Android music players, counting the beat.

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crackrdbycracku

1168 posts

Uber Geek

#83469 17-May-2011 11:54

Hi All,

First and foremost apologies if this is the most obvious to solve problem ever brought to Geekzone.

I have an Android phone which is great except for the music player.

Just so you know I am talking about both the standard Android player and Meridian which I am currently using.

There are two things it does which really get up my nose.

1) First, the thing can't count. I love audio-books, audio-book tracks are titled as below:

Book X Chapter 1
Book X Chapter 2
Book X Chapter 3

but when I load a playlist to my phone the music player re-orders the tracks like this:

Book X chapter 0
Book X chapter 1
Book X chapter 10
Book X chapter 11

After some deep thought I realised it was counting in the following crazy fashion. It sees 0 as the lowest number so this comes first, 1 is the next lowest so it is second, then 1 followed by a 0 is is the next lowest 'number' so it is next, if you have 20 trackds 2 comes after 19 because 2 is higher than 1. Then you get 20 and then 3 and so on.

This drives me nuts and I can't find any way to easily make if count 'properly'. My current work-around is transfering tracks to a playQ on Meridian and thereby ordering the tracks manually. It works but it's a pain.

2) Sometimes I am listening to one playlist, or album and I stop and go to another. When I return to the first playlist of album it starts from the begining, not where I stopped listening.

This is not as frustrating as the first issue but still a pain.

Now both of these seem so simple I figure there must be something obvious that I am missing. Also, this is not mentioned in any reviews so I figure it must be really obvious or it would be an issue for the reviewer, right?

Any body able to help? I don't care which music player I use so if there is a player I can download which fixes the above issues, name it.

Jack

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek

#470052 17-May-2011 12:09

Have you tried renaming them as 01, 02, 03 etc.?

You could also try PowerAmp or WinAmp, both superior music apps compared to stock.

@KnightNZ

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crackrdbycracku

1168 posts

Uber Geek

#470054 17-May-2011 12:15

Thanks,

I could re-name the tracks at some point before importing to the phone, but I would really like the thing to just count like we do. I also suspect it would then count 01, 010, 011, 012 and so on.

Thanks for the player recommendations, I'll check them out.

Jack

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

gcorgnet

1078 posts

Uber Geek

#470063 17-May-2011 12:33

[...]
After some deep thought I realised it was counting in the following crazy fashion.
[...]

Is sounds like it is ordering using the alphabetical order of the track name. Names are simply text and because of this, there is no way for the thing to know that you expect it to use the numbers at then end of the name to perform the ordering.

This is why they put track number in the ID3 tags of mp3 tracks, so that players could use them to order tracks correctly.

I can't be sure but I would be surprised if Winamp for Android didn't do that, provided your tracks contain a valid track number...

Cheers

n4

959 posts

Ultimate Geek

#470081 17-May-2011 12:56

This one sounds like it might suit your purpose better:

https://market.android.com/details?id=de.zorillasoft.musicfolderplayer&feature=search_result

Otherwise a dedicated audio book player, have a look at those available in the market...

Samsung Note20 Ultra, on 2degrees

NZtechfreak

4649 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#470089 17-May-2011 13:16

+1 for PowerAMP, best music player available for Android.

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org

K1000716

569 posts

Ultimate Geek

#470152 17-May-2011 16:11

I use one app for music (poweramp), and another for audiobooks (akimbo). That way I can switch between the two without losing place - something you'll soon appreciate if you try to use one app for both.

I probably spend 2-3 hours a day (up to 6 hours sometimes) listening to audiobooks and find Akimbo (https://market.android.com/search?q=akimbo&so=1&c=apps) is excellent. It supports bookmarks and does a good job of sorting our chapter correctly. It also has a sleep timer. There is a free version to test it out and a paid version ($3.15) if that works well - well worth the price. I've tried a couple but this is by far the best, and I use a lot of audiobooks.

Edit:
I'm not sure if you can switch between books and come back, but give it a try. It's free to try so worth a shot. I only ever listen to books start to finish, not piecemeal.

crackrdbycracku

1168 posts

Uber Geek

#470157 17-May-2011 16:23

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I knew this is the best place to find advice.

I'll try some out and see what works best.

Kind regards,

Jack

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek

#470173 17-May-2011 17:05

K1000716: I use one app for music (poweramp), and another for audiobooks (akimbo). That way I can switch between the two without losing place - something you'll soon appreciate if you try to use one app for both.

Edit:
I'm not sure if you can switch between books and come back, but give it a try. It's free to try so worth a shot. I only ever listen to books start to finish, not piecemeal.

I use Doggcatcher for this, it works with podcasts & audiobooks and it'll remember your place in multiple audio files at once.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.snoggdoggler.android.applications.doggcatcher.v1_0

@KnightNZ

K1000716

569 posts

Ultimate Geek

#470176 17-May-2011 17:10

The description doesn't say but does it have a sleep timer?

stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek

#470181 17-May-2011 17:35

K1000716: The description doesn't say but does it have a sleep timer?

DoggCatcher does. Has an auto-downloader that you can configure to work as you like to pull in your latest feeds too.

@KnightNZ

K1000716

569 posts

Ultimate Geek

#470182 17-May-2011 17:39

Hmm. I might give it a try myself then. :)

K1000716

569 posts

Ultimate Geek

#470183 17-May-2011 17:43

Hmm. I might give it a try myself then. :)

K1000716

569 posts

Ultimate Geek

#470454 18-May-2011 12:22

Well, I tried Doggcatcher. Great idea, but poor support for already downloaded feeds/audiobooks. I'm a but gutted as it seemed to be great, but with nearly 200Gb of audiobooks/podcasts I need a better system than creating virtual feeds for each book. I see there are open requests in doggcatcher to have better integration, but even they say it's not meant to replace an audiobook reader.
I'll use it for my feeds as it's a convenient tool for that, but Akimbo is a much better audiobook app if you have existing files.

crackrdbycracku

1168 posts

Uber Geek

#470463 18-May-2011 12:36

Hi All,

For me it looks like the best combination is MusicFolder Player and WinAmp.

MusicFolder Player for audiobooks. It isn't flash but it gets the chapter order right and it starts back up where you stopped. Would be nice if it had a widget but it isn't a deal breaker.

WinAmp for music as it supports all my playlists and podcast music in an easy to find way, with a cool widget.

Getting podcasts (shameless plug for The History of Rome, there is a reason it recently won educational podcast of the year) direct to phone would be good but it would be a pain if they were auto-downloaded over 3G and it would probably result in having heaps of stuff I don't need or want on my phone.

By the way I tried MortAudiobook Player while I was 'looking about'. I don't know about the rest of you but I found it so complicated it just wasn't worth the bother. It probably does a heap of amazing things but what I really want is a player that plays tracks and doesn't tie up my processor.

Anyway, thanks for all the help.

Jack

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

n4

959 posts

Ultimate Geek

#470474 18-May-2011 12:53

I use BeyondPod for podcasts. It can auto-download every day, and the paid version ($7 or something) allows you to schedule podcasts on different schedules and also do things like only download over wifi (and even turn on wifi to download). You can limit the number of episodes it downloads and have it auto-delete so you never keep more than the most recent x episodes.

Samsung Note20 Ultra, on 2degrees