Stock music player interfering with Poweramp audio?

[Malagant]

I have a kinda weird audio issue on my fairly new Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ phone. It's not a bug I think, but something strange with my phone. Not sure either if it's Poweramp, my settings or the phone itself, but since I only use Poweramp for playing music on the phone I thought I would hear if you guys have an idea what it can be.

Especially when playing music using the phone's speakers I find the sound a little distorted, kinda fluctuating (parts of a song sound more muted than other parts, vocals louder than rhythmic parts) and not as clear as it should be. It made me think that perhaps there was some sort of issue with the phone's stock (default) music player 'pitching in' or interfering and so I checked those general audio settings.

I had presumed that the stock music player with its 'sound effects' would be automatically disabled when using Poweramp (as default), but to my surprise when I tested f.ex. changing the stock player's equalizer settings (keeping everything as is in Poweramp) they changed the audio being played by Poweramp (as if I had changed equalizer settings in Poweramp) and, even more surprisingly for me at least, some of the settings (f.ex. personalized equalizer settings in the stock music player) changed the volume of the music drastically (when I pushed all the stock player equalizer settings down to -10DB just to see how that would affect things, not touching any Poweramp controls or the general volume buttons, the sound of the music being played actually dropped several levels and resulted in a very low volume output).

Any idea what's going on here? I have DVC, Tone and Limit on on Poweramp and I never had this problem on my previous phone (Note 9) so I am kinda surprised by this. Is there some setting either on Poweramp or on my phone that needs to be activated to avoid the two music players 'interacting' (or rather the stock music player interfering with Poweramp) as it seems? Or could there be a hardware issue?  Thanks for any advice.

[andrewilley]

Normally, DVC tends to bypass device manufacturer's bolt-on stuff, but obviously not in your case. Try switching PA to one of its other Output methods. Also try high-res, even if you still set the actual output setting to 16bit/48kHz.

Andre

[Malagant]

Thanks for the swift response and reply. I will test some of those things and see.

Btw I have looked more closely at the Poweramp Equalizer screen and I now notice there is a line going through the DVC symbol, there it stands beside EQ, TON, LMY, STX and TMP on my layout. I have included an image beneath where it can be seen even if it is not very clear (I added an arrow to point to the DVC symbol and thin line going through). Does this mean DVC is not working, even if it is enabled? I don't usually study that screen much once it is set up tbh.

 

[6b6561]

Long press the audio info for more information on the audio flow.

[andrewilley]

Yes, the crossed-out 'DVC' means it is not turned on for the current Output mode (not necessarily that it is not possible, just that it is turned off at present).

Andre

[Malagant]

Thanks to you both, guys!

I checked the audio flow first (by long pressing the audio info) and under 'Volume Control' it said 'DVC: none'.

Then I checked 'Output mode' and for some reason on 'speaker output' only, under 'No DVC', it was switched 'on' (disable DVC for this output).

I switched it to the 'off position' (the line through the DVC symbol is gone too) and now everything works perfectly, the sound is clean and the volume improved much as well.

Excellent! Thanks again for the help.