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Music on Android

slugger09

Well-Known Member
Jul 20, 2010
185
4
Northern Ireland
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.
 
YMMV, but try Zimly, it's a bit like real player (or even, try real player, lol), but seems to behave itself better than other players. Couple this with an app for downloading album art & you're good to go.

I tried motorola media sync for my itunes & got the same duplication problem (mostly with my compilations), so I won't bother with that anymore. I've found that sometimes it helps to go in settings > manage apps & clear the media storage cache, maybe even the app data, then un/re-mount the SD card & let it re-scan all media again. This should fix most duplication problems, & really it's best not to bother with playlists, just drag & drop album folders.

Overall I'm happy with the sound but when comparing to my ipod touch it's a little quiter, maybe less SQ, but then my touch has the wolfson chip (had an ipod classic which sounded less SQ, ofcourse this does not have wolfson chip, also).

I really hope there is an android update for the music / media as it can play all these formats, just handles them very poorly. How about gapless?
 
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I have noticed that all android phones are quiet in any media. Not sure why...

Perhaps the fabled iPhone is using a slight amplifier whereas none of the android phones are? Dunno.

Maybe that new tablet from HTC slated to have Dr. Dre audio will be as loud, or louder. I think that'll be a good indicator when it comes out.
 
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I listen to a lot of music too. (My phone is my MP3 player.) I use "PowerAMP Pro" as my media player for both ripped CD's and iTunes media. It works really well, has equalizers, volume boost, fetch album art and can create playlist. I have an Atrix which has separate vol. setting for the head phone and speaker. I can mow my lawn and still hear my music, without having the volume all the way up. (I do use ear buds.) I listen to my music taking a shower with just the phone speaker and can hear fine. Not to mention hooking my phone up to my car audio aux and home stereo system. I'm very happy with my music being player thru my Atrix.


I haven't tried playing any music in MP4 format though. I use the drag and drop method to transfer my music from PC to phone. This works best for me and the easiest. I use "ES File Explorer" to orgainize all my files on my phone. I normally have to move music from one music folder to the one I want it in when downloading single songs from itunes. (No big deal though, since I know where to place the files.)
 
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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.
 
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