Geese1 Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 So I've been having this problem for a while now, and it was suggested I try the Poweramp forum as I might be able to get some answers here. I use iTunes as my music repository on my desktop, and I use iSyncr to transfer the files over to my phone, and I'm obviously using Poweramp to play them. I just recently did a full wipe on my phone when I flashed the stock Android 6.0 rom to the device, and when I reloaded all my music back on I noticed that Poweramp is having trouble with certain tracks, where it never used to be a problem before. What's happening, is that in iTunes you can specify where you want a track's stopping point to be, and it will only play up to that particular point in the song. This is useful because I have a song that, on the CD, has about 8 minutes of silence at the end of the track before the next song starts. This was done to separate it out from a hidden bonus track on the album. Well, I obviously don't want to listen to 8 minutes worth of silence, so I went into the track properties in iTunes and specified where I wanted the stopping point to be. Now in the past, when I had transferred the song over to my phone using iSyncr, Poweramp played the song and then stopped at the same point I had specified in iTunes. Now however, even though it plays correctly in iTunes, when I reloaded the songs back onto my phone, it plays the entire track length. I at first thought it was a problem with iSyncr, and so I've been working with their support team to try to find out what the issue was, but they can't seem to find a problem at their end, and suggested I switch to another player. Since I would prefer to stick with Poweramp, they were the ones who thought it might be a problem in Poweramp itself, and suggested I post here to see if we can get any further along. Some additional info, I'm using a stock Nexus 6 running Android 6.0. My computer is on Windows 10, and iTunes is the latest version, which at the time of this post is: 12.3.1.23. I'm also using the latest versions of iSyncr and Poweramp. Hopefully, you guys can shed some light on this, and please let me know if you have any questions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewilley Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 I don't know, but I suspect iTunes may simply be adjusting the track's length field, which I know has caused issues with some poorly coded VBR files in the past so perhaps Poweramp simply ignores what it considers to be an incorrect value and continues to play all the music it finds in the file? You might be better properly cropping the MP3 file, which can be done losslessly as long as you don't mind cutting on a frame boundary. I use a really old program called MP3DirectCut (http://mpesch3.de1.cc/) to do this - the interface is a bit clunky, but it works perfectly. Andre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geese1 Posted November 8, 2015 Author Share Posted November 8, 2015 I don't know, but I suspect iTunes may simply be adjusting the track's length field, which I know has caused issues with some poorly coded VBR files in the past so perhaps Poweramp simply ignores what it considers to be an incorrect value and continues to play all the music it finds in the file? You might be better properly cropping the MP3 file, which can be done losslessly as long as you don't mind cutting on a frame boundary. I use a really old program called MP3DirectCut (http://mpesch3.de1.cc/) to do this - the interface is a bit clunky, but it works perfectly.Andre iTunes rips the files from the CD in .aac format, so I can't use an .mp3 tool to edit the track. And what's weird, like I said, is that Poweramp used to play the correct track length. It's only recently that I've noticed this has changed when I had to reload my music back onto my phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewilley Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Can iTunes not just use a standard format? Silly question, this is Apple we're talking about! (M4A files from iTunes seem somewhat unreliable outside of the Apple ecosystem). Andre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geese1 Posted November 8, 2015 Author Share Posted November 8, 2015 Can iTunes not just use a standard format? Silly question, this is Apple we're talking about! (M4A files from iTunes seem somewhat unreliable outside of the Apple ecosystem).Andre In all fairness to Apple, aac just stands for Advanced Audio Codec, and I don't believe it's a proprietary Apple codec. The only one they use for that is their Apple Lossless codec, of which none of my music is. And, as I keep saying, it was working before in Poweramp, so I'm trying to figure out why it's not working now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewilley Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 Hard to tell if this is an Android M issue, iTunes version issue, or where the problem lies. Could you perhaps upload an original and a post-tweaked version of the same song file for checking? Andre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geese1 Posted November 11, 2015 Author Share Posted November 11, 2015 Hard to tell if this is an Android M issue, iTunes version issue, or where the problem lies. Could you perhaps upload an original and a post-tweaked version of the same song file for checking?Andre Sorry about the delay in responding. Can I upload the two song files to the site, or do I need to put them up on an external host and just provide the link? Since it's copyrighted material I don't want to get into any trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewilley Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 External file share would be easiest. Andre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geese1 Posted November 11, 2015 Author Share Posted November 11, 2015 External file share would be easiest.Andre Okay, here are the links to the unedited version as well as the one with the edited track length. It looks like they're about the same size, so I'm wondering if the edited version has a bit of extra coding on it to tell iTunes where to stop during the track: https://mega.nz/#!cQ8yTJoa!gDX-XT_0XM5LZBpj5istuy9jz0-vllgcaH4aPw4FkcU https://mega.nz/#!dRs13RoI!aoUYHY-gg7iRc-XuECOhm1NeV1Kp4luIw9KZhPoYU5M Hopefully we can track down where the problem lies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewilley Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 I've tried both of those file on four different programs on my PC (Windows Media Player, VLC, foobar2000, and my own preferred Zoom Player) and all show both of the tracks with exactly the same 11'05" length. Sorry, I guess this 'trimming' feature is now an iTunes local playback thing (another one of the many reasons I won't have iTunes loaded on any of my equipment). You need to actually cut the file down rather than leaving it full-length with tags modifying it. I don't know whether there are any tools out there which can do frame-based lossless cropping of M4A files in the same way that MP3DirectCut does for MP3s. You mentioned that you thought it used to work in the past? Do you have an example file where it still does work? Andre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geese1 Posted November 12, 2015 Author Share Posted November 12, 2015 I've tried both of those file on four different programs on my PC (Windows Media Player, VLC, foobar2000, and my own preferred Zoom Player) and all show both of the tracks with exactly the same 11'05" length. Sorry, I guess this 'trimming' feature is now an iTunes local playback thing (another one of the many reasons I won't have iTunes loaded on any of my equipment). You need to actually cut the file down rather than leaving it full-length with tags modifying it. I don't know whether there are any tools out there which can do frame-based lossless cropping of M4A files in the same way that MP3DirectCut does for MP3s.You mentioned that you thought it used to work in the past? Do you have an example file where it still does work?Andre Andre, No past example unfortunately, as I did a factory wipe when I updated my phone to Marshmallow. I do distinctly remember it working in the past however, so it's not just my imagination. One thing to consider, on the edited track iTunes does show the full 11 minute length in the track listing, but when you actually click on it to play it in the player window it shows the edited track length of 4:17 seconds. As I said, I'm wondering if there's been an update to iTunes that makes it so that it puts some sort of marker on the track so that when you go to play it in iTunes it knows where to end the song. If this is the case, the ideal thing would be to have Poweramp also be able to read these tags so that it also knows where to end the song. I don't know if that's how it worked in the past, but it would be great if the developers could somehow add that in. As it stands, I believe this might be the only track I have that has this problem, and since I'm always listening to my phone either with bluetooth headphones or with a bluetooth connection to my car's stereo system, it's not a huge deal to just hit "next track" once the song ends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewilley Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 No, all of the four PC programs I played it with carried on playing past the 4'17" mark, I think it's just an iTunes thing. Just put it down to Apple don't do standards (apart from the ones they create for themselves). As I said, I can't test in iTunes as I won't have it on any of my computer equipment. I use EAC and LAME for ripping CDs if that's any help. Andre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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