audio stutter/very short cut

[drawersystem]

every now and again trhough out a track it will stutter or cut out for a fraction of a second. not a massive break but very annoying

and yes i have disabled all the music fade and played around with audio buffer size and increases audio thread prority

[andrewilley]

Is this on Bluetooth or via phone speaker / wired headphones?

Andre

[drawersystem]

Is this on Bluetooth or via phone speaker / wired headphones?

Andre

wired

[andrewilley]

You've tried the obvious things I'd normally suggest. You could try disabling Direct Volume Control, and also try playing from internal phone memory rather than SD Card and see if that makes a difference.

Andre

[sonny]

I'm having this issue as well..happens to me many times a day.. I've tried all the fixes and nothing helps.. after reading through the forums I'm thinking it's a kit Kat issue

[ChrisMuc]

On a bluetooth headset, those short "gaps" are also noticeable and pretty odd. I had this behaviour on KitKat and still have it on Lollipop.

[andrewilley]

On a bluetooth headset, those short "gaps" are also noticeable and pretty odd. I had this behaviour on KitKat and still have it on Lollipop.

I get it occasionally with Bluetooth (car stereo) when the device screen is off, but not when the screen is on.

Andre

[ChrisMuc]

Since I'm listening to music only when screen is off (when the device is in the pocket), it's indeed possible, that it only occurs, when the screen is off.

[gvanbrunt]

Is it any particular file formats? I'm not positive but I think it may have started for me when I started using flac instead of mp3.

[gvanbrunt]

No sooner did that thought pop in my head and then a read this:

 

http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/01/08/bug-watch-flac-audio-files-are-popping-and-stuttering-on-android-4-4-a-fix-is-coming/

[andrewilley]

Ah, you didn't mention that you were playing flac files. In the absence of any comment to the contrary, the assumption would normally be that you are playing normal MP3 files. I'm not sure whether PA uses the native Android flac codec or not though.

Andre

[ChrisMuc]

For me this happens on mp3s.

 

I'm no longer sure, if this is really related to Poweramp, since when I'm watching videos (with mp3 audio) in MXPlayer, I also get occasionally (but fewer times than on Poweramp) cuts.

[ChrisMuc]

Yesterday, I observed an even weirder stutter bug:

 

I was listening to music via my bluetooth headset, then made a phone call (without explicit pausing of Poweramp), also via Bluetooth, and when I ended the call, I got really horrible stuttering and repeats in Poweramp.

 

Other apps produced normal sound via Bluetooth, only Poweramp provided that terrible sound experience. It cured, after I watched some video a few seconds and toggled the music from Poweramp several times.

[gvanbrunt]

I've also seen stutter get worse after a call. Not sure why that is. However just installing latest cyanogenmod to see if fix mentioned above has been incorporated and the flac files work again.

[Adambean]

Ah looks like I'm having a very similar issue. The stuttering pattern (after hearing it enough times) seems to be somewhat consistent, as in, when the issue happens the time delays of the stuttering sounds familiar. My phone plays music whilst in my pocket with the screen off for 99% of the time.

 

I've read the http://support.powerampapp.com/knowledgebase/articles/323527-skips-hiccups-stutters'>FAQ and my situation is as follows:

• My phone is a Galaxy Note 3 running KitKat. Rooted, but no other custom ROM has been applied.
• Media stored on an external SD card, but it's a UHS-I class card -- should be plenty fast enough, what with videos playing fine.
• Headphones are wired, although the issue happens with the phone's speaker too.
• As far as I know nothing is governing the CPU frequency. Power saving mode is disabled.
• Google's media player doesn't have any issues.
• No 3rd party effects installed.
• ​I'm not too sure about CPU consumption, can OSMonitor log such consumption in the background?
• The song doesn't matter much, or format. It happens on both MP3 and FLAC audio files, and the position of the song isn't consistent. Occurrence is very random.

Increasing the thread priority to highest and buffer size to +750ms does somewhat reduce the frequency of the issue, but it still happens often enough for me to not want to use Poweramp right now.

 

Possible software conflicts I could think of:

• S-View mods for Note 3 -- displays current song playing whilst an S-View cover is attached, and has 3 buttons (play/pause, previous, next)
• Pocket Skip Track -- allows the volume buttons to change track (whilst in pocket), but this was added recently since the issue started

[Adambean]

I've got a bit of an update to this to share, and it appears to mean Poweramp is not at fault at all. To be sure of this I tried using PlayerPro Music Player (trial). Whilst it seemed the stuttering issue had disappeared it eventually happened, though not as frequently. The pattern was exactly the same too, which pretty much excludes Poweramp from the cause of the problem completely.

 

I've since changed back to Poweramp because of its' better interface and MUCH lighter battery usage. Seriously, PlayerPro requires a DSP pack for anything audio related other than volume, and it munches the battery right up. Having switched back I started sniffing around for other possible causes, but not knowing much about the workings of Android (other than what I know about Linux) I've not found any predictability to this issue to nail down an absolute cause.

 

I read on the Poweramp FAQ about CPU governors, and had seen this kind of option available through OS Monitor. Again I don't know much about Android, but looking at the possible values gave a clear idea of what this does.

 

My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 using ChainFire's rooting trick. Nothing I know of has been tinkering with CPU settings. Here's the core status from OS Monitor:

• Core 0: Enabled, minimum 300 MHz, maximum 2,265.6 MHz, governor interactive
• Core 1: Disabled, minimum 300 MHz, maximum 2,265.6 MHz, governor interactive
• Core 2: Disabled, minimum 300 MHz, maximum 2,265.6 MHz, governor interactive
• Core 3: Enabled (sometimes disabled), minimum 300 MHz, maximum 2,265.6 MHz, governor interactive

I set core 0's governor to performance, 1 and 2 to power save, and 3 to on demand. I have no idea if these are ideal, but I thought I'd try it out. On the plus side the stuttering issue appears to have gone completely, and the battery usage seems nearly unaffected. However taking a look at OS Monitor again I see all the governors have gone back to interactive and core 1+2 have been disabled. So it could have just been luck that no more stuttering happened.

 

Usage after a 7 hour shift + 30 minutes walking in/home, would have been ~3 hours of music playing time

Usage after a 8 hour shift + 30 minutes walking in/home, would have been ~1 hour of music playing time

[Lucky815]

Is there any solution to this problem? I'm getting a few short stutters on my Note 4 running 4.4.4. I keep messing with the audio buffer and thread priorities. Will maxing both out result in the fewest number of stutters, or is it possible that it could exacerbate the problem? I've tried turning the equalizer on and off (maybe the limiter would help?), and I've toggled direct volume control. Any suggestions on optimal settings?

[CiroConsentino]

On 11/25/2014 at 2:51 AM, drawersystem said:

every now and again trhough out a track it will stutter or cut out for a fraction of a second. not a massive break but very annoying

and yes i have disabled all the music fade and played around with audio buffer size and increases audio thread prority

Hi all, I know this is an old thread but I think I might have found the culprit: "Thermal Mitigation off" set to disabled.
I just started using a LG G3 D855 model, and I was getting these small random cutouts while playing songs. Same behavior in stock Android 6 and with Fulmics 8.0 custom ROM. Then I remembered that I've disabled the "thermal mitigation off" setting (activating this feature) to help keep the phone in lower temperatures.

Poweramp 2.0 build 588 was working fine before I changed that setting (internal memory and SD card). Well, I've enabled that setting again (default setting for LG G3 D855) and haven't got a single audio cutout playing music for the past 2 days. I still need to play songs straight for an hour or so to be sure.

If you phone have this setting, try to enable it, restart your phone and try again.

Confirmed. I listened to music for 2 hours and got ZERO cutouts or stuttering in audio. At least for me, the thermal mitigation off setting was the one causing the problem

[CiroConsentino]

Damn... I spoke too soon. This morning I started listening and in the very first song the audio cutout happened once. Then in the next song, it happened again
I disabled all notifications sounds and phone vibration and still happens. LG G3 is using Android 6. This never happened with my other phone LG Prime Plus 4G H522F (LG Magna), but it uses Android 5.0.2 (sadly, that phone is bricked...)
I tested a couple other music players and didn't noticed this bug.

... update...
Ok, I did a phone reboot and now the audio cutouts are gone again...
... end of update...