Crackling sound through bluetooth

[Maprewop]

Hello

When Poweramp plays music through bluetooth (I use it only in the car) sound does slightly crackling. Not much but enough to recognize it, particularly on Jazz. All I tried so far is disabling / enabling DVC for bluetooth. Are there other settings I should check?

I'm using a Poco X3 phone with Android 10.

[maxmp]

@Maprewop ensure you have correct Bluetooth output buffer settings - try Restore defaults in Audio / Outputs.

[Maprewop]

On 1/26/2022 at 6:40 PM, maxmp said:

@Maprewop ensure you have correct Bluetooth output buffer settings - try Restore defaults in Audio / Outputs.

Thank you. Unfortunately it didn't help. It is audible in quite passages. This doesn't appear when I play music on Spotify or Webradio. Anything else I could try?

[andrewilley]

Have you tried different output methods (e.g. OpenSL ES, Audio Track, AAudio, or Hi-Res) for your Bluetooth output?

Andre

[Maprewop]

@andrewilley Hi. Yes I have tried different output methods. The issue keeps persisting. I tried a lot. But now I recognized something. My Jazz collection is in .flac, some albums in .aac format. When I play the same song / album in .mp3 format all the crackling is gone. Is there something I can do to optimize audio regarding .flac ? That explaines why I mentioned n my post above that the crackling appears particularly on Jazz music. Since most of my other music is in .mp3 format there is no crackling. The crackling is good to hear on bluetooth output but also on jack output, although less pronounced.

May be interesting to note that the crackling appears already at the very beginning of a quiet song, even then when the sound didn't even started. The first 1 or 2 seconds at the start of a song were the audio output should be totally silent.

Otherwise I have to switch to .mp3.

Another question; I actually use only Folders Hierarchy. Then I choose a folder and navigate by swiping through the albums. Since a while ago, sometimes Poweramp jumps to another folder when I swipe for the next song within an album. Any suggestion to solve that?

[andrewilley]

Sounds like PA is not able to read the larger FLAC files from storage fast enough, whereas the more compressed MP3s are being loaded quickly enough. Did you increase the buffer size in your chosen output method to as large as it will go to see if that helps? (latency will be very high, so a middle ground would be ideal)

What does Audio Info (long-press on the metadata line at the bottom of the player screen)m show when you are playing FLACs through Bluetooth?

2nd Question: Sounds like you have got Shuffle mode enabled. Regular swiping should never take you to a new folder unless you are are the very end of the current one and you do an extra-wide swipe gesture. Turn Shuffle off using the icon on the right under the cover artwork on the player screen.

Andre

[MotleyG]

1 hour ago, Maprewop said:

That explaines why I mentioned n my post above that the crackling appears particularly on Jazz music.

Is it possible you have Replaygain applied for these files and set too high?

[Maprewop]

23 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Sounds like PA is not able to read the larger FLAC files from storage fast enough, whereas the more compressed MP3s are being loaded quickly enough. Did you increase the buffer size in your chosen output method to as large as it will go to see if that helps? (latency will be very high, so a middle ground would be ideal)

What does Audio Info (long-press on the metadata line at the bottom of the player screen)m show when you are playing FLACs through Bluetooth?

2nd Question: Sounds like you have got Shuffle mode enabled. Regular swiping should never take you to a new folder unless you are are the very end of the current one and you do an extra-wide swipe gesture. Turn Shuffle off using the icon on the right under the cover artwork on the player screen.

Andre

Ok, I applied exact the settings you shown on your screenshot. Listened last night and today and it seems the crackling is gone on jack. Will test it later on Bluetooth but I think it should be ok too. That's great if it stays that way. Thanks. Glad I can keep my .aac and .flac playlists. Now it's time to create to export all the settings.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Maprewop

[samuelawachie]

@andrewilley @maxmp

What does the value of the number of buffers actually do? Is it like a multiplier effect on the other buffer settings?

So for instance in that screenshot on the post above, it'll be effectively (8*120) to give the approximate 900 value? Or is it more like a parallel implementation where each buffer is responsible for various parts of the DSP processing?

[maxmp]

@samuelawachie the default value is optimized for a standard android device with the stock ROM, but that may be increased if you have custom rom, tweaked bluetooth implementation, instability in BT connection, etc. There is a trade off between buffer size and latency, increasing buffer size (which is number of buffers multiplied by buffer size) increases latency. Poweramp tries to hide latency, so reasonable buffer increase won't affect usability, but very large values will.