Bluetooth issues [#11416, #11417]

[Peke]

can you elaborate bit more not sure that I follow correctly? Also looks like random issues rather than constant/replicable one.

[mcow]

can you elaborate bit more not sure that I follow correctly? Also looks like random issues rather than constant/replicable one.

So far, that was the only instance of that behavior. The basic problem was: I thought I'd stopped playback by turning off the car stereo, but when I returned twenty minutes later, the tablet was still playing, thru its own speakers.

[rusty]

mcow,
Sounds like the same problem as described here:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 21&t=75505

Let us know if build 230 solves it (please reply in the other thread).

Thanks.

-Rusty

[mcow]

So I think I've determined a pattern for MMA failing to play back over BT. I often use the Samsung Music Player, which has a single track in its library (the sound of crashing waves) that I play in my bedroom overnight and also thru headphones when my office gets loud. I've noticed that if SMP was the last active player at the time the BT connection is made, then MMA can't seem to get access to it.

Try these steps:
1) Play something thru the Samsung player (maybe any other player), using the device's speakers or jack; pause it.
2) Connect device to BT (head unit off)
3a) Bring up MMA
3b) Turn on head unit after BT connection established
3c) Try to play something thru the BT connection.

One thing I've noticed: after step 3a, before the head unit has come on, I've several times seen MMA go into play mode on its own; the track progresses for a few seconds, then it pauses; then the scrubber bar returns to 0:00, and then it starts to play again. I don't know if this play, pause, reset, play cycle ever stops; I've seen it go on four times in a row before I tried something else. It may do the same thing once the head unit is on. But I don't get music thru the BT.

Sometimes, if I turn off the head unit, stop MMA from the notification bar, and restart, it will play. Also, sometimes, switching the head unit to a CD, letting it play for a period of time, and then switching back, I can get music.

Contrary to the above, if MMA was active prior to connecting to BT, it seems to play; at least, it seems to play more often.

[martin.bohac]

Yes, some media players(like PowerAmp) take control although aren't in foreground. They are listening connection event and register their listeners on this event. The media player, which register its listener as last, wins. To get more chance to take control by MMA, use option called "Always respond to remote buttons" or kill SMP(or maybe SMP has also option for this).

[mcow]

To get more chance to take control by MMA, use option called "Always respond to remote buttons" or kill SMP(or maybe SMP has also option for this).

I do have that option set. The Samsung player (or maybe it's the default Android player) has no such setting; it has an explicit "Via Bluetooth" menu selection which starts a scan.


For the past week, I've been using PowerAmp as my Android player instead of MMA. In that period, there have been at least fifteen different sessions of bluetooth playback in the car -- typical usage for a week.
I have seen a couple of the Bluetooth playback symptoms that have been plaguing my usage of MMA, but far less frequently, and recovering has been far more reliable than with MMA. With PowerAmp, I have not once had to simply shut off the tablet and switch to a CD, which I've had to do at least two or three times a week with MMA over the previous weeks.

The symptoms I've seen with PowerAmp: music playing normally, then suddenly in mid-song stopping. This happened twice in a very short period of time, in the same song in fact. I shut off the stereo entirely for about five minutes, then turned it back on and restarted the song: it played all the way thru and continued on thru the queue like it's supposed to.

The other symptom occurred when I turned the car on and the car stereo had been left on before shutting off. In that case, the stereo tried to start playback before the BT connection had been made (which is also a problem with MMA) and the progress bar started moving with no audible sound. Unlike with MMA, however, simply turning off the car stereo, making sure PowerAmp was not actively playing, and turning the car stereo back on was enough to start the music.

So, I can say that the problems with BT playback (with my Samsung tablet and its bluetooth implementation and Android 4.2.2, and with my car's bluetooth implementation) are not entirely MMA's fault; but given the relative lack of problems with PowerAmp's playback, I think there is definitely room for improvement in MMA.

[mcow]

I read something tonight informing me that as of Android 4.2, Google included a "BlueDroid" Bluetooth stack in the software. I have not determined for sure if Samsung included the stack in the Galaxy Tab 2 update to 4.2.2 but I assume they did. Here's a bug issue where people are complaining about 4.2 Bluetooth audio, but I am not experiencing the problem described there (staticy noise, especially in the high end). I know there are Android features that did not make it into the Tab's 4.2.2 firmware image (e.g. lockscreen widgets), but I don't know enough about Android distributions to know exactly which Bluetooth stack is in my tablet.


Today, playing back thru PowerAmp, sound suddenly stopped in the second song of the drive. I was in traffic, so I didn't do anything about it, just let it go on. After a few minutes, the next track started up, audible in the car speakers, as if the track had kept progressing silently and then something was reset at the switch to the next track. The head display had gone to blinking "PAUSE" when the track went silent, but did not change back to "BTA" when the next track started playing.

This problem of tracks suddenly going quiet started maybe two weeks ago, when I was still using MMA as my in-car player. It's happened maybe eight times in that time period, with both MMA and PowerAmp. There is an intersection I pass thru where this problem happened twice, making me wonder if radio interference could be affecting the car's Bluetooth.

[mcow]

I got a new Bluetooth audio device, an active speaker in my house. So far, this behaves a lot better than the car does.

In particular: on the tablet, if I turn BT off and then turn it back on, I get a window showing the paired devices. With the speaker, the BT entry shortly changes to "Connected." The car never does this.

And altho I haven't used MMA to play into this speaker very much, yet, I have had no problems at all when I have.

[mcow]

I've seen a problem, repeated in the past few days, where MMA never advances the song beyond two or three seconds. The Bluetooth connection is active: I can use the head unit's Next/Prev tracks and MMA updates accordingly, but with a long pause between BT button press and updated screen. Pressing the Play/Pause button on the screen also sometimes is laggy.

What's unusual about this is that it also doesn't play to my desktop bluetooth speaker; I haven't seen that behavior before.

I captured a log: JV22AUSCR0
I am still running build 259, I wanted to wait to see if people had problems with the new database format. But I haven't seen any reports of improvements in bluetooth, either.

[mcow]

With build 291, MMA's BT performance has been pretty solid. Starts playing every time I turn the head-unit on, no sudden silence. Today I happened to turn the car off and then on again, and the BT connection reestablished right away. I don't know if anything's been changed to lead to this, but I hope the behavior keeps up.