Sporadic stutter

[batibal]

Hi,

I've noticed a sporadic stutter during music playback. Unfortunately I'm not able to reproduce the circumstances.

I tried toying with the settings, but even the highest buffer values didn't solve the issue. I even turned the Replay Gain off, but to no success.

All my files are plain mp3 128 cbr, I'm not using any cross fade or even gap-less playback options, so I'd imagine there shouldn't be a problem with decoding. Anyway I'm running GMMP on the fastest android machine there is - the HTC One - so this is not a case of limited resources.

Any idea what may be wrong? The issue is incidental (few minor skips per hour at most, I'd say), but quite annoying.

thanks

[GoneMAD]

If you have gapless, eq, replaygain and crossfade off.. its using the built in media player for playback which i have no control over. If any of those are on it will use the custom audioengine I wrote. Most of those settings like the buffer size only affect the custom audioengine.

Do you have those 4 settings turned off?

[GoneMAD]

also what kind of stutter is it.. only for a few milliseconds or does playback stop for maybe a second and then resume?

[batibal]

At the moment I'm only using Replay Gain, as I noticed it had no effect on the stutter. So I guess I'm running the custom audioengine.

I understand it will be hard to determine what causes this bug, until I can reproduce it.

[batibal]

There is no pause in the playback, just a quick 'stumble' or 'scramble' in the sound.

Also I experience this very randomly: sometimes it can happen twice inside a song, other times not a single time on couple of entire albums.

[GoneMAD]

you said you turned replaygain and it had the same issue tho? Which would mean when its off its using the stock media player as well.. assuming the EQ is turned off (if the eq button is lit up on the equalizer view its on.. even if the bands are flat)

If thats the case it leads me to believe its something outside the player has is messing with the playback

[batibal]

I had the equalizer tab hidden, so I didn't notice it was on. Now I turned it off and disabled replay gain. Gap-less & cross-fade off - now I'm finally on the built in audioengine.

I'll keep watching, if the stutter comes back (of course it stopped the moment I started this thread

[batibal]

Also I suspect there is a possible conflict between GMMP and the native music player, which can cause problems.

For instance I've only been using GMMP for playback, but the native player's audio playback controls keep appearing and disappearing from the lock screen (the GMMP widget is turned off).

From the start I wanted to use standalone GMMP, but it is impossible to permanently shut down the native app (as I've done for the google app also pre-installed on my device).

[GoneMAD]

so it doesnt let you disable the htc player?

[batibal]

I can force shut it, but not permanently, it restarts immediately.

[GoneMAD]

In jelly bean you can fully disable system apps. IF you go to settings -> applications -> click on the music player there might be a disable option there. It doesnt uninstall the app, but will kind of freeze it so it will not start. Im not sure if HTC disabled this or not

[batibal]

It's disabled, I can't shut it down, believe me, it's the first thing I tried!

On a brighter note: I haven't experienced any stuttering since I turned off the EQ and left Replay Gain, Gap-less & Cross-fade off as well.
So maybe it was the conflict between GMMP and native player after all.

Too bad I'll have to live without replay gain, though.

I'll keep You posted. Thanks.

[GoneMAD]

it might be.. i think its more likely something with your specific device. I'm pretty sure i have some other HTC One users that dont have any issues. Either way.. let me know if there are any more issues

[batibal]

I've been listening closely over the last few days and I found a potential source of the stutter. In most (all?) instances it happens when I listen to music on my outside terrace, which is almost out of my wifi range.
What I came to suspect is that the glitches in the playback occur, when my device is struggling to connect / is connecting to the network.
I think I haven't experienced any problems with wifi turned completely off.
I don't really see how one can affect the other, but that seems to be the case. Anyway, GMMP isn't to be blamed.
Thanks again.

[GoneMAD]

yea the weak wifi signal can put some stress on the cpu. I am surprised it has that big of an impact on the HTC one