vorbis playback quirks on android device

2014-11-04 21:47:30

Hi,
I have an ICS android phone that I play music on.  The music players on it seem to handle vorbis files in an inconsistent way.  The default/native player plays some vorbis files just fine, but with others there are short halts or drop-outs, just a half-second or so now and again.  These files I just described seem to play fine & normally in the Google Play Music app.  I have a couple of vorbis files that will not play at all in either player; I get a message about not supported file type.  But these files play fine on another android device I own, and also play fine on a Win 7 computer.  I'm guessing the inconsistencies stem from different vorbis encoders or something.  Can I somehow update the android phone so it handles vorbis files better?  If I download another 3rd party music player app for the phone, do they just use the existing codecs on the device, or do they come with their own codec support (which might be newer or better)?
Thanks.

vorbis playback quirks on android device

Reply #1 – 2014-11-04 21:55:41

There are some players out there that use non-system codecs (usually ffmpeg), but that's for the formats not supported by the system.
You can try if ARMamp plays the files without stuttering, it uses ffmpeg for everything from what I know. There is also deadbeef.

I don't know if google updated anything related to decoders (except for increase in BT A2DP audio bitrate) in newer android versions, but Jellybean and Kitkat plays all my ogg files fine.

vorbis playback quirks on android device

Reply #2 – 2014-11-05 14:08:16

The reference Vorbis decoder uses float arithmetic heavily.  Some devices (yours?) simply don't do well with it.  There is a fixed point version of the library for this reason.

Deadbeef, since it was mentioned, uses the fixed point library for Android and shouldn't be dependant on any codecs already on the phone.  The idea is to "just play" on any device.

As for not playing at all, the files are presumably defective in some way.  There are a couple of fairly common mis-codes in Vorbis files that some software will ignore and some will reject.

vorbis playback quirks on android device

Reply #3 – 2014-11-05 15:11:24

I had an issue on my phone when I was running ICS where playback would drop out every so often. It would happen in spells (very annoying when it started acting up) and when it did I would usually look at the cpu usage and find some service using a lot of cpu time. It just didn't seem to handle decoding well when anything else competed for cpu time. I've since flashed the phone to Kit-kat based Cyanogenmod and it's been smooth as glass ever since.

vorbis playback quirks on android device

Reply #4 – 2014-11-05 22:08:03

Thanks for the ideas and responses everyone.  I will checkout ArmAmp and/or DeaDBeeF.

Regarding the "won't play at all" files.  The weird thing is, they will both play flawlessly on a really old android phone of mine, running 2.2.  Just with the stock music player, no special apps.  So I don't think they have any inherent fatal flaw.

And I haven't noticed any intermittent drop-outs on music files of any other format (mp3, m4a), just the vorbis ones.

- Tea