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Audio Player Apps

Started by cweb, May 16, 2016, 07:30:40 PM

cweb

What audio player do you use on your phone? Is it the same one for podcasts and music?

I used to use the default music player app on my old Galaxy S4, but since my Moto G didn't have one I've been using Poweramp. For music and podcasts. I like the way it handles playlists and queues. The EQ and basic processing settings are all I need, too.
http://powerampapp.com/
I guess they're working on version 3 (after forever) that's supposed to have a new audio engine and wider codec support.

I've also heard that the mobile Foobar2000 project (http://mobile.foobar2000.com/) is finally public. Just a preview release, for now.

For streams, I like VLC.

zeebo

Quote from: cweb on May 16, 2016, 07:30:40 PM
...I've also heard that the mobile Foobar2000 project (http://mobile.foobar2000.com/) is finally public. Just a preview release, for now.

I have an ancient phone so can't comment, but another bellgabber turned me onto Foobar for PC and I love it - ditched Winamp finally and use it exclusively for all audio so I suspect the mobile version could be good.  One thing I really like about it is you can set it up to remember the last file played, and the position within the file so you can start right back up - hopefully they'll keep that in there.

norland2424

i tend to use Aimp on all my devices, and winamp on my desktop

cweb

Quote from: zeebo on May 16, 2016, 07:36:07 PM
I have an ancient phone so can't comment, but another bellgabber turned me onto Foobar for PC and I love it - ditched Winamp finally and use it exclusively for all audio so I suspect the mobile version could be good.  One thing I really like about it is you can set it up to remember the last file played, and the position within the file so you can start right back up - hopefully they'll keep that in there.
I've long been a fan of foobar2000 on the PC. With the right plugins, you can do just about anything with it. I love the tagging options, especially the masstagging stuff.

zeebo

Quote from: cweb on May 16, 2016, 07:49:31 PM
I've long been a fan of foobar2000 on the PC. With the right plugins, you can do just about anything with it. I love the tagging options, especially the masstagging stuff.

Another cool feature is ReplayGain which I used to equalize my whole AB collection so the levels are consistent across each file. 

Ciardelo

I use VLC on my desktop, my laptop, my android tablet and android phones. The only device that doesn't get VLC is my Chromebook. Recently I went looking for recording apps for streams and  there are SO MANY.  But I went back to what was familiar to me. I use VLC with little *.bat files and Windows Scheduler to record streams when I'm away.

That ReplayGain that some people use with foobar sounds very interesting. Mack Mahoney's Military X-Files are horribly equalized or mixed or whatever. One minute it is at the right level, the next is too soft, then it gets too loud. I'll need to check it out.

albrecht

Quote from: Ciardelo on May 16, 2016, 09:09:16 PM
I use VLC on my desktop, my laptop, my android tablet and android phones. The only device that doesn't get VLC is my Chromebook. Recently I went looking for recording apps for streams and  there are SO MANY.  But I went back to what was familiar to me. I use VLC with little *.bat files and Windows Scheduler to record streams when I'm away.

That ReplayGain that some people use with foobar sounds very interesting. Mack Mahoney's Military X-Files are horribly equalized or mixed or whatever. One minute it is at the right level, the next is too soft, then it gets too loud. I'll need to check it out.
There is a balance. I want an audio player that has basic controls but some other stuff. Like mentioned, remembering the track you were playing, a way to 'force' tracks to play in order (somehow internet downloads often have tags or players revert to alphabetical etc order- bad for concept albums,) and a timer for shut off at night. IT would be nice to find a player that could record streams by presets but I will sacrifice that for just organization by album and title and the other stuff I mentioned. Like ability to play other formats but, from what I've heard, if I'm playing stuff on my phone to ear buds the higher quality formats like FLAC aren't really worth it. For movies VLC I liked for video but I was watching a particular dark movie the other night and messed with the video settings and now everything I watch is messed up! I can't seem to find a "restore default" settings? (Though I was drinking and haven't messed with it sober.) With much power comes much responsibility!

Ciardelo

Quote from: albrecht on May 16, 2016, 09:37:55 PM
There is a balance. I want an audio player that has basic controls but some other stuff. Like mentioned, remembering the track you were playing, a way to 'force' tracks to play in order (somehow internet downloads often have tags or players revert to alphabetical etc order- bad for concept albums,) and a timer for shut off at night. IT would be nice to find a player that could record streams by presets but I will sacrifice that for just organization by album and title and the other stuff I mentioned. Like ability to play other formats but, from what I've heard, if I'm playing stuff on my phone to ear buds the higher quality formats like FLAC aren't really worth it. For movies VLC I liked for video but I was watching a particular dark movie the other night and messed with the video settings and now everything I watch is messed up! I can't seem to find a "restore default" settings? (Though I was drinking and haven't messed with it sober.) With much power comes much responsibility!
lol Been there, done that etc.
Here's a quick Google:
To reset preferences and VLC Hotkeys to system default: From the menu bar, click on Tools > Preferences [Shortcut: CTRL +P]. At the bottom of the preferences option box, you will see a button that says “Reset Preferences”. Click on it.

If worse comes to worse. Fuckit. Completely uninstall  it. Delete any remaining directories...then do a fresh reinstall. :shrug:

zeebo

Quote from: Ciardelo on May 16, 2016, 09:09:16 PM
That ReplayGain that some people use with foobar sounds very interesting. Mack Mahoney's Military X-Files are horribly equalized or mixed or whatever. One minute it is at the right level, the next is too soft, then it gets too loud. I'll need to check it out.

The cool thing about it is it doesn't overwrite the original file, it just tags it with metadata the the prog reads when it plays it, so your orig file is safe.  Also I forget now as I did it some time ago, but pretty sure I was able to batch process the whole collection at once.

MV/Liberace!

In foobar, does the normalization process work on formats other than mp3? FLAC and WAV are what I'm most interested in. Thanks.

norland2424

Quote from: MV on May 17, 2016, 10:18:17 AM
In foobar, does the normalization process work on formats other than mp3? FLAC and WAV are what I'm most interested in. Thanks.

Is it even possible to do it in other formats?

triola

Quote from: norland2424 on May 17, 2016, 10:29:33 AM
Is it even possible to do it in other formats?
If Foobar utilizes the ReplayGain specification, it could as easily encode it as metadata in any format:

"...FLAC and Ogg Vorbis use the REPLAYGAIN_* Vorbis comment fields. MP3 files usually use ID3v2. Other formats such as AAC and WMA use their native tag formats with a specially formatted tag entry listing the track's gain and peak loudness..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain

Whether it actually does, I wouldn't know.

Keep in mind the intention here is to control playback, not modify the original track. The media format is inconsequential since any text-data (such as is used by the ReplayGain spec) can be appended to the end of a media file without altering the media itself. The player reads the ReplyGain tag for that track and sets it's playback to a corresponding level, doesn't matter what the media format is.

cweb

Yes, the FLAC specification happily includes compatibility with ReplayGain. I haven't been able to find explicit data stating that it works with WAV, but when I run ReplayGain on a WAV file, it appears to save that stuff with the file's regular metadata. So if you're just using foobar2000 (or another ReplayGain-friendly player like VLC) you should be good.

That's the catch with ReplayGain. It's just a plain old tag value. So if the program you're using doesn't know what the hell the tag means, you won't get the benefit of ReplayGain normalization.

There is the ability in foobar2000's file conversion feature to permanently apply ReplayGain to files. This basically adds the normalization to the file before the converter spits it out.

Remember this is normalization and not dynamic compression. So if the levels are all over the place, they will still be all over the place after ReplayGain.

If a podcast has crazy ass levels, you could always use a compressor DSP. VLC has one built in, foobar has a bunch that you can download. On mobile devices, Poweramp (which I mentioned earlier) has it.

albrecht

Any quick/easy/free programs I can use to join mp3 files in Linux? I used mergemp3 on my Windows but recently for the heck of it 'saved' an old out of date computer by getting rid of windows and installing (from what I could tell) is the easiest/barebones versions of Linux that still 'looks' like Windows (since I am not a programmer.) I know there are ways in the command line to merge files, including mp3 but I really don't know what language used and it seems to be fairly time-consuming (even though command line you have to type out each file name or have the files in separate directories, etc.) Is there something like mergemp3 that is GUI-based and can simply merge a few mp3 files together? I downloaded Audacity but it seems waay more stuff than I need (and I still can't figure out how to merge, in succession, the files....it outputted all chapters to play at once- like listening to a possessed victim with many demons talking at once! I want something to join ex: Chap1.mp3 Chap2.mp3 Chap3.mp3 into Book.mp3. Thanks!

Quote from: albrecht on September 06, 2016, 08:13:10 PM
Any quick/easy/free programs I can use to join mp3 files in Linux? I used mergemp3 on my Windows but recently for the heck of it 'saved' an old out of date computer by getting rid of windows and installing (from what I could tell) is the easiest/barebones versions of Linux that still 'looks' like Windows (since I am not a programmer.) I know there are ways in the command line to merge files, including mp3 but I really don't know what language used and it seems to be fairly time-consuming (even though command line you have to type out each file name or have the files in separate directories, etc.) Is there something like mergemp3 that is GUI-based and can simply merge a few mp3 files together? I downloaded Audacity but it seems waay more stuff than I need (and I still can't figure out how to merge, in succession, the files....it outputted all chapters to play at once- like listening to a possessed victim with many demons talking at once! I want something to join ex: Chap1.mp3 Chap2.mp3 Chap3.mp3 into Book.mp3. Thanks!

This is a tough one. I've never had a need to do this, but apparently there are a lot of people looking for the same thing.
MP3wrap is recommended because it doesn't mess up the tags. The Moosewrap GUI front-end for mp3wrap looks to be pretty good, but you need to make sure the dependencies are met.
Apparently, mp3wrap modified files have trouble playing on I-Devices.
I'm checking out 'sweep' right now (it's in the system package manager - I use synaptic), but it's just as complicated as audacity.
Don't be afraid of the terminal, it's your friend and easier to use than Doze command line.

Here's a Tut on how to combine in Audacity. http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=65517

You'll still need to import both / all   files one at a time, there is no drag and drop, and right click has limited functionality, but so far it's the best solution. Also make sure your export settings are high enough quality that you don't lose quality through down-sampling. When I gave it a test run, my sound quality sucked compared to the original file because of this.

I'll keep looking for a solution that's easier to use.

Quote.it outputted all chapters to play at once-
Check the tutorial I dropped, they all played at once because they weren't time shifted. Every track in the window will play at once unless you select, copy, paste at the end of the previous track and then delete the original copied track. Also note that when you load a track, it loads both right and left channels, that's why there are two graphs for each track loaded.

Like I mentioned, I'll see what I can come up with, but most people just use the terminal.

Edit: I'm playing w/ sweep right now, and if you dig backwards masking, sweep can play the tracks backwards at full quality.   :)

Edit-2: Sweep also needs real-time CPU access with JACK, so if you are on an old system, don't be running other cpu intensive programs in the background.

Edit-3: On my 2004 pentium-4 i686 2.0GHz system it's running approximately 45% cpu load.

triola

Quote from: albrecht on September 06, 2016, 08:13:10 PM
Any quick/easy/free programs I can use to join mp3 files in Linux?

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate

In many (if not most) cases, the various media applications you find on the web to do any number of operations on audio and video files actually use ffmpeg to finally perform the operation. It's easy to use/script, so you may as well go direct and script it yourself, write your own front-ends to perform different operations or use any of the ready-made front-ends to do whatever you need.

As far as the audio itself is concerned, you want to avoid re-coding and just perform a writeable-stream operation, ffmpeg has two ways of merging media: one re-codes the other just writes the existing bytes, which is the preferable way to go to avoid possible degradation of the audio.

Seriously, though, if you download any number of 'swiss-knife' media manipulators and drill down into their file structure, you'll most likely find ffmpeg is the actual engine and they've just written the front-end (given they haven't directly linked the lib rather than referenced the shared lib, in which case a binary editor will turn it up with a text search).

analog kid

Quote from: triola on September 08, 2016, 12:59:38 PM
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate

In many (if not most) cases, the various media applications you find on the web to do any number of operations on audio and video files actually use ffmpeg to finally perform the operation. It's easy to use/script, so you may as well go direct and script it yourself, write your own front-ends to perform different operations or use any of the ready-made front-ends to do whatever you need.

As far as the audio itself is concerned, you want to avoid re-coding and just perform a writeable-stream operation, ffmpeg has two ways of merging media: one re-codes the other just writes the existing bytes, which is the preferable way to go to avoid possible degradation of the audio.

Seriously, though, if you download any number of 'swiss-knife' media manipulators and drill down into their file structure, you'll most likely find ffmpeg is the actual engine and they've just written the front-end (given they haven't directly linked the lib rather than referenced the shared lib, in which case a binary editor will turn it up with a text search).

Yep.
cat *.mp3 > joined.mp3

Works on audio and video.

albrecht

Thanks for all the answers. That terminal line seems to work as long as the files you want to join are in the same folder. I haven't messed with Audacity yet since this is working. But the ability to 'listen in reverse' is an interesting option. I wonder if that is how Oates does it? Haha. Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Here's the sweep homepage, and a page for Linux Audio.
Yeah, sweep is more of a DJ app, but it's fun to play with.

Sweep: http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/index.html

LinAudio: http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/apps/start


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