What's the best audio player for the LD?

[Joel]

What audio player do you use and why? I'm currently trying out AeroPlayer and like its MP3 and AAC support. Battery life also seems to be great.

Are there any others worth to try out?

[peterjb31]

Will it play copy protected AAC?

DioPlayer usd to be quite good but I don't think it is being developed anymore.

[Joel]

No, only the iPod can play .m4p files.

[slaughters]

PocketTunes can play WMA files as well as MP3. With WMA files taking only have the space of MP3's that is a big selling point to me.

[Mike Chicago]

I've been using TCPMP on the LifeDrive. It has less static than Pocket Tunes, it's free, it plays MP3/AAC and more, and it's my main video app. Since I don't have to switch apps to watch videos, it's often in the cache -- this last simple benefit means a lot less LD sluggishness for multimedia over time.

[peterjb31]

I encode my music in ogg format. You don't have to pay for pocket tunes if you use ogg as the limitations of the demo after expiry only apply to WMA and MP3. + OGG is better than both in my humble oppinion. I use my Sony Walkman for most of my music need, 6 gig hard drive means loads of podcasts and HHGTTG audio series.

[Joel]

How's the battery life with Pocket Tunes and with TCPMP?

[peterjb31]

Pocket Tunes with the screen off and no blinking led and 7/8th volume about 7 hours - at least that is what I got - wifi and stuff off obviously.

[Mike Chicago]

TCPMP battery life seems okay, but I've never benchmarked it, and I basically recharge the LD every night by habit. It worked solidly last week when traveling from New York to Chicago -- music at LaGuardia, TV shows and music on the flight, music at O'Hare while waiting for my ride, etc.: Probably, the better part of a four-hour exercise. It seems like TCPMP blinks less than other audio applications when accessing the Microdrive, but I know Pocket Tunes is supposed to have more caching capabilities than the others (though, the caching doesn't always work after the LD 2.0 update, I've read -- less dynamic heap to play with without a Dmitry hack).

[deadpixels]

Hi i've tried to play an aac music on TCPMP file but i get this following error

MPEG4 AAC audio decoder not included! IT was removed from the official install package because of intellectual property considerations.

ergh? Is this decoder avaible elsewhere?

Cheers for the help :confused:

[dragonsgames]

http://www.rarewares.org/files/aac/tcpmp.aac.zip

[deadpixels]

ah cheers, just what i needed. Don't have to convert all those stupid aac files now, i've tried it, seems to work ok, but it keeps saying Out of memory in the top right corner, grr bloody lifedrive you crazy!!

[Mike Chicago]

... it keeps saying Out of memory in the top right corner, grr bloody lifedrive you crazy!!

Do a soft reset to reclaim some dynamic heap. I've never seen this with TCPMP, by the way. Other apps have fragmented your heap. You might have to do this soft reset on occasion in the future, too. Not a big deal, really.

Curious, have you updated your LD to 2.0? I've read some reports saying you actually have less dynamic heap to play with after the update. This is why I haven't updated: I don't want to endanger my CaSTaway Atari ST emulation!

Now, time to play some Pang...

[zAchry]

im using TCPMP for music and videos... tired of pocket tunes.. always accessing the drive and eating up most of the battery

[rkadowns]

If gapless playback, background play, and AAC playback are important to you, then AeroPlayer is about your only option. TCPMP is OK otherwise. I've heard of PocketTunes before but am not sure what it is. ;)

[Mike Chicago]

If ... AAC playback [is] important to you, then AeroPlayer is about your only option.

TCPMP handles AAC playback just fine with the file dragonsgames pointed us to above.

[rkadowns]

TCPMP handles AAC playback just fine with the file dragonsgames pointed us to above.

I know that, but this was my COMPLETE sentence; "If gapless playback, background play, and AAC playback are important to you, then AeroPlayer is about your only option." :mad:

We all know TCPMP is a great program, but as a playback application for music, for the most part it's featureless.

[NovemberZulu]

Truth is:
There is no good or bad media player for palm devices. In fact, there is no good or bad media players on any device at all since there is only one processor routine for media playing no matter if is a lifedrive or a notebook who belongs to sony and phillips in a common developement. All encoded music starts from a defined hardware based algorythm common to all devices that can play media files. Most of media player in palm devices are only a mask over the palm media player processor algorythm as is windows media player, winamp or real player do over sound cards and kernel, for instance. So, no matter if is cheap or expensive, downsized or oversized, at a plain, they al sound the same when playing encoded music, mp3, mp4, ogg or ra. Different is with wav or mac audio files where EXIST a matter of resolution, 24, 32, 96, 192 bits, which has no kind of encoding at all. Also, no matter how high resolution you use to reproduce music, once it is in a cd, it downgrade directly to 16 bits, or 24 bits in a dvd, or 192 in moviedirect for theatre (if you dont have at least 35000 uss for one of them, forget it)
Now, in other news, ok, we have 4 mp3 players as an example. RealOne, Ptunes, mmplayer or TCPMP. All of them are the same. If you connect your device to some sound analyzer software, youll see. There is no difference in quality or response. Because IT CANNOT BE. Some of these fine media players have equalizers or volume boosters or both. Well, the more eq or boost you add the more battery drain. This is because you are making the cpu of your device get warmer trying to compile the digital data decoding and adding Digital Audio Process. But not confuse: adding digital audio process doesnt makes encoding media sound better. Just fit it over the original sound range where the audio/video file was encoded.
As a tip, if you have an eq in your software (and this is valid for ANY device small or big) you can use this eq configuration to recover part of the loss signal erased to encode and fit size into media file category. If you look around, encoding audio process, in simple terms, erase extreme audio signal frequences that human ear doesnt perceive (which is not true). Basically the encode process cut low and high frequencies to diminish file size while remain audible into an allegedly range of quality. An attempt to recover such frequencies is to use a eq with this parameters *example refers to a 5 channel eq, but you can extend the criteria over 12, 24 36 or 64 eq channels*
from left to right, goes bass to treble
all eq has 5 faders and a mid line which means zero eq, the plain sound with no freq reinforcement.
So, here we go
assume that this mid line is 0% and on top is 100%
For a basic mp3 encoded at 44.000khz 16 bits 128 bps (the 99.98% of the mp3 around) settings are:
1 bass/13% (this is what you hear in the body, the percusive movement of sound in the air)
2 midbass/15/17% (this is what will really pump your ears)
3 mid/0/3% (this is the voice or solo instruments range)
4 midtreble 8% (this is most of the steel sounds and reverb freq, move up for instrumental music to 9/10%)
5 Treble 5/12% (this is the sense of air and glass of music, like cymbals, fx, reverbs and drum decays)
In resume, the more eq you apply, the more power consumption for the device.
Finally, what I like? mmplayer for internet music, tcpmp for video and ptunes for general music. Ive installed real player in my LD only because I have lot of conferences and audiobooks in real media format, and, for the lack of eq, is the less battery dryer.
Saludos de parte de Maradona.:rolleyes:

[Jostian]

That you can listen to internet radio, its streaming works really well in conjunction with Xiino (not blazer as it has a caching problem with streaming) and the number of stations on shoutcast .com is immense.