Build 912 is a total mess

[Bracket]

Opening the app it says "-Doesn't look like anything to me".

Each time I have to build/scan the entire database. Images are empty, tracks are empty.

Ater a while Poweramp has stopped.

Reinstalling previous build 911: App not installed, The package appears to be corrupt.

What do I do? Everything worked fine until I downloaded the latest build.

[andrewilley]

First, tell us what device and Android ROM you are using. Sounds like a permissions thing to me, try revoking all storage permissions and then Grant Access to your Music Folders again. Note: do not try to grant access to the root level of your storage, instead use the folder that contains your music.

You can roll back to 911, but you will need to do a complete uninstall first - you can't overwrite a newer version with an older one.

Andre

[Bracket]

Fiio M15 with Android 7.

I rolled back to 911. Now I lost almost all of my playlists. A complete disaster!

[andrewilley]

Playlist files (e.g. M3U or M3U8 files) should be re-read automatically, as long as they are saved in locations that PA is allowed to scan (set via Settings > Library > Music Folders). However internally created playlists are stored in PA's local database, which is transient and would be lost along with any other settings and database entries if you uninstall the app, or for any other reason it got corrupted. That's why there has for a long time been an option in Library > Playlists > (menu) > Export, which backs up internal lists to permanent files. Did you do that at any time before uninstalling? If so, just move the saved M3U8 files into one of your Music Folders locations and they will be re-read automatically (there is no need to 'import' manually).

Ironically, build 912 has much more comprehensive Backup options, including backing up and restoring internal database entries such as playlists, ratings, play counts, etc. But that would only work from 912 onward, which won't help you yet.

The Fiio architecture is a customised (so non-standard) version of a very old Android, so we'd need to find out why build 912 is not recognising and saving the music library database. Is your music stored in internal memory or on an SD Card? In the Music Folders screen, can you see the folders to select them? Does a Full Rescan find your music again, and is that retained after a reboot?

Build 912 is still beta, so you might be better waiting for the next stable release via the normal Play Store scheduling for your device.

Andre

[Bracket]

Hi Andre

The updates are presented to me automatically via the Play Store. I have not seen any mention of it being a beta before I tapped on update. Not in the name of the file either. By now I retraced how to leave the beta tester program.

After doing the update to 912 I (luckily!) directly used the expanded export settings. So having rolled back to build 911 and seen that a lot was missing I imported these settings, without succes (it was not meant to be I now understand). Because this did not work I did the update to 912 again and this time succesfully reimported the settings, including the playlists. Everything came back thank god. Only the playlists now all have the date and time added to their name so I will have to manually correct each and every one of them.

Unfortunately, this lasted not very long. Poweramp stopped. Restart brought me back to where I came from and I had to do a rescan (of the music on the external card and the playlist folder in the internal storage). When this was finished I tapped on the android back button, briefly  saw an album cover and the unmodified layout and then the black screen with the mention "-Doesn't look like anything to me". Back to square one. Another rescan.

The lists seems to appear in the way I set up. The single track view and other skin settings though are not.

Poweramp stops when I go to another app. When I ignore -close app- I can return to it and everything is still there.

What you said about revoking permissions, how do I do that?

[maxmp]

It’s a beta build. The solution for reported issues is to update to the next beta builds. Thanks!

[andrewilley]

On 12/9/2021 at 1:40 PM, Bracket said:

By now I retraced how to leave the beta tester program.

After doing the update to 912 I (luckily!) directly used the expanded export settings.

When this was finished I tapped on the android back button, briefly  saw an album cover and the unmodified layout and then the black screen with the mention "-Doesn't look like anything to me".

What you said about revoking permissions, how do I do that?

1) At some point in the past you must have specifically joined the beta programme in the Play Store. Max reposts the link to enable/disable it with every new build on the forums (it's https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.maxmpz.audioplayer ). That means you will receive betas automatically, and there is of course always a risk of issues when doing that - after all, that is what beta releases are for, to allow time to iron these sort of things out before a mass-release to all users. Generally the cycle consists of a number of rapid fix releases in quick succession in order to sort out any reported issues and get new the development to stable position for general release; after 912 was issued, 913 and just now 914 came out very quickly, and there may well be more if needed. Then there's a longer period of building up new stuff in the main code before that too gets released into first beta and the cycle starts again. But as you have that turned off now, you will only get the eventual stable versions pushed to your device.

2) Glad you had backed everything up when you first installed 912, at least you have not lost your important playlists going forward. Personally I would be tempted to Export them to physical .M3U8 files on storage as well, as a second level of security if they are very important to you (also can be used elsewhere if you want).  

3) If this is still happening with build 914 (which you'll need to manually download as you have turned the beta programme off, see https://forum.powerampapp.com/files/file/76-poweramp-build-914-uniapk/) please could you capture an error log at that point: PA Settings > Get Support > Send Log > email to gpmaxmpz [at] gmail.com.

4) Permissions will not be the issue here as your device is running a very old version of Android (Nougat, which is more than five years old - a lifetime in computing terms) but I didn't know that when I suggested it. FiiO don't generally keep their devices up to date with the latest Android releases. As a stand-alone audio platform they rightly consider the OS to be just an underlying means to an end, not an end it its own right which Google seem to promote (for better or worse). This can sometimes cause issues with the latest app releases though, which may be expecting (or sometimes requiring) Android versions to evolve with them - for example current versions of PAv3 won't work at all if your Android version is older than 5 (Lollipop).

Andre

 

[Bracket]

I have submitted a reply twice in the past few days but I don't see them here. I am not going to retype everything.

In short: I am left disillusioned with Poweramp. Betas may have issues but this time it's a disaster. Many of the album covers in my playlists have gone (build 914). I am wasting hours and hours trying to fix things.

My idea is that Poweramp has become too complex, when I look at all the issues that users have (many won't bother writing). But the basics, the quality of the sound, are not taken care of, at least in my case with the Fiio M15. Why can UAPP provide real high resolution on my DAP and Poweramp can't? If it were not for the better interface Poweramp has I would have turned to UAPP already. They are improving though and the turning point is not far away.

[andrewilley]

Are you referring to missing artwork for Playlists themselves (i.e. the thumbnails shown next to the title of each playlist) or for all the songs within lists (as shown on the player screen too)? The song cover images are the same as those used for regular album song views, so if they are present in the All Songs or Albums lists, they should be visible within Playlists too. Ideally these should be embedded with your audio files for the best compatibility, but PA's auto-download copies are stored in Android/data/_com.maxmpz.audioplayer/album_art/ and manually selected images are stored in Android/data/_com.maxmpz.audioplayer/album_art/ (note the underscore in the path). When you uninstall an app though, its data folder could be removed too, that's down to Android to decide. On recent Androids, the user is presented with a prompt to keep or delete data folders, but I'm not sure how Android 7 handled this. If Android did delete the whole folder during your uninstall, then any cached image files will obviously have been lost, but these should get built up again over time as you view albums/songs/etc. and PA searches for images online. But again, having cover artwork embedded within the actual audio files is definitely the preferred solution as it travels with the files wherever you use them. 

PA can provide high-resolution output on many Android devices, although it does not offer specifically coded drivers for individual non-standard players. As far as I know, high-res is available for FiiO devices though, despite their non-standard implementation of Android and customised drivers.

@maxmp have you had a chance to check recent versions of PA against recent updates on FiiO devices? I know you are looking more at Android 11/12+ compatibility at the moment, but just in case FiiO's Android 7 customised mods have broken something existing:

 

Andre

[Bracket]

Album art shows up in All Songs. Also in most Playlists titles, though some have disappeared.

The tracks inside the playlists do NOT show album art anymore (exceptions aside) though the same tracks do show the art when I approach them via all songs or artists etc.

[andrewilley]

Will the tracks without art in your playlists actually play? And does the artwork show on the player screen?

Andre

[maxmp]

@Bracket Interesting behavior. This is not what can't be reproduce (read - there is some specific issue on your device/environment which may be require fixing in app, may be not). 

What is the source of album art for those tracks which show covers in other lists but not in playlists? You can check that by using Info/Tag (or Album art) in menus - it shows if there is embedded cover.

 

 

[desmond gabriel]

All my album art for every different song has Album  art embedded. But if I explore and change an artwork for a certain song, a whole row of different songs adopt that new piece of artwork. I don't undetstand why? I'm using an Oppo Reno 2, Android 11.Thanks,pls advise! 

[andrewilley]

Selecting new artwork manually will change all of the tracks in that album.

Andre

[Bracket]

All songs play normally.

After switching off the DAP and restarting the next day Poweramp starts to rescan; no album art or tracks are visible in Artists, All Songs etc. In Playlists no album art is visible for all the titles and most tracks. After the rescan the situation in Artists, All Songs etc have returned to normal. But in Playlists 2 of the 20 have no art for the titles and the vast majority of all the tracks have no art. The tracks in the Playlists do play but the screen stays black in the track vue, so no art. However, in Artist, Genres, All Songs etc the album art show up in all cases, also in track vue.

In Playlists, checking Info/Tags of a track that does show art, the section Album Art says: No Embedded Album Art. It is the same for the tracks that do not show art. So there is no difference there.

In Playlists I noticed the following: the notation of the tracks is correct in the cases where album art shows up. Where there is no art, the notation is different, namely beginning with the track number and ending with the format (flac, mp3). The choice of list options has the desired effect of the tracks with art but not on those without art.

Checking a folder of an album that does show art in Playlists I see a JPG with the album art.

Doing the same in case of a track that does not show art I also see such a JPG. On top of that, in Info/Tags of this track, the heading Album Art says: 585x566 JPEG Embedded. Nonetheless the art is not shown in Playlists. Again, the exact same track does produce album art when approached via Artists. Also, the notation is correct when viewed via Artists, Genres etc, so without track number and format.

So, it is the notation of the tracks in Playlists that causes the album art to be not found? But why is that not an obstacle in the case of Artists, Genres etc?

In Settings/Playlists the Resolve Playlist Entries was checked/on.

In previous builds, when I exported Playlists to the Playlists folder on the internal storage of the DAP, I could see the files when the DAP was connected to the PC via USB. That was the way I backed up the Playlists: I copied those files to store them on the PC. This time however the folder says it is empty, whereas when I check on the DAP via ES File Explorer I do see all the Playlist files in that folder. I managed to backup via the network instead.

Since nothing worked I deleted all Playlists from Poweramp on the DAP and reimported them from the expanded export settings file I had created after updating to build 912. I have done this before, without success. This time it did work. The Playlists now show the artwork again. In the titles as well as in the tracks. The only inconvenience is that each playlist title contains the import date. I had reached this point at the previous try. I then renamed all 20 playlists, deleting that date. At that point the problems started as described in a previous post.

Not all the art that was attached to a playlist title has reappeared, but other art from the same playlist.

So, we're back to square one. Many hours later.

I described what I encountered as I went along and I kept it in this post for your information.

[andrewilley]

When you see filenames (e.g. with the .mp3 extender) instead of titles, that generally means the scanner was unable to read any tag data at the time of the last scan. If all the library lists are all empty when you restart your device and PA has to do a Full Rescan, sounds like PA was not allowed to save its state correctly during power down, as everything should still be present and the rescan is just be to check for new/changed content.

Art for songs within playlists should be the same as looking at that same song in another category (e.g. All Songs or Albums), are you sure these are the exact same files and you don't have any duplicates showing? (check the exact path/filename in Info/Tags).

Embedded artwork is read on-the-fly when you view a song or category list, it is not permanently cached back during a rescan.

A Full Rescan first crawls through all your folders to find music files first (which is quite quick) and then it does a second pass to read the embedded data from each audio file (which can take several minutes with large collections or slow file systems). Once that is done, it goes through any playlists matching up the lines in the playlists with the newly scanned library. System performance could be unpredictable until this process is finished.

I would suggest leaving Settings > Library > Playlists > Resolve Playlist Entries turned off for the moment, it might be easier to see what is going on that way. Do you see any unplayable items that way?

I have no idea why folder content shown via ES File Explorer is different to a Windows USB connection, that's down to your device's firmware and Windows I'm afraid.

Andre

[Bracket]

Everything is back to the state before build 912. The issue must have been in the playlists, I don't know at what stage of exporting/importing that happened. There are/were no duplicate tracks.

The remaining incorrect art for some of the playlist titles was repaired when I removed the date from the title of the newly imported playlists.

To conclude, I have switched off receiving betas. I remain a Poweramp user as long as there is no better alternative (in interface and sound), but I also continue to regret having to turn to UAPP to obtain the optimum sound from my Fiio M15. Though you have explained it to me a while ago I still fail to see why UAPP manages to extract the best from this DAP and Poweramp does not.

Thanks for your time and help Andre.

[andrewilley]

Glad everything is finally working again for you.

Yes, a name-change to a playlist would prevent an existing cover image file from being re-matched. So you can either edit the playlist's name back to the way it was before, or edit the matching JPEG image's filename that is saved in Android/data/_com.maxmpz.audioplayer/selected_playlist/ .

Andre

[beat8000]

55 minutes ago, Bracket said:

To conclude, I have switched off receiving betas. I remain a Poweramp user as long as there is no better alternative (in interface and sound), but I also continue to regret having to turn to UAPP to obtain the optimum sound from my Fiio M15. Though you have explained it to me a while ago I still fail to see why UAPP manages to extract the best from this DAP and Poweramp does not.

 

I have also bought the USB Audio Player Pro as a temporary solution before the issue of loading huge music libraries was solved.

To my opinion the UAPP sound is not better than the Poweramp sound on my Fiio M11 Pro. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by beat8000