.jpg
Once it's saved, go to the folder, right click on the file, click properites, uncheck 'archived' and check 'hidden'. Bingo, this will make sure the artwork you want will appear. It does work, I spent alot of time sorting out my music over Christmas, as music is what i do and this kind of thing bothers me.
You can use HTC's auto artwork function and it does work ok generally for well known stuff, but if you need to plug artwork gaps, use the above.
Glitches in playing... I've found that if you leave Wi-Fi and Data enabled then it does cause pauses generally in quite a few apps, not just the music player, though it is obviously bloody annoying having a 5 second break mid song. Simply switch off Wi-Fi & Data (i'm not 100% sure which is causing it, but it's when the handset is trying to sync out). You'll find then you don't get any interruptions in your music. And let's face it, going to Wireless Connections only takes 2 seconds to switch them on and off. Though granted, HTC should REALLY sort this out.
Main problems i have with the HTC built in music player is the following:
1 If you wizz the Touch Flow album covers too fast, it bugs out and flips to whichever end it is closest to. Annoying.
2 On contacts you get the A to Z slider to speed up finding who you are after, why in hell not on the music player for artists etc???
3 If you go to an artist, say Janis Joplin, play a track, if you then go 'back' to the artist list, are you at J still, NOPE, you are back at A. Annoying. Scroll, scroll, scroll.
4 Why no function for you to choose artwork from a specific folder, which would save all the above fuss, plus an MP3 tag editor/fixer, hardly rocket science in this day and age.
There are other points that will come back to mind once I hit submit I'm sure.
Not related to the music player, but does anyone know if there's a fix for the really annoying way the cursor jumps from where you are when writing a text and you click on 'add symbol'. It jumps to the start of the text, which if u are only briefly above ground on the tube, is really sodding annoying. The keyboard isn't quite as good as the iPhone as it is - a point i'm loathed only to admit to other HD2 users ;-)
Hope some of this helps.
Cheers
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Thanks for taking the time to post this lengthy response. I did see the way you suggested to add artwork on the Hints and tips thread, but what a ball ache. I do't really want to be spending hours resizing pictures just so they can go on the phone, they really should be a way to do this much easier. It would be nice if they had a dedicated program like itunes to do all this kind of stuff. I'm hoping the programs mentioned above will solve my woes.
I can't believe with a phone so powerful that it pauses and has glitches in music playback, that is sooo poor, and inexcusable to me. Does that happen with all music players, or just the HTC sense one?
I've tried windows player that was preinstalled on the phone, but it won't locate any of my music. If I update the library it just fills it with all audio files from my phone (such as sat nav audio) but not my music, why is this and how do I get it to JUST update my music?
I have contacted HTC about the text issue and they tell me they are working on a fix.
Hi,
I agree, it's a ballache that we shouldn't need to do. It's more for those annoying odd one or two album covers here and there that don't get picked up or end up with the wrong covers when you request the handset to update artwork from the Gracenote database.
All these issues with the music player are pretty poor for a handset costing near £500. I should really forward my last post to HTC...
Cheers
Ok, so I've tried other media players and to be quite honest I don't like the interfaces, I like HTC's much better (except for the fact that you can't search). I have added artwork to my media on my PC now using monkeymedia, and jukebox, but when I transfer the music files to my HD2 there's no album artwork, why is this and how do I get it to transfer without going through the long winded process mentioned above?
I DJ and do a lot of my own CD's, and want to add artwork Can anyone help? Or is it just the HTC music player that won't pick up the artwork, and so I'm forced to use another player? If so is there a player out there that has a nice interface like HTC?
I've seen S2P, but which version should I download? Theres vga or wvga?

HD2 Music player questions, suggestions needed.

Okay, so now that I'm committed to the HD2, I'm also committing to fix or remedy the issues I have with the device. I've gotten it to run smoothly, except for the Sense music player.
First, is it normal for it to scan for music every time it's powered on, or unplugged from USB? You would think it would save an "image" of your library to run off while it scans the SD card for new files, but no. Instead, it scans for several minutes, in which time it won't display any artists or albums and lags horribly. Am I missing a setting, or have my library sorted incorrectly? Right now it's setup as root/music/artist/album/mp3, fwiw.
Also, the gap between tracks is terribly annoying. It totally kills mix cd's that are cut into tracks, and ruins the flow of a lot of albums. Is there a way to get rid of this, like the "skip silence" function in iTunes? I knowIf not, is there an app that scans and removes silence from the beginning/end of my mp3's as a batch process? For example, point the app to my music folder, and let it scan/trim silence from each mp3 automatically?
Other than these problems, I really like the music player... but these things are serious dealbreakers for me. If there's no way around them, is there a music player you can suggest that does these things?
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I really don't think these things are a lot to ask from a music player, and I'm hoping there's a way to make it happen.
+1 i too has this same issue
Yes, this happens. People have suggested a music player called nitrogen, but I haven't really messed with it to know how good it is or not.
Yes the HTC Sense music player can be one of the problems with this phone, especially for larger music collections, and/or ones stored on the card....mostly due to the less-than-efficient way it indexes the music. The two cabs I have attached should help you with that somewhat. The first one adds indexing to the startup group, so it should be pre-indexed by the time you decide to open the music tab. The second one turns on caching on the card, which should also help speed up the indexing and access times on the music tab.
As for the gaps between tracks, I've never seen a solution for that other than manually trimming the files...but even that won't totally remove the gap. I listen to a lot of full-length mix CD's too and the way I get around this issue is to just rip the CD as one full-length mp3, instead of as individual tracks. EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the free utility I use for that
sirphunkee said:
Yes the HTC Sense music player can be one of the problems with this phone, especially for larger music collections, and/or ones stored on the card....mostly due to the less-than-efficient way it indexes the music. The two cabs I have attached should help you with that somewhat. The first one adds indexing to the startup group, so it should be pre-indexed by the time you decide to open the music tab. The second one turns on caching on the card, which should also help speed up the indexing and access times on the music tab.
As for the gaps between tracks, I've never seen a solution for that other than manually trimming the files...but even that won't totally remove the gap. I listen to a lot of full-length mix CD's too and the way I get around this issue is to just rip the CD as one full-length mp3, instead of as individual tracks. EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the free utility I use for that
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Hey, thanks for the help!
I have several mixes ripped as a single track, but it's hardly convenient. I just hope HTC is aware of this, and working on a solution for an upcoming ROM release. I definitely won't be holding my breath, though.
I've tried a bunch of different music players and the only one I have found that doesn't have the silences in between the songs is Pocket Player. Its a paid music player but if you have a large music library or listen to music a lot its by far the best solution out there.
speoples20 said:
I've tried a bunch of different music players and the only one I have found that doesn't have the silences in between the songs is Pocket Player. Its a paid music player but if you have a large music library or listen to music a lot its by far the best solution out there.
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I actually tried that out last night, v4.1, and I found it really clunky, with poor sound quality compared to the stock music player. Maybe I don't have the latest version, but I really didn't like it much.
Is there any other music players that have an interface similar to stock? Even if it doesn't have gapless playback, it's more likely that a dev would update the app more frequently than HTC.
gilla409 said:
I actually tried that out last night, v4.1, and I found it really clunky, with poor sound quality compared to the stock music player. Maybe I don't have the latest version, but I really didn't like it much.
Is there any other music players that have an interface similar to stock? Even if it doesn't have gapless playback, it's more likely that a dev would update the app more frequently than HTC.
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Next try nitrogen and TCPMP

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