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View Full Version : Pocket Player vs HTC Audio Manager - Speed problem


meddleuk
2nd February 2008, 01:43 PM
Hello,

I am not here to bash Pocket Player as I do believe it is the best audio player out there at the moment. Functions such as the album art plugin, Upnp make it stand head over shoulders against the competition.

The only thing that really lets the player down for me is how sluggish it is. I have a HTC Touch overclocked to 247 and Pocket Player has a very noticible delay when browsing the menu and playlists also takes a couple of seconds to start a song. The Player itself is stored on my phones main memory, I have tried various ways to increase the speed and setup to no avail.

Now I also have HTC Audio Manager which came bundled with the phone which to be honest can't compete with the features of Pocket Player. However it runs fine underclocked at 120 and from a sonic point of view with decent headphones their is not much to seperate them but the thing I can't get over is how quick the menu works and how I can quickly navigate from one artist to the other and select a new song. I would say it is about 5 times quicker than Pocket Player which considering it is a free player does not make sense at all. Now that is with an 8GB MicroSD card crammed with MP3's and almost 60 artists. The menu is just more snappy and very responsive and as I am someone who likes to change songs half way through it gets me where I want so much quicker!

I only bought Pocket Player from 3.50 onwards and have moved up to the 3.51 and searching around the forum can see some members feel that the older versions are quicker despite the fact they may be buggy. Surely the speed can be increased in some way or a fix can be added.

The reality now is that I use HTC Audio manager 95% of the time as it's closer to the speed of a standalone MP3 player while Pocket Player looks as if it should be designed for a really high end phone with a super fast processor. I know this not to be the case so it must be the way the menu/design has been implemented.

Can anyone advise or give feedback please.

dgaud007
4th February 2008, 06:00 PM
Here are my results for comparison:
Device: Hermes
OS: Official AT&T WM6
PocketPlayer: v3.51 (installed on sd card)
Options / Settings:
- Crossfade = 2.0 secs
- visualization = album art, small spectrum analyzer, speed normal
- NO DSP
- Interface Redraw Speed = FAST
- Decoder priority = EXTREME
- Use Fast Input Buffering
- Input Buffer Size = small (64KB)
- Audio Buffer = normal (1500 msec)
- Use Fast Eq (when available)

Results:
startup: 20 secs (it feels slow)
update library (3.49GB): 13 secs (no bad I think)
update album arts list: 21 secs (the first time)
Play: < 2 secs

You might want to play with the buffer settings and the decoder priority. Disable the automatic media scan at startup. Also, I have found that wma files take a LOT longer to load and play than mp3's, so try encoding everything in mp3 if possible. My mp3's are usually encoded at 192Kbps. Hope this helps.