Bluetooth Stuttering Playback [#12887]

[andonevris]

I have been having stuttering issues whenever I use MMA to play over bluetooth. The music will cut out briefly then carry on as normal. At first I thought it was a phone/android issue as there have been known issues with A2DP in Android so I spent weeks investigating this as an Android issue. I tried all the suggested fixes including tweaking the CPU to run in performance mode and setting the min clock speed quite high on all cores as I was convinced it was CPU spikes causing it but nothing worked.

Finally on a whim I tried to use the stock music player which I have never used before and there wasn't a single stutter, I've been using the stock player for the past 3 weeks in the car and have not had a single stutter so it seems this is a MMA issue after all. It's not any particular device that causes the stuttering as it happens in the car, bluetooth speaker and bluetooth headphones.

I went back to MMA and played with all the playback settings, suppress notifications on/off, disable touch sounds on/off, volume leveling on/off, eq on/off etc. but nothing worked. Obviously the stock player is doing something differently to MMA during playback, maybe it's given a higher priority by the system (so maybe still CPU spikes) or maybe a larger buffer (other Android users with stuttering playback fixed their issues by using a player that allowed them to set a large buffer) I have my music stored on an external SD card, not sure if that makes a difference but non-bluetooth playback is fine so I think probably not.

So for now I'm stuck using the stock player for playback which I hate and and just use MMA for syncing. I had a search to see if anyone else is having theses issues but couldn't find any mention of it which is strange so maybe it's something to do with my phone setup? I am rooted.

If I can provide any more info to help diagnose please let me know.

Samsung Galaxy S5
KitKat 4.4.2 (rooted)
MMA build 480
Music stored on external SD card, mostly high bitrate (320kbps) mp3s

[rusty]

Hi,

I can't replicate the issue (testing with a samsung tablet running android 4.4). Perhaps if you posted a link to a debug log it might indicate something going on...

-Rusty

[andonevris]

Hey rusty, just uploaded a couple of logs straight after stuttering happened

Log ID: YAGY8ZBO7X
Log ID: 0RU4WF5C41

Let me know if you need anything else

[mcow]

My Galaxy Tab (not a phone) is stuck at 4.2.2. I have found that if wi-fi is on, I can't use any Bluetooth device without stuttering, even if there is no network. I set up a Tasker task to turn off wi-fi when it makes a BT connection.

I have other issues that only occur in the car (which is the only AVRCP device I have), but the wi-fi+BT is consistent on all of them.

[andonevris]

My Galaxy Tab (not a phone) is stuck at 4.2.2. I have found that if wi-fi is on, I can't use any Bluetooth device without stuttering, even if there is no network. I set up a Tasker task to turn off wi-fi when it makes a BT connection.

I have other issues that only occur in the car (which is the only AVRCP device I have), but the wi-fi+BT is consistent on all of them.

Turning wi-fi off didn't help for me it's one of the things I tried early on, the stuttering seems to be worse when the screen is off which is why I thought CPU (phone in low power mode) but even cranking the CPUs to high doesn't fix the problem. Hopefully the debug logs will help

[solid_spartan]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4,Android 4.3, Mediamonkey Pro, version 1.1.3.0496.

I often use Mediamonkey while my phone is connected to the Bluetooth in my car. However, the past couple weeks, it has been stuttering. The rate varies. Sometimes it's a couple times a song, other times it's every few seconds. It's really annoying.

It doesn't happen when I'm just listening using earbuds.

It doesn't happen if I use Google Play instead of Mediamonkey.

I don't have this issue with Mediamonkey for Windows.

I've tried reinstalling the app. I've tried deleting my library from my phone and resyncing. I've tried restarting the phone. None of those things helped.

I'm not in low-power mode.

Any thoughts on this issue? Any more info you need?

[rusty]

Hi,

We've just posted build 500 (available as a beta build in Google Play, or as a release build via the forum).

Please go to Options > About MediaMonkey > tap the MediaMonkey icon to see 'Developer Options' > enable 'No album art' and "No progressbar in notification/miniplayer".

Then try playing content over Bluetooth to see if the stuttering still occurs or not. Please let us know what happens.

Thanks.

-Rusty

[andonevris]

I Just gave this a try, when I turned on the no album art option the connection was good for about 10 minutes then I got a couple of stutters, definitely better than it was.

I then tried turning off the progress bar just out of curiosity and haven't had a stutter for about half an hour. Looks promising!

I'll post up with any further updates

EDIT:

I can confirm I've had no more bluetooth stutters since I turned off the album art and mini player progress bar options, so it seems for me the issue is resolved with these options.