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Well, neither do I to be fair. I seriously dislike iTunes but it can take more input than just the store..
Regardless of the official Music player app there are third party ones, some of which are super simple (presenting a http upload on the network and allowing playback of uploaded media) or, in my case, Plex (with a plex pass for local sync)
> Right now I'm absolutely astonished at how difficult it appears to be to just listen to music with a good pair of headphones. Is it not 2018? The media is full of talk about preposterously ambitious ideas such as AI and self-driving cars and yet I can't even listen to a fuck-damn music track? O_o I enjoyed reading this. The whole time I thought however: that’s not an issue on my Apple devices. Then I read: > If any…
I find this especially humorous given this: > Although Android is Free Software, meaning I can modify the code, it would probably take me months to learn enough about music decoding and the Android-media-player-service to write a fix.
Would I be able to fix just the media player service, and make my smartphone use the fixed version? Without flashing it with a brand new OS, losing data, warranty, OEM drivers, and ability to receive security updates? Didn't think so. Android "open source" delivers only half of the expected value.
Boy does this person need to look at the ‘good headphone’ market. I paid (a very reasonable) $2k for a set of reference headphones and a suitable amp/DAC to drive them. I could have spent a lot more. It is hard to drive a set of headphones with enough SQ to make them worthwhile. You cannot plug a set of headphones into an Android phone and expect anything good to happen. And lots of DAPs suffer from software problems…
> I do not have to pay a tax to apple to listen to my music. Well, neither do I to be fair. I seriously dislike iTunes but it can take more input than just the store.. Regardless of the official Music player app there are third party ones, some of which are super simple (presenting a http upload on the network and allowing playback of uploaded media) or, in my case, Plex (with a plex pass for local sync)
Though, seriously, if I can throw a little bit extra (shockingly not a lot, compared to similar modern Android offerings) at my phone and not have this kind of basic problem and, presumably, other basic problems of a similar nature then there is a tipping point of efficiency that isn’t terribly far away.
I love how people can do this type of stuff. Whenever I get out the soldering iron to fix any problems, I face a 50% chance of success against 50% chance of fucking it beyond repair. Well, I guess it fixes it in both cases...
All that because the android-media-player-service has a bug.
”It improves sound quality by taking away the hard work of driving the dynamic load of the headphones from the device" Can anybody explain that please? What is this dynamic load whose driving is hard?
Due to a poorly designed circuit in the CD player, noise is introduced when current flows. So the more current is flowing, the more noise. Driving a dynamic load is not hard, it has been solved for a long time. The vendor just chose a poor design, probably to shave a couple tenths of a cent from the material bill.
A proper designed amplifier requires very little current (ideally none) on the input. In electronic terms: the amplifier has a high impedance. Thus the amplifier causes very little noise when connected to the cheap CD player.
The OP build a better amplifier that causes less noise when current is drawn from it, so using that results in a better quality sound.
”It improves sound quality by taking away the hard work of driving the dynamic load of the headphones from the device" Can anybody explain that please? What is this dynamic load whose driving is hard?
Converting an electric signal into mechanical movement takes energy. Thus, current needs to flow from the audio amplifier in the CD player to the headphones. In electronic terms: the headphones have a low impedance (AC resistance). Due to a poorly designed circuit in the CD player, noise is introduced when current flows. So the more current is flowing, the more noise. Driving a dynamic load is not hard, it has been s…
Thanks! This was the missing part.
I'm not saying open source is bad and everyone should prefer free software. It's just a good example of the difference between the two in practice rather than in some debate about licenses and the abstract principles behind them.