Hi everyone. I'm sorry for the long post, but my problem is a little difficult to explain. I have a fully-updated, non-rooted, stock, HTC One with Sprint. I'm having a problem with notification sounds; specifically, with silent notification sounds.
For certain applications, I need to use the "Silent" notification sound. I use this for notifications in a game (Wordfeud) and also for certain, specific contacts (via an app named "SMS Popup"). There is a "Silent" notification sound already built-in and I've always used this on my prior phone (an Evo 3D) with no problem. In SMS Popup, however, the built-in "silent" notification sound doesn't work. When I select it, it defaults back to the phone's default ringtone sound. I wasn't sure where the bug is (the app or the OS), so I figured I'd just make my own silent sound and use that. I did that, selected it, and it worked (I'd get the notification icon, a notification vibration, but no audible sound, as expected).
When you specify a custom notification sound, it then appears in in the regular, Android notification sound-picker interface from that point forward. I've added a few custom sounds already and this works just fine. However, once I specify a custom, SILENT sound, the standard, Android notification sound-picker interface will crash every time I try to use it. The only way I can make the sound-picker interface work again is if I delete the custom, silent sound from the file system (fyi: I use ES File Explorer for all of this).
I figured the problem might have had something to do with the way I encoded the sound. My first try was 0 a second sound, but then I tried 1 second and then 2.1 seconds. I've tried WAV and MP3 and I tried various bitrates, etc. Confusingly, I even tried making a file named "almost_silent" (MP3 and WAV), which has sound, but is quiet enough to be inaudible. That causes the problem too! Finally, I downloaded some other, random, "silent ringtone" MP3 from the internet and that ALSO causes the problem.
If I pick any other custom, NON-silent sound, everything works just fine. It's only silent (or nearly silent) sounds that cause the problem. I'm at my wit's end here. Can anyone else confirm whether their phone has this problem too? Any idea what could be going on?
Thank you!