Problems over Bluetooth

[misha0209]

Hello there,

 

it's been ages since i wrote on this forum, but i'm experiencing a few things over bluetooth that are driving me nuts.

In this post i'll describe 3 problems i have over bluetooth with Poweramp.

When i say bluetooth i'm reffering to my car stereo, i do not use bluetooth headphones or any other devices.

If it helps, my current stereo is the build in headunit of the Mazda 3. but i can confirm the problems on Alpine units, as well as Audi A3 stock.

 

So, here goes:

 

1. To make it short, i get these skips, like very short pauses when i playback with screen off.

I did test my car, and it performs perfectly with a nokia lumia, and an iphone. it also does fine with my phone and the stock player of the ROM.

Like i said above i get these problems with screen off, i have wakelock ticked, i played arround with different buffer values, as well as task priorities.

Probably relevant, i use headphones, off of the phone jack at work quite a lot, and i DO NOT HAVE THSES ISSUES! screen off, or on, no problems, just bluetooth.

I do not use DSP except Replay gain. But i can confirm that even with RG off, i have the same behavior.

I've even installed a custom kernel to allow me to play with various settings of the device, thinking it's the ROM that is to blame. but if i run APOLO, the built in playes, no problems.

Do you have any sort of tweaks i can try? any experimental features? i'd be more than happy to act as a test subject as long as my phone doesn't blow up... so long as it's not in my pants.. or next to my ear

 

2. Sometimes, when connecting, somehow the connection is not correct, Poweramp does not start, and my car just shows unknown everywhere..

If i hit play from the headunit, nothing.. usually i have to reconnect.

Now, on to the funky part. sometimes, just sometimes, if i start music from the device (start Poweramp, hit play) the display of the headunit instantly changes to the track name, and i hear music... so it's like after connections, my system acts as if there is no Poweramp in my system. this never happened with my gf's phone. that is a nokia lumia.

 

3. I am a big fan of Direct Volume Control. clearly audible improvement.

Now, i like the fact that i can now have DVC, and BT DVC. DVC has given me this issue since i've had Poweramp.

so, scenario: i'm connected to car stereo, via BT, and i have BT DVC enabled. 

a call comes in. i answer, i can talk, all fine so far

now, when the call ends - does not matter if i end the call, or the person i'm talking to hangs up, when the music comes back, volume is low.

now, don't think the Android media volume is low. NO! that is at max, like i always keep it for BT. BUT, it is clearly audible during playback that the volume has diminished to about half of what it was before.

Now, if i make the call, regardless if i end it, or the other party hangs up, when music comes back, volume is perfectly normal.

 

These are the big 3 bugs i have with Poweramp over BT.

say i could live with 2 and 3, but 1 is KILLING me! it is annoying as hell.

please give me some advices as to what i can tweak and how.

 

On a completely unrelated note, do you think it would be possible to add a ReplayGain scanner function to Poweramp? or at least let me see if the track has RG in track info screen?

 

Thanks in advance, if you need anything (logs, more settings i have ticked.. so forth) please let me know!

I'll provide all i can.

 

PS:

my phone is a samsung i9505

and i'm running, yeah, probably guessed it, cyanogen mod 11.

Poweramp build 2.0.10 - 571 

[andrewilley]

1) As you are using a custom kernel, try increasing the minimum (idle) CPU frequency setting and see if that helps.

3) Unfortunately, the fix for that issue at the moment is probably to turn DVC off. You could try adjusting the short audio focus change setting, but I don't think that will help.

Andre

[misha0209]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

 

1) yeah did that. went so high as my main clock 1890. no luck..

also played around with hotplugs, governors, IO schedulers. IO read-ahead.

nothing. all give me more or less stutters. none gave me an acceptably small amount i could live with (though IMO it's the basics of an audio player, play glitch-free, you shouldn't live with any amount).

it seems to me it has to do with the sleeping. at screen off, the phone keeps trying to deep sleep while the music is playing. funny it only happens over bluetooth.

is it out of the devs hands to prebuffer more data to the bluetooth buffer (i soppose there is such a thing between apis). or is this what the audio buffer size does.

do you have any gov names for me i should try? or IO schedulers?

i find it quite crappy, since the idea of Poweramp was to be an audio quality oriented product. this right here is THE WORST thing that could happen to an audio player. i would even go so far as saying, i would prefer to give up a little sound quality (a little mind you) to have a stutter free playback!

and i say it again, i'm willing to try any experimental features, and test them out for the dev team, since i seem to have a hostile environment (phone, rom, car, all of the above)..

 

3) not such a biggie for me, like i said, 1 takes the prize for sure, but i just figured i report it, it will help the dev make Poweramp better. i doubt that many users actually care about it.

 

Now don't get me wrong, i kind bad-mouthed Poweramp a bit up there, at point 1.

i could just as well stop using Poweramp and just use the player that works. thing is, i love this app. and i want to keep using it, and i would love to help improve it. that's why i decided to post here.

but this bug is driving me nuts!

 

PS: for some time i thought it was cyanogen at fault. so i flashed the samsung firmware on my device, and gave it a go. same thing, Poweramp = problems, samsung player = no problems.

[andrewilley]

You could try reporting your specific issue to the dev at poweramp.maxmpz(at)gmail.com, referencing this thread for an idea of what has been tried so far.

I have had the same issue occasionally myself (again with Bluetooth only, and only when the screen goes to sleep) but increasing the minimum CPU rate seems to have fixed it for me (as does keeping the screen on, which is not an issue for me as my phone is always plugged in when I'm driving any distance anyway, and I have it set not to go to sleep while charging).

Andre