SPV MP3 Support sucks - bigtime!!!

[Guest qazzi]

OK-I've stayed as quiet as I could for long enough... :?

I was hoping someone would have had a similar viewpoint and felt the neccessity to raise it with a vengeance... - but since no one has - I will!!

I think the windows media player software built into the SPV is total and utter cack! :x

I have been waiting for the longest while for a half decent mp3 player and along came pocket MVP/Divx player (ver4), Which turned out to be failure at playing mp3s as well. Basically it simply starts to skip in the middle of a song. (BTW I know about the 'load the song and press pause to let it fully load tweak' but to be quite frank, I find that both time consuming and ridiculous. Pocket MVP is also a real resource hog - it really slows the phone down. It is definitely an improvement though... :wink:

Issues with 'SPVs windows media player':-

1 - Left sound channel sometimes comes out of right (The polarity of stereo mp3s is sometimes incorrect) - which may be subtle for some but intensly irritating to audiophiles such as myself. :evil:

2 - The sound skips intermittently - even if your not using any other programs/phone features etc - but I have to say I feel that the sound shouldn't skip period. I am aware that this may be down to the way the media player app is coded (it is definitely in need of optimisations...) but I feel that this is down to the UNDERCLOCKED PROCESSOR!! (f*&k what orange say!!!!) - there is no way that a processor clocked at 132mhz or whatever is not going to be able to cope with scrolling an image/text, flicking through a few menus as well as playing an mp3 - especially if there is a separate processor dealing with phone stuff!! :evil:

3 - And why the hell does it have to scan the entire storage medium for digital media files!?! Why can't the user specify a folder/directory location to play files from. This stupid function/trait means that the SPVs media player takes 40secs to simply load up! damn! :evil:

4 - Where is the seeking (position slider) function? - I mean where the hell is it?! That is what I consider to be a standard feature of anything that proports itself to be mp3 player in this day and age!! Damn my old SL45 (Bless it..) had that 2.5 years ago! :evil:

5 - Built in playlist feature? My old but dear SL45... Damn what is the deal with this phone - Damn what is the deal with microsoft. :evil:

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh!!!! :x

Ok - I think I feel better now that I have vented - he he! :lol:

Please can someone develop a winamp for the SPV, please!!! - Please note I am not a software engineer but I would do everything I can to assist a project like that.

Or maybe you know of an alternate, dedicated, fast, mp3 player software for the spv - if so please post!!!

Or I may be in danger of getting me an XDA... :roll:

Hey, midnight - please don't tell me about your speed tweaks because I have applied them. (BTW - Midnight, Awarner, Monotholix, Paul, Clint Eastman and other forum contributors!! - Thanks so much for the information and tweaks in your posts and on your sites - I really appreciate ya'll making your knowledge available like that - thanx again!!) :( ;)

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

Here goes...

1: i noticed :/

2: Ever taken a look at how much memory winamp takes when its playing? The SPV's resources are limited as it is...i also believe the explaination for the CPU speeds.

3: Blame MS, it was their call...

4: As above. Hopefully something we can look forward to in SP2k3, or developable in CE.NET

5: Doable, see the Articles section for help on .asx "playlists".

Oh, and np

:lol:

[Guest muff]

(it is definitely in need of optimisations...) but I feel that this is down to the UNDERCLOCKED PROCESSOR!! (f*&k what orange say!!!!)  - there is no way that a processor clocked at 132mhz

thought I'd share this,

at the fanfest event on saturday one of the MS guys mentioned something that I'd not heard before...

the SPV has 2 processors !!!

one of these is an ARM7 running at ~90MHz

and one ARM9 running at 132MHz

apparently the ARM7 chip manages the radio functions only, and the ARM9 is the main processor

now I've not heard this before, and it was only mentioned in passing whilst talking about other tech stuff, and it was not an answer to a direct question about the processor clock speed we've all heard about

I know this doesn't answer the mp3 problem, but I'm sure microsoft's line on this would be that the phone primarily supports wma / wav as it's sound formats

this is another case of the documentation on the phone not being detailed enough, something I did speak to another MS techie about at the meet (though no real answer there)

muff

[Guest mrjuglas]

I know this doesn't answer the mp3 problem, but I'm sure microsoft's line on this would be that the phone primarily supports wma / wav as it's sound formats

well, I use wmas and they skip occasionally when doing other things as well! It doesn't bother me as much as it obviously does qazzi though :lol:

[Guest mrjuglas]

Damn, how do you get the quote function to work???

[Guest mrjuglas]

Damn, how do you get the quote function to work???

It's OK, I've figured it out, sorry :oops:

[Guest akarno]

The real answer is to lower the bit rate. Some say that the sound lost is great, but I only use the SPV to listen to music when I am out. There is usually enough background noise that I cannot hear the difference.

Try using 64Kbit MP3s. It also means you get more MP3s on your phone.

You can also use a utility to batch convert your MP3s to WMA that sound much better at 64K than MP3s. Try:

http://www.reseau.org/mp3towma/

Personally I have used this utility to convert all my 128Kbit MP3s to WMV at 48KBit 32K sampling. At this rate, the sound is poorer through proper seakers but sounds fine on the SPV headphones.

There are a number of ASX playlist generators. My personal favorite is:

http://www.modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=902

But then I wrote it :wink:

[Guest midnight]

i was gonna say, microsoft arent great lovers of the mp3 format, they prefer you to use their format, hence better playback of wma at the same bitrate (although wma is a better compression that mp3 anyway at lower bitrates), as for other things like 'why does it search the whole phone', and 'no seek bar', well the only thing i can say is... simplicity, it makes it foolproof, it searches the whole phone so you dont have to specify whether the song is on the phone or the sd card (personally, i dont have a big prob with this, i can keep albums in seperate dirs, and still play all the songs), and the controls for playback are all on the joypad. it isnt perfect, and it has been mentioned many times (very recently cos it is pos to show the seek bar, just cant control it)

its better than nothing, and with the many coders out there, many players will appear soon.

oh, and yes, it does support playlists, .asx files (if asx then why no asf even if its identical to wma/wmv)

oh, and i've never really had a prob with choppy playback, cant say i've noticed any left/right sound probs, hmm maybe cos i play wma's not mp3's

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

I've never had a problem with media player, guess I must be lucky

playbacks smooth and loadtimes I don't think are bad at all.

[Guest Rob.P]

^ Ditto but then I'm not an audiophile, so I can see why you are irrate.

[Guest Palindrome]

I've had some skipping but it's not too much of a problem. What does my head in is that there is no pause button. When I press the action key during playback it holds it's position for a few secs before going into stop mode.

[Guest mcfc2134]

I use 192k bit rate mp3'z every day on my way to and from university. Never had a problem! Looks like I'm a lucky one!

[Guest glynton]

I use 192kb/s WMAs and have no trouble. Only time it skips is when i initiate a major event on the phone, like open a program.

The headphones are terrible. I bought an adapter to reduce my Sony headphones' jack down to SPV size, and it works better. It's still a very flat sound though, needs a GEQ!

I have actually used my phone at a party as a (v.small) juke box once which had everyone in awe! ;)

Glynton

[Guest Palindrome]

Yeah, I've plugged my phone into the amp when I've had friends over. Loved the look on their faces when I first did it!

[Guest MECX]

ive had problems recently---and did some tests----i first thought it may have been the speed boost tweak thing-and i tried to uninstall it but i dont think it did---anyway i found that if the storage card is half empty the playback is better.

with WMA's encoded using VBR quality 50 (approx 80kb/s) the tracks would skip like every ten secs and after it skiped the stereo would reverse??

WMAs encoded at 80kb/s CBR didnt seem to skip as much and the phone seemed to like MP3's at 80kb/s ( you could look at other tracks/ browse the phone with less skiping)

also-sumthin for you to try----play a track for about 15secs then press the left arrow key (to restart that track) on mine the left and right channels swap??? this also happens when i press the select key?

is that emblaze player by orange any better??? havent tried it my self

[Guest amo]

Jus remember a dedicated mp3 player wont skip because it is a product designed specifically for its purpose. The spv hasnt been designed for perfect mp3 playback or video as seperate products are available for that. it is a phone that allows you to access these features. And no matter how limited the support for these features are or how bad they perform, none of us paid much more that £130 for the phone anyway so who can complain. (and before someone says they paid 300 quid for one - it wasnt designed for the payg market otherwise it would have been launched on their too. Orange wanted it on contract only and so 130 nicker should have been around the most u paid for it)

[Guest phdutton]

I couldn't agree more, I've only started having problems recently with it though.

I use it in the car (through one of those tape adapters) sometimes the song will skip, like a CD player with no skip protection, other times it will play the first 2 seconds of a track then skip to the middle of another one for no aparant reason!

Any one who can shed any light on why this happens would be much appreciated.

Pete.

[Guest Chris b.a.r.f.]

OK-I've stayed as quiet as I could for long enough... :?

I must say that I agree with you on almost every point you make - I've also come to SPV from an SL45 and miss all the old phone's MP3 features. I wouldn't call the SPV's media player "cack" but it ain't the best. In it's defense, I'll say that I *never* get any hacking when playing 128kbps MP3s, even when I'm composing/sending/receiving SMS/email.

[Guest Chris b.a.r.f.]

Any one who can shed any light on why this happens would be much appreciated.

Sounds like your MP3s aren't being copied "clean" to your Storage Card. I've experienced the same prob. occasionally, for what I think are two different reasons. First time out, I was running a mass of other apps on my PC + Dave Mirra in the background + copying MP3s to the SDcard. All the trax I copied in that session were "hoppy". Second reason had something to do with my "old" cardreader - for some reason, it just gave up the ghost. Some tracks would transfer across OK, others would sound awful.

One more thing: make sure it's an SDcard you're using, not an MMC - the transfer reates for SD are quite a bit higher and the SPV seems to perform better with them...

HTH