Second song plays silently

[Tim Mathews]

Hi,

I recently upgraded to an Android 13 phone with all the software I had from Android 12 on its predecessor. HiFiCast was among the apps transferred. Now I'm finding that when I play a track from the queue, everything is fine. At the end of the track it moves to the next and appears to be playing but with no sound. At the end of that track the timer keeps incrementing past the duration of the song. If I press Pause and then Play during the track, the sound returns. This behaviour does not happen when installed on other devices.

I have turned off battery optimisation, cleared storage and cache, reinstalled the app, and restarted the device, but all to no avail. Other music apps (Amazon Music, BubbleUPnP, etc) work just fine.

Any ideas on why this is happening and how to correct the situation would be greatly welcomed.

Thank you,

Tim

[Hi-Fi Cast Developer]

Hi,

If your phone is a Pixel 6 or above then this is a known issue.

I think the problem is due to the audio file parser on the Pixel phones. It seems to crash on some (but not all) music files - possibly related to the software that was used to create the files. I assume those apps you mentioned that do work don't use the same (buggy on Pixel phones) features of Android that Hi-Fi Cast does.

Unfortunately I don't have a fix. And the only workaround I can think of is for you to re-rip the files using different software (or convert them) - however, even then I can't be sure this will fix things.

Sorry :(

[Tim Mathews]

Hi,

Thank you for considering my problem. I don't have a Pixel phone, I am far more down-market with the Ulefone series, which over the years have become better and better, and I am now on my fourth, the Note 16 Pro.  Hi-Fi Cast ran perfectly on its predecessor, the Note 13. All my music is on an SD card in the phone. Fortunately, I have BubbleUPnP, which although not as nice to use, is perfectly capable of rendering the music, so all is not lost. I can only think that the problem lies with your software.

Tim

[Christian H.]

Hi,

I have the same experience here with my Pixel 8. The encoder I use the most is lame, so it shouldn't be a problem with encoding. Is it possible to investigate this issue further and put some work into solving it? I would also offer help in providing information. I don't know how to get logs or anything like that though.

Chris

[David Todd]

I have recently upgraded from a Pixel 4a (Android 13) which didn't have this problem to a Pixel 7a (Android 15) which does have this problem.   The Pixel 7a works fine with Foobar2000 - accessing a minidlna media server and playing the music tracks without the sound stopping.  So I do think the problem lies with Hi-Fi cast.  My Hi-Fi Cast account is a premium account.   Hope this issue gets fixed soon. Thanks.
.

[David Todd]

The issue can be fixed by changing the [Audio Decoding Method] from "default" to "alternative".    This setting (on a Google Pixel 7a) is in [Playback Devices] - [This Device] - [Settings] - [Audio Decoding Method] change "default" to "alternative"

Thanks to DB for the DM with this advice.

[Zala Pierre GOUPIL]

HI,

I have a Unihertz Jelly 2e and a WiiM Ultra (DLNA) playback device. I have the same bug except that the trick of pausing the tune and playing back again doesn't work neither. When playing a list some random tunes play with normal volume but most of them play silently. I have tried to apply the audio decoding method above, unfortunately it is proposed only for the default device, not for a DLNA player.

Can you please help?

Thanks in advance.