FLAC players for Android

[WAD62]

Like the old proverbial buses you wait for ages for an Android FLAC player then all of a sudden a whole pack arrive (or more likely my eye's been off the ball);

http://www.androidzoom.com/free_android_applications/flac%20player

I've been using winamp (beta) for a while and whilst I was waiting for them to provide FLAC support it looks like a whole load of other developers have been adding it to their product.

I'm evaluating powerAMP at the moment (on my HTC Desire), free download, eventually £4 or so...supposed to handle 24/96 FLAC

Mp3 gapless still doesn't work properly, has some very flashy tone/DSP controls, no replay gain...but it does play flac!

Anyone found any other good alternatives...?

[Ali Tait]

Cheers Will, I'll give it a go.

[WAD62]

Cheers Will, I'll give it a go.

looks like some interesting equaliser/preamp controls, and it also allows one to select a specific music folder...how long before one could point it at a USB drive from an epad, or even a network directory? ;)

[WAD62]

Been messing around with powerAMP...using our old friend DSOFTM as a benchmark, on a HTC Desire with Sennheiser CX300IIs

The gapless mp3 playback almost works, but not quite, still annoying enough to be useless.

Standard 16/44.1 FLAC plays back very well, and gapless works too. :cool:

The FLAC does sound better then the mp3 (and I use VBR mp3 at setting 1 so it's good quality mp3), I wondered whether I'd be able to tell the difference on a phone.

I have a 24/44.1 version of Spiritualised - Let It Come Down, generated by dBpoweramp (I wish someone would come up with an original product name) from an HDCD, it fails to play it, well tries to but it sounds like a tape being FF'd on seek.

So even though they claim 24/96 playback it can't do 24/44.1, perhaps the limiting factor is the desire CPU, but it is 1ghz ;)

But the FLAC sounds so good I may stick with it :)

Edit; One minor issue is that the app uses the Android media library for it's catalogue, the Android media library ignores the FLAC files, however one can also play via a file browser library, so the FLAC albums are accessible from there...not ideal, I wonder if other FLAC players have the same issue...:scratch:

Tone controls and DSP effects only ruin the sound...not worth having for FLAC playback

[Ali Tait]

Good to know Will. I have the same phone and the same headphones!

[WAD62]

Now that I can play FLAC I need a bit more space, I've just ordered one of these 32Gb Sandisk SDHC at £39...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/32GB-SAN-DISK-MICRO-SD-HC-32-GB-SDHC-MEMORY-CARD-TF-UK-/170597666966?pt=UK_Photography_MemoryCardReaders_R L&hash=item27b869d096#ht_500wt_954

Nearly down to £1 a gig...looks a reasonably reputable seller, we'll see ;)

[Ali Tait]

Let me know if it's pukka Will, that's a good price.

[WAD62]

Let me know if it's pukka Will, that's a good price.

Looks like the seller has got quite a bit of business invested in ebay, and is selling a full range of memory products, so at least it's not an isolated sale...fingers crossed :eyebrows:

[WAD62]

Well the SDHC card arrived yesterday, looks like a genuine SanDisk, it also comes with an SD adaptor which is useful (if you have an SD reader on your laptop that is).

It formats to 32G, which is nice.

However I think there may be a problem with powerAMP's ability to read over 16Gb, I put about 16.5Gb worth of FLAC on there, and it failed to read more than the first 7 albums, then it trashed the rest of the files requiring a reformat....:steam:

That's rather a pain as it was FLAC that prompted me to expand the card capacity in the first ducking place :steam::steam:

I'm now checking if it is indeed powerAMP and not the card itself, so I've removed powerAMP and am loading 18Gb of mp3 for use with winamp...

By the way it's rather slow writing to it, but it is only a type 2 sdhc

[Ali Tait]

That's a pain Will, hopefully you'll get it sorted.

[WAD62]

That's a pain Will, hopefully you'll get it sorted.

Avoid like the plague, the card is unable to retain data above a certain address, leaving half the storage unusable until a re-format.

I've been round the loop 3 times, this time only attempting mp3 and winamp, same problem, it becomes corrupt, leaving zero length files.

I've just sent a rather curt email to the vendor, we'll see what happens...;)

Yesterday was Belkin heaven, today is SanDisk hell, oh well swings and roundabouts...:)

[Ali Tait]

Thanks for the heads-up Will, I'll give them a miss then!

[Reid Malenfant]

I'm not sure if you can do this, someone more conputer savvy than me should know though - which means you guys :eyebrows: Instead of treating it as a single drive/card whatever could you stuff a partition at the 16Gb point as see if it'll then store more files than 16Gb worth...

No doubt someone will say it either can't be done or it's a bad idea, just my mad head getting ideas :cool:

[WAD62]

I'm not sure if you can do this, someone more conputer savvy than me should know though - which means you guys :eyebrows: Instead of treating it as a single drive/card whatever could you stuff a partition at the 16Gb point as see if it'll then store more files than 16Gb worth...

No doubt someone will say it either can't be done or it's a bad idea, just my mad head getting ideas :cool:

Nice idea, although I don't believe Android has the capability yet to utilise multiple/partitioned drives...

No it's hardware fault, that can occur with these flash drives, the registry/index area remains intact, but when it goes off to find the indexed data it's a pile of poo, and the data portion then becomes unusable as it get flagged as such, which then requires a re-format, and round the loop we go.

Hence I've been filling it up with data just to check, as this is common, it may just be my bad luck, or they're selling off a known faulty batch.

I've got some diagnostic stuff I can run against it just to confirm

The only other possibility is that an HTC desire trashes 32 gig drives, but it is rather the benchmark of android phones, and there are no other complaints about it on the web as far as I can see.

I like a good moan anyway ;)

[Reid Malenfant]

I like a good moan anyway ;)
Only every so often i hope :eyebrows:

Ah well, can't say i didn't try ;) Best of luck with sorting it out with the seller :)

[Ali Tait]

Found this-

http://www.htcdesireforum.com/htc-desire-general-discussion/micro-sd-card/

Which seems to say that size should work fine, as long as it's a pukka SD!

[WAD62]

Only every so often i hope :eyebrows:

Ah well, can't say i didn't try ;) Best of luck with sorting it out with the seller :)

Oh err missus! :eek:

I've got a nice invoice I use for situations like this, (amount of time wasted * overly inflated hourly rate), one thing I learned from my time in the states is how to complain, they are masters at it :)

We'll see what the diagnostics come up with :eyebrows:

P.S. I'm sure the seller will replace it without any issues anyway

Edit; Supplier is very quick to offer a refund, make of that what you will, as they're quite a bit cheaper than the nearest competition I'm a bit suspicious...if I hadn't tested it to full volume I'd be under the impression it was OK, some punter will get caught out down the line when it's too late for a refund. :eyebrows:

[WAD62]

Whilst I've been fannying around with this duff card I have perfected my SDHC hotswap technique for the HTC desire (Android Froyo 2.2), but this should work for any android phone...and you won't have to rebuild it from scratch :)

1. Get yourself an SDHC card reader, USB or SD adapter, it's essential, you can not do this using your phone alone.

2. Take the new card (lets call it B), using the adapter do a deep format of it using your PC/Laptop

3. On your phone, go into settings and dismount the existing card (lets call it A), once it has dismounted, power off your phone and extract card A

4. Using the adapter back up the entire content of A to a new directory on your PC hard drive giving a snapshot of the card.

5. Put A back in the phone, so you can use it whilst you do the transfer which can take some time, just calls and texts etc.

6. Copy the image of A from your PC to B using the adapter.

7. Add any additional music files from your PC to B under Music (create subdirectories for different file types, this will help if you're playing FLAC). It's quicker to do it via the adapter than through the phone...marginally as these type 2s are slow.

8. Dismount & remove card A again, as in No. 3

9. Insert card B and away you go, all apps should be as was, and all other data should be retained, all media is always scanned at bootup time so your new music will be picked up.

10. Reformat card A give it to your missus, and repeat the procedure for her phone, gaining brownie points on the way ;)

If this does not work either your phone, or your new card are knackered :doh:

[Stratmangler]

I've been playing with the andLess player tonight, and I'm quite impressed with the way it handles things.
Sound quality is good, and flacs play without issue - seems to cope with gapless too.

I spent more than I'd normally care to on a 3.5mm to 3.5mm QED interconnect cable (£11.20 @ Tesco), and have this connected between my LG Optimus One and my car stereo, and now have The Beatles original catalogue available to play in the car with no nasty juggling of CDs between albums. :)

I'm in the process of adding more music to the SD card.

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/media_and_video/andless_fucr.html

[Ali Tait]

So that should work on the Desire too then?

[Stratmangler]

Yup:)

[WAD62]

Yup:)

...after listening to FLAC on my phone I've ditched my mp3s, I'll live with a smaller selection of FLACs, but it's a small price to pay for the improvement in sound quality, I've squeezed 44 albums onto a 16Gb card with a bit of space left for normal phone functions.

I think I first reported that powerAMP didn't do gapless, actually it does, perhaps when I first checked it I'd stressed it out by asking it to play a 24/96 track first.

It's working fine now, I tried andLess and it does play well too, I just prefer powerAMP's ability to give you a file navigator, so you can structure things in music/flac/artist/album structures, or you can view by artwork in a flat album name alphabetical order. It also gives you player control when the phone is 'locked', in the same way that winamp does.

The DSP effects and tone controls aren't worth having IMHO.

Anyway I've spent my £3 on it now so too late to go back ;)

[Stratmangler]

I had issues with andLess playing AAC files - so I got rid.
Trying powerAmp now, and when I scan my library none of the flacs come up.
Which is a pain, as the player quite happily plays flac.:doh:

[WAD62]

I had issues with andLess playing AAC files - so I got rid.
Trying powerAmp now, and when I scan my library none of the flacs come up.
Which is a pain, as the player quite happily plays flac.:doh:

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately these players have to use the android media library, for some reason, and as yet android doesn't recognise FLAC, but probably it'll be a future enhancement.

Make sure your library is pointed to your FLAC collection, the default is Music, I've put my FLAC in a folder under music, and it recognises directory hierarchies.

when you select menu, there's an option for 'folderers/lib', on that next screen there're 2 options at the bottom, 'folder' & 'library', for flac set it to folders, at the top there're 2 options, one for a flat list of the albums in album name sequence, or the other is a hierarchical list of the folders, so if you can be bothered to store artist/album structures this is useful.

It puts it's own poweramp cover art file in each directory.

For the time being I think this is as good as we can get until android recognises FLAC at an OS level, but it's not too bad, particularly when one can only put 40 or so albums on the phone. :)

[Gmanuk101]

nice thread, cheers :)

[WAD62]

nice thread, cheers :)

Bit out of date now, but the SD replacement still holds true...

And there have been a few upgrades to poweramp in the meantime. :)

[Gmanuk101]

Bit out of date now, but the SD replacement still holds true...

And there have been a few upgrades to poweramp in the meantime. :)

well the phone has arrived and the 1st app I downloaded was this one, all paid for, so will have a blast later on.

now if I can get microUSB to USB B it will go direct to my standac :) otherwise it's hPhones straight to the amp :)

[RichB]

Radio paradise and last FM have nice android apps if you've got all you can eat data. And if you've not already downloaded Google's music manager and done the backup thing then you really should.