Android app sees but won't play music

[SabreCEO]

unfortunately, I don't think re-encoding is an option for me since my subsonic server is running on an anemic old laptop...

oh well, still looking for a workable solution...

Did you try it? It only takes a few seconds to set up, and even if your laptop is slow it shouldn't take that long for it to re-encode an mp3. If you haven't tried it yet - try it and see if it's slow - it may not be.

[sindre_mehus]

Both hour-long podcasts and variable bitrates works fine in the soon-to-be-released version 1.1 of the Subsonic Android app, so please be patient

[cwilliams]

Sounds like Sindre has this fixed, so my me too is meaningless. Oddly enough, I never experienced this issue before (running Android 1.5, the first beta Subsonic app and 3.8beta1.) Now that I'm running Android 1.6, Subsonic app 1.0, and Subsonic server 3.8, none of my streaming starts....

My entire music world revolves around subsonic, its amazing how helpless I am without it. Guess I should thank Sindre again for the awesome app.

Anyway Sindre, I'm lazily working on a proper feature request list for the android app, but heres one that kills me. The app has problems playing in the background, and worse when it dies and I re-open it, it forgets the now playing list! If the now playing list persisted between sessions that would alleviate alot of my headaches. Thanks!

[sindre_mehus]

Version 1.1 is available in Android Market now. Please upgrade and let me know how it works.

Cheers,
Sindre

[Protoman]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
It all works!!

[dan1son]

Android player 1.1 works great for MP3s now... seems to buffer itself and download the entire tracks in order as it's playing (which is good, works like a super buffer).

Only problem is, I always get an IOException on ogg files unless I transcode them to lower bitrate mp3s (which works, but isn't ideal).

Should the player support ogg files directly? I know the android phone can play them just fine by itself.

Great update!

[cwilliams]

1.1 is definitely working now, but it appears the fix was to just download the songs with no streaming. While "download and play" was a great option, I believe it's an imperfect solution to replace streaming with:

1. I have 600 gigs of music in subsonic and a 4 gig card in my phone. Now whenever I use this app it will slowly fill up my memory card, which doesnt have much space left anyway. What will it do when its full? Can I set a maximum amount of space on my card to take?

2. This will just hog bandwidth. A lot of us with "unlimited" data plans actually have limits (Verizons is 5GB a month. Luckily T-Mobile is more forgiving). 1.1 has two bandwidth issues: it downloads the entire playlist, ahead of what I am listening to, and two, it downloads full bitrate songs. Often I make a giant playlist in the Subsonic android app and hit play. I might only make it through a handful of songs until I stop, but this app just downloads as much of the playlist as it can now. Plus, most my music is 320kb. I'd prefer to stream it to my phone at less then that (hopefully a configurable setting within the android app some day).

While I am extremely happy the app is working again, I hope you can get actual streaming working again in the near future. Streaming continues to work in numerous other android apps.

Thanks again for the awesome app Sindre!

[sindre_mehus]

1. I have 600 gigs of music in subsonic and a 4 gig card in my phone. Now whenever I use this app it will slowly fill up my memory card, which doesnt have much space left anyway. What will it do when its full? Can I set a maximum amount of space on my card to take?

2. This will just hog bandwidth. A lot of us with "unlimited" data plans actually have limits (Verizons is 5GB a month. Luckily T-Mobile is more forgiving). 1.1 has two bandwidth issues: it downloads the entire playlist, ahead of what I am listening to, and two, it downloads full bitrate songs. Often I make a giant playlist in the Subsonic android app and hit play. I might only make it through a handful of songs until I stop, but this app just downloads as much of the playlist as it can now. Plus, most my music is 320kb. I'd prefer to stream it to my phone at less then that (hopefully a configurable setting within the android app some day).

Currently you will have to clear the cache manually (Settings > Delete cached music) if you're running out of storage space. Later versions of the app might do this automatically. Also, I guess a new setting "Number of songs to pre-load" would be nice to have.

Just to clarify one thing: The Android app does transcode and downsample music according to the player settings.

Cheers,
Sindre

[cwilliams]

Thanks for the reply Sindre.

Just to clarify one thing: The Android app does transcode and downsample music according to the player settings.

At first I was confused how I could miss such a setting, but realized its a setting in the subsonic server, not the android app. It works great!

Currently you will have to clear the cache manually (Settings > Delete cached music) if you're running out of storage space. Later versions of the app might do this automatically. Also, I guess a new setting "Number of songs to pre-load" would be nice to have.

Excellent, great ideas. Those two settings would solve all the issues I pointed out. Also possibly an option to delete a song after playing it. Then it is basically the same as when it was streaming, except people could easily have it otherwise too.

Thanks again for the awesome apps Sindre. My wife and I use subsonic every day on our android phones

[dan1son]

Just a few thoughts on the android app (1.1) after using it as my only media player for a full day. While it is considerably better than the last version. I have a couple of things that might be helpful to make it even better. I agree a "buffer X tracks setting" or a "stream" mode would be useful for reasons already mentioned.

1. (bug) Currently when streaming over 3g I get audio skips every so often. It sounds to me like it's skipping when it's finished with each subsequent download chunk (not 100% sure on this, but it seems to fit). What I mean is when it first plays it has like 300K or whatever in buffer, when it gets to the end of that chunk it has a dropout/skip that starts the next chunk, at the end of that chunk it skips again... etc. If the whole song is buffered there are no skips.

2. (enhancement) Retries need some help. If I'm driving around (my main use for the app) downloads tend to stop, fail, etc. randomly due to network issues. The app seems to fail and not pick back up where it left off, start the download over, or otherwise. Once an error is thrown it seems to just stop trying and needs to be restarted to get it working again. This makes it very unreliable.

3. (enhancement) Make the play button enabled and have it auto select the whole album and play. Will remove an unnecessary "select" click.

4. (bug) Ogg files don't play, IOException is thrown.

I think this is the killer app for a 3g connected device. The ability to stream my entire music collection over a cell tower is just insane. Your work on the app has been great. I appreciate it.

EDIT:
5. (bug) Last.fm submissions and now playing reflect the currently downloaded song and not the song being played.

[powe1wa]

Prior to the recent update on Subsonic for Android I had no issues. Used it for days (just got the HTC Android Eris) non stop with out errors. This coming from a guy that knows tech breaks and was amazed how this prog would not break. Then, the update came... and ever since I'm having errors pinging my server and the demo server. Also issues with playing the music. If I keep hitting play (after downloaded) then eventually the song will play. Currently, I'm able to ping successfully but the whole hitting play repeatedly until the song starts is getting kinda stupid. So, I donated and all I ask for is a fix for my problems =)

Let me know if you need any information. By the way, no issues playing from PC or MAC.

Thanks for the update
ep

[evandena]

Just to clarify one thing: The Android app does transcode and downsample music according to the player settings.

Cheers,
Sindre

What player settings are you referring to? I'm curious how this bandwidth compares to other players like Pandora or Slacker.

[evandena]

Just to clarify one thing: The Android app does transcode and downsample music according to the player settings.

Cheers,
Sindre

What player settings are you referring to? I'm curious how this bandwidth compares to other players like Pandora or Slacker.

[evandena]

Just to clarify one thing: The Android app does transcode and downsample music according to the player settings.

Cheers,
Sindre

What player settings are you referring to? I'm curious how this bandwidth compares to other players like Pandora or Slacker.

[cwilliams]

Just to clarify one thing: The Android app does transcode and downsample music according to the player settings.

Cheers,
Sindre

What player settings are you referring to? I'm curious how this bandwidth compares to other players like Pandora or Slacker.

It transcodes to whatever bitrate you have set in the android section of the "players" settings in the Subsonic web interface.

Depending on what this is set to, it can be more or less bandwidth then Pandora/Slacker/etc.