[Q] Music > Playback Hiccup (Volume Goes Down and Back Up, Clicks)

[[email protected]$k!]

Hello everyone,

I have a question regarding Google Play Music on my Note 4 (SM-N910F Snapdragon, stock and no root—yet, full build no. KTU84P.N910FXXU1ANK4), it has a weird problem playing music (plus one more thing I'll mention later on).

Basic info:

1. All of my songs are placed on my LEXAR microSDHC 32GB Class 10 633x UHS-1 card. The reason why they're not on internal SD is simple, I need a place where I can write data, and since unrooted KitKat is totally stupid in this area, I don't see it changing anytime soon
2. Format is m4a AAC LC, VBR Preset 5 (Typical bitrate 192kbps)
3. I have no Adapt Sound, Equalizer, Effects, nothing... turned on, as I want the raw sound.
4. It doesn't happen in the Samsung Music app.

Here is my hopefully simple and understandable description of the problem:
When try to I play a locally stored album, I'd play the first track, it plays perfectly fine and then when it goes to the second one, its volume goes down and back up to normal usually around the 1 second mark or so. This also happens when I try to skip to the end of the first song and let it go on to the next one. No matter if the display and app are active or not.

I've tried many songs and it always happens on the second song only. I still have my S2 (GT-i9100) with the same version of GPM and it works just fine.

Anyway, here are a few samples of it happening.
here is a google drive folder with three recordings of the problem + an info pic for the third sample

It's driving me nuts.

And the other thing I mentioned: why can't I see almost none of my album art, unless its embedded in the file itself? (I use folder.jpg in every album folder...) –this applies to both GPM and Samsung Music. Is this because the apps can't write thumbnails onto the SD card?
I can't properly use the stock Samsung Music for various reasons:

• it doesn't understand Albumartist, Album Artist and Band tags — which makes choosing an album from an artist with some guests real pain (I'd have to retag my songs to lose the guests from the artist tag I suppose)
• it's fullscreen = can't see notification/status bar/time, unless I swipe the top of the screen — any option to see statusbar by default?
• no gapless playback... GPM on my N4 is gapless between tracks, but has this gap after a second, so.... not really gapless either!

Thanks in advance for any help in solving this issue.

 

[[email protected]$k!]

So, here is a little EDIT: I was, to say it mildly, a little angry, so I started trying different players and noticed that for example Poweramp does the same thing, but instead of changing volume, it loudly clicks in the same place. And other players do it too.

Changed the thread name to reflect that it doesn't affect just Google Play Music, but it's by far the worst of the bunch.

I need someone to just check if they have the same problem—just play the first song, it should be fine, and then skip to the end of it and let it go to the next one on its own, and in my case, you'd hear the volume go down and back up almost instantly, but it's so unpleasant that I have to throw away my headphones every time it happens...
It's most noticeable in something slow or a guitar, not so much in a disco/techno/etc. song as it has a rhythm that could probably mask it.

 

[daffie]

I also (exclusively) use Poweramp for playing music on my mobiles. I solved the isse you described by going into Settings > Audio > Advanced Tweaks and deactivating the top 3 settings (Dv control, BT direct control, MusicFX).

 

[bibbo81]

I had your same issue I've tried all the possible solutions but nothing seemed to solve the problem (actually it was working good with the cyanogenmod 12 alpha but it was too unstable...) but in the end I decided to take it to the assistance and now I am waiting for an unknown spare part that is missing...
:crying::crying::crying::crying:

 

[[email protected]$k!]

bibbo81: And what did they tell you? That the problem is hardware related? Don't even try to tell me that I'm gonna have to get it fixed?!

daffie, I'm pretty sure I turned those off, but let me check and get back to you.

Thanks guys for letting me know that I'm not the only one with this issue...

 

[[email protected]$k!]

here goes a solution of sorts:

Daffie, like I said, I turned those off first thing, meaning it doesn't fix the issue for me, HOWEVER, switching MusicFX on and off causes it to either click/skip or make the volume down/up thing...... that lead me to an idea: disable the SoundAlive app, and guess what: Google Play Music works perfectly (still missing album art), but Poweramp still clicks or pops (not sure which one is that ) and skips around the one sec mark.

This makes me believe that there's definitely something about the SoundAlive app that's causing the issue. Shame it doesn't fix it for Poweramp, though. (None of the buffer/priorities/etc. tricks works)

THE BOTTOM LINE IS: this makes the issue almost solved in my case, since I don't use SoundAlive at all, and I do like GPM a little bit more, because its "start screen" isn't the player screen itself, but rather the library window and I can go back to it, instead of going out of the app, plus it understands %Albumartist% tags.

But I'd still like to fix this, so that we don't have to disable stuff, that might be useful to someone.

Anyway: Does anybody know how to get GPM (and also Samsung Music) to read album art from "folder.jpg"?