just to let you know: bass can be boosted with a capacitator, but no official OM documentation on that one
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Dylan Reilly <[email protected]> wrote: > One of my primary uses for the openmoko is a music player, and I have > spent some time trying to improve my listening experience with it. I > wanted to make a web page or such on the subject but I am highly > unmotivated to do so. In lieu of that, I am posting my findings here. > > Audio Quality > ------------- > IMO, good audio quality can be achieved with proper tweaking of the > alsa mixer. Some of the settings do nothing while others make the > openmoko sound like crap (e.g., bass boost). The state file [1] is > what I am using. One can utilize this by over writing the like-named > file in /usr/share/openmoko/scenerios . I even find the bass decent, > but not ideal. This is a known, and much discussed, hardware issue. > > Audio Player > ------------ > When I started my quest, there was no music player that met my needs. > The two that were close were pythm and mokoko. Mokoko has more > potential, I believe. However, it has (had?) issues resuming from a > suspend (crucial for me). That seems to imply an issue with gstreamer > - which it utilizes for playback - and that is something I do not want > to bother fixing. So, for the short term I turned to pythm and began > hacking away at it. The following is a list of changes I made to the > 0.5.1 version: > > 1) Improved responsiveness, especially with regard to starting the > next song in a play list. > 2) Lowered processing overhead during main update loop. > 3) Tweaked the GUI. Most notably, the buttons are larger. > 4) Read ID3 tag info at play list load time using python ID3 library. > 5) Optionally (default true) disable suspend through enlightenment > while song is playing. Change the no_suspend option in the [mplayer] > section of /etc/pythm.conf. > 6) Automatically pause playback when phone call received, resume on > hang-up. Only if running on FSO-based framework (not qtopia > phone-kit). > 7) Hook directly into alsa for setting/getting the volume. > 8) Tweaked nice levels for more consistent playback. > > Note that these changes apply only to the mplayer back-end and I have > no idea if the mpd back-end still works as I have no mpd server set > up. Furthermore, I have not tested this with ogg files, so item 4 from > the above list might break on those. Needless to say, this is a work > in progress. > > To play with this, one should first install the regular pythm package > [2] and then extract [3]. Some of the tweaks include changing nice > levels for the GUI and mplayer which are done in /etc/pythm.conf and > /usr/bin/pythm. > > There are still some issues that I may not be able to over come (i.e., > audio "blip" on some song changes) but I believe they are inherent to > the use of mplayer as a back-end and the slowness of the openmoko > processor. Moving to gstreamer is probably a good idea for the future. > > There is a good chance this won't work out of the box given that I > have not tested it on another device. Let me know and I will see what > I can do. > > MP3 Playback > ------------- > For better or for worse, my music is encoded as vbr mp3 files. Mplayer > normally does not handle vbr very well. So, I patched an compiled my > own version. You may find it at [4]. Without the patch, pythm can not > handle vbr. I also added mp3lib decoder support which I feel is > slightly better than the others. This may be enabled by default via > [5]. Be warned, that I know nothing about optimally compiling mplayer > and the binary is *huge*. Any input on that would be appreciated. > > Headset Detection > ------------------- > If one is using a recent FSO frameworkd then this is now automatically > handled. If you are not, the either upgrade or search the mailing list > archives for extensive discussions on the matter. > > Troubleshooting > ----------------- > 1) Sound skips. This means there is another process that is running at > about the same priority as mplayer and taking more than ~15% of the > CPU. You can either address the problem with this rogue process, or > increase the priority of mplayer via pythm.conf. > > 2) Sound is only coming out of one speaker when using the stereo-out > jack. This means that the alsa mixer still has the amp for the > built-in speakers enabled. See "Headset Detection." > > 3) Audio quality is bad. Either #1 is happening or your alsa mixer > settings are bad. I find the audio quite good but with some > degradation at the high end. > > That is all that comes to mind at the moment. > > [1] http://atariland.net/~dreilly/openmoko/audio/stereoout.state > [2] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Pythm > [3] > http://atariland.net/~dreilly/openmoko/audio/pythm-0.5.1-dmr-20090115.tar.gz > [4] http://atariland.net/~dreilly/openmoko/audio/mplayer.gz > [5] http://atariland.net/~dreilly/openmoko/audio/mplayer-conf.tar.gz > > -- > Dylan Maxwell Reilly > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community > _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
