Google Assistant and music volume

[AudiOw]

Hello,

I use Poweramp with Google Assistant. One issue I have is when I tell the assistant to turn the volume up or down, it says it does so (and the volume bar does increase/decrease), yet there is no change in the actual music volume, and I have to manually change the volume with the volume button. Moreover, when I change the volume with the button (after I've already requested with the assistant), the volume would be 2 bars above, meaning it did register my request but did not actually increase the volume.

I was going to post this on the Google forums instead of here, until I thought of trying the same with another music player, with which the assistant successfully changed the volume.

 

Another question I have, and this one might be more for users who are already using Poweramp with Google Assistant: When I ask the assistant to play a song I have on my phone, and the song name is rather unknown, although the assistant heard me properly (and even registered the command, it would change the request to another song name, usually a well known modern song. For a theoretical example, I ask of it to play 'Kippaka', it registers the request as Kippaka on the screen, but then it changes it as well as reads out loud "asking Poweramp to play 'Keep It Up'" (theoretically some famous modern Pop song). Whereas it works fine with more known songs I ask of it to play.

I would also appreciate any general tips and advice from fellow Poweramp users who use it with Google Assistant.

Regards.

Edited December 23, 2020 by AudiOw

[andrewilley]

Are you using high-res output or regular OpenSL ES ? And if high-res, have you tried Settings > Audio > Advanced Tweaks > Emulate Media Stream?

I think Google Assistant tries to interpret song names or artists for itself (using a cloud-based search) before passing the command onward to an audio player. Since it does not have access to PA's library database, it can't know whether something exists in PA or not. For example, I just tried a voice command "Play Close Your Eyes" (which isn't a song that exists on my phone at all) and Assistant determined that 'Close Your Eyes' is a song by Michael Bublé and passed that interpreted title/artist info to Poweramp - and of course PA could not play it. The Last Processed Command log in PA showed:

Andre

[AudiOw]

58 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

Are you using high-res output or regular OpenSL ES ? And if high-res, have you tried Settings > Audio > Advanced Tweaks > Emulate Media Stream?

I think Google Assistant tries to interpret song names or artists for itself (using a cloud-based search) before passing the command onward to an audio player. Since it does not have access to PA's library database, it can't know whether something exists in PA or not. For example, I just tried a voice command "Play Close Your Eyes" (which isn't a song that exists on my phone at all) and Assistant determined that 'Close Your Eyes' is a song by Michael Bublé and passed that interpreted title/artist info to Poweramp - and of course PA could not play it. The Last Processed Command log in PA showed:

Andre

Hi Andre,

I'm not too knowledgeable about the audio settings of the app, never really touched those. Here are my output settings:

 

Do I change anything here?

 

As for the command, do you maybe have an idea what I can do so the assistant first looks through my device media files and only then the internet? I would understand if the assistant heard me wrong, but it does register for a second the exact name as I called it out and as it is meant to be spelled, then changes it. I've found nothing of such in the Assistant settings.

Thanks.

 

[andrewilley]

I don't think there's very much you can do about Google Assistant, it is what it is. One of the reasons it can do what it does is that it contains a level of AI rather than just slavishly working to a huge page of user-programmed settings. So yes it may correctly interpret the specific word you are saying, but when it tries to understand that as a piece of music, it fails. You could say "Play Cucumber Sandwich", and while it might understand the words cucumber and sandwich, it won't know how to apply that in the context of playing a song. I agree that in such cases it might be nice if it just passed the exact phrase over to the music player to interpret (especially for a lot of theme park background tracks and podcasts that I have in my collection) but it tries to be Apple-style clever and help out first.

Audio-wise, you appear to be using regular OpenSL ES, not high-res. Assuming you are not using the phone's internal speaker, there's no harm in trying high-res for your chosen output method (e.g. Wired Headset/AUX) and also trying Settings > Audio > Advanced Tweaks > Emulate Media Stream.

Andre

[AudiOw]

1 hour ago, andrewilley said:

I don't think there's very much you can do about Google Assistant, it is what it is. One of the reasons it can do what it does is that it contains a level of AI rather than just slavishly working to a huge page of user-programmed settings. So yes it may correctly interpret the specific word you are saying, but when it tries to understand that as a piece of music, it fails. You could say "Play Cucumber Sandwich", and while it might understand the words cucumber and sandwich, it won't know how to apply that in the context of playing a song. I agree that in such cases it might be nice if it just passed the exact phrase over to the music player to interpret (especially for a lot of theme park background tracks and podcasts that I have in my collection) but it tries to be Apple-style clever and help out first.

Audio-wise, you appear to be using regular OpenSL ES, not high-res. Assuming you are not using the phone's internal speaker, there's no harm in trying high-res for your chosen output method (e.g. Wired Headset/AUX) and also trying Settings > Audio > Advanced Tweaks > Emulate Media Stream.

Andre

Throughout the day I use both the phone's speaker and others. What happens if I enable high-res and use the phone's speaker? Also, is there a way to enable high-res only when not using the phone's speaker?

And curiously, what is it about high-res that fixes the volume command issue?

[andrewilley]

I didn't say it would fix your problem, as it might be nothing to do with PA at all. But high-res output (especially with DVC enabled) uses less of Android's audio processing and more of Poweramp's. Equally, DVC might actually be the problem, so try without it too.

Each output device (internal speaker, headset, Bluetooth, USB, etc)  can have it's own independent settings, so you can experiment with what works best for you.

Andre

[AudiOw]

53 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

I didn't say it would fix your problem, as it might be nothing to do with PA at all. But high-res output (especially with DVC enabled) uses less of Android's audio processing and more of Poweramp's. Equally, DVC might actually be the problem, so try without it too.

Each output device (internal speaker, headset, Bluetooth, USB, etc)  can have it's own independent settings, so you can experiment with what works best for you.

Andre

Thank you kindly for your elaborate help, Andre. I appreciate it. Do you maybe have any other tips/advice about Poweramp and/or Google Assistant in general?