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Help Issue - Audio Distortion/Skipping With Screen Off

jikhead

Android Expert
Apr 8, 2010
785
184
Can someone who's now running the updated 4.0.2 software test this problem I found on the phone two weeks ago and report back whether it is fixed or not?

The Bug I found - First off, let me mention that the software version on the phone was 4.0.1 and not the supposedly final release version of 4.1. The problem I found had to do with listening to music with the screen turned off. I bluetooth'd three songs and one video over to the phone. Two of the three songs are 320kbps mp3s, while the 3rd song was 128kbps. (backlog on this: the 128mp3 came from iTunes a long time ago and that's what you get from them. I quit using iTunes back in 2007 and starting using only 320mp3s because of my deejaying.) Anyway, when you play a song (Google Music is only player on the phone) whether via the speaker or headphones, music experience is fine when the display is on. Once the display turns itself off or you turn it off, the music begins to distort and skip (skip slightly). All this occurs with the sound enhancer (EQ) turned OFF. If you turn the EQ settings to ON, this problem goes away. I tried this many, many times and got the exact same results. Note, that it did NOT occur with the 128kbps mp3. Also note, that it should not have anything to do with the bitrates being used. I have no issues like this on my Incredible nor on my GFs iPhone. Also, the Google Music store's default bitrate is 320kbps as well. Perhaps this is addressed in the ICS 4.1 and the phone needs to be updated, don't know.
http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-nexus/458566-got-play-w-lte-gn-today-pics-found-bug.html
 
I'm having the same problem with FLAC and 320kbps tracks. It's the CPU. When the screen shuts it drops CPU power to conserve battery but it does it so much it ****s with audio buffering.

I'm still looking for a fix. All I can think of so far is rooting and installing SetCPU to set a custom CPU profile of like ~400Mhz when the screen's off.

On 4.0.1 by the way but I can tell you I know that's the root cause. I am mostly okay in the default music player, but any third-party players and the issue is pretty severe. I assume the default player probably gets some CPU priority but not quite enough for higher quality files.

By the way, iTunes mostly dishes out AAC files from their store (not that I'd even bother touching that program with 100ft shit-tipped pole). Despite being 128kbps (usually), they are higher quality than MP3 files though they can sound different and sometimes poorer. Can't go wrong with FLAC though.
 
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I have the same issue. I only have 320 kb. I read this post, had music playing, went to settings and turned on the equalizer. It somewhat adjusted. The bass boost and 3d effect were already on(I just bought gnex yesterday. I never touched the music settings.), I turned them down. Once I played around with presets the phone crashed. I repeated after boot. Same result. I was able to fix the sound, adjust preset and equalizer with no music playing. Hopefully more updates come soon..
 
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Same issue here, largely fixed by using PowerAMP with maximum buffer size, and highest priority level in settings (I say largely fixed because I had it once yesterday, first time in several weeks it's happened after setting up PowerAMP).

If you Root I would think that something like SetCPU could fix this by increasing minimum CPU clock with screen off (obviously at the expense of battery).
 
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The problem is caused if you use an app like SetCPU to lower the frequency of the CPU at screen off. The solution is not to tune the frequency down below one half the max freq at screen off. To start with you can enable the performance governor ==> no skipping, next set it to conservative ==> lot of skipping. Also disable profiles during music playback if any.

Thnx! :)
 
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