audioplayer that allows multiple instances/volume level mixer

[dohduhdah]

Hi.

Is there an audioplayer app for android that has an option somewhere in the settings that allows one to run multiple instances of the app simultaneously?
I want to run two or more audioplayer apps side by side, so I can listen to an audiobook while listening to instrumental music.
Of course I want to be able to manage the volume of each of those instances separately, so I can play the music at a lower volume to ensure it doesn't interfere too much with listening to an audiobook.

Also, are there audioplayer apps that have an option somewhere in the settings to toggle the app to have a volume setting independent of other apps?
So I can run this audioplayer and a different audioplayer side by side and being able to set the volume for each of them separately.

Alternatively, I'd also be interested in a volume manager app that allows one to manage the volume of multiple apps that are active, similar to the volume mixer in windows where you can set the volume of all audiosources independently.

greetings and thanks in advance for any feedback, Niek

 

[vosg]

There's a good mixer-player in the playstore, it's called Party Mixer by Prizmos Ltd. I think it will allow you to do what you describe. It has a large slider to balance the volume between the two mp3 players it contains. Give it a try, it's freeware.

 

[SkyJackpot]

Hi.

Is there an audioplayer app for android that has an option somewhere in the settings that allows one to run multiple instances of the app simultaneously?
I want to run two or more audioplayer apps side by side, so I can listen to an audiobook while listening to instrumental music.
Of course I want to be able to manage the volume of each of those instances separately, so I can play the music at a lower volume to ensure it doesn't interfere too much with listening to an audiobook.

Also, are there audioplayer apps that have an option somewhere in the settings to toggle the app to have a volume setting independent of other apps?
So I can run this audioplayer and a different audioplayer side by side and being able to set the volume for each of them separately.

Alternative, I'd also be interested in a volume manager app that allows one to regulate the volume of multiple apps that are active, similar to the volume mixer in windows where you can set the volume of all audiosources independently.

greetings and thanks in advance for any feedback, Niek

It should work with a lot of the audio players from the Google Play store. I just tested it using a music player called "PowerAmp" in the Google Play store and "Google Play Music" which is an audio player also available by searching the Google Play store.

With both of them open i played music in PowerAmp and listened to an audio file in Google Play Music and the volume was able to be changed very easily.

 

[dohduhdah]

There's a good mixer-player in the playstore, it's called Party Mixer by Prizmos Ltd. I think it will allow you to do what you describe. It has a large slider to balance the volume between the two mp3 players it contains. Give it a try, it's freeware.

Problem with that app is that it only seems to work with a single playlist.
It would be useful if both mp3 players worked with separate playlists.

E.g. one playlist containing all audiobook tracks (usually I want to go through this list in sequence)
and another playlist containing my music collection (I typically have that one on shuffle).

Also, usually I actually like to listen to 4 or 5 things simultaneously, so two playlists would be great, but I'd be more happy with an app that actually allows any numbers of mp3s to play simultaneously and in independent playlists, and each with an associate volume level that can be set independently.
Ideally, there should just be a good mp3 player that simply allows multiple instances to run simultaneously and a volume control that only applies to that specific player app and not to all apps on the device.

 

[dohduhdah]

It should work with a lot of the audio players from the Google Play store. I just tested it using a music player called "PowerAmp" in the Google Play store and "Google Play Music" which is an audio player also available by searching the Google Play store.

With both of them open i played music in PowerAmp and listened to an audio file in Google Play Music and the volume was able to be changed very easily.

It doesn't work, or at least not with the trial version of poweramp.
When I start poweramp, google play music stops playing. When I start google play music, poweramp stops playing. Also, google play music seems like an annoying music playing app, since it isn't even able to browse folders on the sd card to select a folder for playback (I'm talking about the actual folders, not the 'albums' that contain the mp3 files, since I want, for instance, to be able to play a jazz folder that contains subfolders with the actual jazz albums).

I've tried many different player apps (bsplayer free, n7 player, winamp, jetaudio basic, vlc, play music, poweramp, realplayer, party mixer, free vDJt, edjing for android, djstudio 5) and so far none really work very well.
My minimal requirements are independent volume level management and not
interfering with other player apps (e.g. one that stops the other player when it goes to the next track).

 

[dohduhdah]

With all those thousands (millions?) of apps out there for android, it truly mystifies me that there doesn't seem to be something as basic as a volume level mixer that controls the volume level for multiple apps. What's the point of being able to multitask if you can't even do something basic like that?

 

[dontpanicbobby]

dohduhdah, how do you make sense of 5 different things playing at 1 time? I'm not doubting your ability to do this mind you, I'm just curious what type of training you may have had to develop that talent? Can you really tell what each individual stream is doing or do you just pickup needful things from each one as they play? What would be an example of 5 audio streams you have played and enjoyed? I can grasp the concept of an audiobook playing with light music in the background but that's only 2 streams. 5 just boggles my mind...

 

[SkyJackpot]

With all those thousands (millions?) of apps out there for android, it truly mystifies me that there doesn't seem to be something as basic as a volume level mixer that controls the volume level for multiple apps. What's the point of being able to multitask if you can't even do something basic like that?

Well it works for me, so it seems like not being able to play 2 audio streams might be a limitation of your phone or Android operating system version my friend. Unfortunately I have no idea what phone or operating system version you're using so i can only give feedback to you on my own experiences.

I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S3 with Jelly Bean 4.1.2 and testing 2 audio players worked very easily for me, although I can't say I have any use for this functionality at this time. Maybe I will have in the future.

 

[dohduhdah]

dohduhdah, how do you make sense of 5 different things playing at 1 time? I'm not doubting your ability to do this mind you, I'm just curious what type of training you may have had to develop that talent? Can you really tell what each individual stream is doing or do you just pickup needful things from each one as they play? What would be an example of 5 audio streams you have played and enjoyed? I can grasp the concept of an audiobook playing with light music in the background but that's only 2 streams. 5 just boggles my mind...

Well, it very much depends on the kind of music (resonance vs interference). Also, you can have atmospheric audio in a separate channel (like birdsounds or subtle noises you might hear in a forest).

I enjoy minimal music, like la monte young and this tends to mix well with just about any other music. Then I also like experimental, electronic and ambient music, like john cage, brian eno, karlheinz stockhausen and again, that tends to mix well with most other kinds of music.
Then I have a separate playlist with a complete bach collection (teldec 2000) and a lot of jazz music.

So I play audiobooks or video courses (e.g. teaching company) at full volume, then I have 4 additional players with various kinds of music and audio.
One player with bird sounds (16 hours worth), volume level 5%.
One player with la monte young (30 hours), volumelevel 1%.
One player with stockhausen and AGP (avant garde music project) (169 hours), volume level 3%.
One player with Bach and various Jazz music (457 hours), volume level 5%.

I like the way that things are barely perceptable in the background, just loud enough to overcome environmental noises like the fans buzzing in the PC.

I even listen to 3 playlists in my sleep. Again, at a fairly low volume, but that way, whenever I can't sleep and lay awake, I always have something to listen to. I also find that the audibooks sometimes seem to influence my dreams.

It's fascinating that there are different ways to enjoy music. You can enjoy it by focusing your full attention on it, but you can also enjoy it in the background while your mind is engaged with other things. It's almost like a way to meditate and to observe how one's awareness can be somewhat distributed over different things you perceive. Just like when you listen to music, you're able to focus your attention on various individual instruments that are playing together.

 

[dohduhdah]

Well it works for me, so it seems like not being able to play 2 audio streams might be a limitation of your phone or Android operating system version my friend. Unfortunately I have no idea what phone or operating system version you're using so i can only give feedback to you on my own experiences.

I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S3 with Jelly Bean 4.1.2 and testing 2 audio players worked very easily for me, although I can't say I have any use for this functionality at this time. Maybe I will have in the future.

I'm using a HTC OXP with android 4.1.1.

Sometimes it works reasonably well to play multiple mp3s.
Like for instance, winamp and jetAudioBasic don't seem to interfere with each other. JetAudioBasic also has an equalizer with pre-amp, so this does allow one to lower the volume somewhat compared to the volumelevel of winamp.

So far I find that JetAudioBasic has the most features and seems to work best as an audioplayer, especially given that it's a free app.

But it would really simplify things if it had an option that allows one to run multiple instances.

On my previous smartphone, HTC Touch Pro, that runs windows mobile, it seems the audioplayers are better. I use pocket player, coreplayer and gsplayer and they work nicely together. Each has an independent volume level and they can also handle big playlists (thousands of mp3s) and large mp3s. Some of my mp3s are rather big, like almost 2 hours for the biggest one (single track) and such unusual files can crash players sometimes:

Dorian Blues in G by La Monte Young on Just Stompin - Free Music Streaming, Online Music, Videos - Grooveshark

 

[SkyJackpot]

I'm using a HTC OXP with android 4.1.1.

Sometimes it works reasonably well to play multiple mp3s.
Like for instance, winamp and jetAudioBasic don't seem to interfere with each other. JetAudioBasic also has an equalizer with pre-amp, so this does allow one to lower the volume somewhat compared to the volumelevel of winamp.

So far I find that JetAudioBasic has the most features and seems to work best as an audioplayer, especially given that it's a free app.

But it would really simplify things if it had an option that allows one to run multiple instances.

On my previous smartphone, HTC Touch Pro, that runs windows mobile, it seems the audioplayers are better. I use pocket player, coreplayer and gsplayer and they work nicely together. Each has an independent volume level and they can also handle big playlists (thousands of mp3s) and large mp3s. Some of my mp3s are rather big, like almost 2 hours for the biggest one (single track) and such unusual files can crash players sometimes:

Dorian Blues in G by La Monte Young on Just Stompin - Free Music Streaming, Online Music, Videos - Grooveshark

I'm glad that you've now found some success and have found out that the Android operating system can indeed play many audio files at once, contradictory to your previous comments, although I understand it can be frustrating when you don't find the solution to your query immediately, as happens with many comments which are made on Forums out of anger at that time. The answer to many life's problems is patience rather than being reactionary when there hadn't been any solutions or guidance posted at that time.

I'm glad you can listen with both Jet Audio and the other applications you mentioned, as I suggested you could earlier even though I haven't used Jet Audio yet, but such is the confidence I have in the Android operating system.

You mentioned a HTC phone which has the same capability of playing 2 audio files. I would like to remind you that the process of using coreplayer and gsplayer on your HTC phone is exactly what you have just achieved with Jet Audio and the other Android music player. If the music player has a volume control inside the application then it will be independently controllable, as I can confirm by my test using PowerAmp to turn the volume down and leave Google Music Player to play at the normal system volume.

You also mentioned the fact that you used 2 programs on your previous operating system. I'm not sure what you're definition of "multiple-instance" is but to me it would be 2 programs open which have the same name and identity and probably a different system identifier to allow you to use 2 instances of the same program at once. You said "gsplayer and coreplayer play nice with each other" which leads me to believe you had to open 2 different programs at once in order to gain the functionality you needed, so I'm not sure why you mentioned operating systems and multiple-instances like these are normal practices for developers to enable their applications to do...in any mobile operating system... As I said before its better to have a little patience before reacting.

I hope you are enjoying your audio book and enjoy the rest of your day.

 

[funkylogik]

I know (by accident) that i can stream audio (via an audio sreaming app) while PowerAmp plays local audio but i havent tried using two players to play local audio files at the same time. Im sure it would be possible though unless theyre tryin to play the same file(?)
Think i saw someone suggesting a DJ app though which would seem perfect for playing two sources and using a cross-fader to mix the volume :thumbup:

 

[funkylogik]

I'm glad that you've now found some success and have found out that the Android operating system can indeed play many audio files at once, contradictory to your previous comments, although I understand it can be frustrating when you don't find the solution to your query immediately, as happens with many comments which are made on Forums out of anger at that time. The answer to many life's problems is patience rather than being reactionary when there hadn't been any solutions or guidance posted at that time.

I'm glad you can listen with both Jet Audio and the other applications you mentioned, as I suggested you could earlier even though I haven't used Jet Audio yet, but such is the confidence I have in the Android operating system.

You mentioned a HTC phone which has the same capability of playing 2 audio files. I would like to remind you that the process of using coreplayer and gsplayer on your HTC phone is exactly what you have just achieved with Jet Audio and the other Android music player. If the music player has a volume control inside the application then it will be independently controllable, as I can confirm by my test using PowerAmp to turn the volume down and leave Google Music Player to play at the normal system volume.

You also mentioned the fact that you used 2 programs on your previous operating system. I'm not sure what you're definition of "multiple-instance" is but to me it would be 2 programs open which have the same name and identity and probably a different system identifier to allow you to use 2 instances of the same program at once. You said "gsplayer and coreplayer play nice with each other" which leads me to believe you had to open 2 different programs at once in order to gain the functionality you needed, so I'm not sure why you mentioned operating systems and multiple-instances like these are normal practices for developers to enable their applications to do...in any mobile operating system... As I said before its better to have a little patience before reacting.

I hope you are enjoying your audio book and enjoy the rest of your day.

Tbh that sounded (read) very passive aggressive mate. Try n keep things cool eh :beer:

 

[dohduhdah]

I'm glad that you've now found some success and have found out that the Android operating system can indeed play many audio files at once, contradictory to your previous comments, although I understand it can be frustrating when you don't find the solution to your query immediately, as happens with many comments which are made on Forums out of anger at that time. The answer to many life's problems is patience rather than being reactionary when there hadn't been any solutions or guidance posted at that time.

I'm glad you can listen with both Jet Audio and the other applications you mentioned, as I suggested you could earlier even though I haven't used Jet Audio yet, but such is the confidence I have in the Android operating system.

You mentioned a HTC phone which has the same capability of playing 2 audio files. I would like to remind you that the process of using coreplayer and gsplayer on your HTC phone is exactly what you have just achieved with Jet Audio and the other Android music player. If the music player has a volume control inside the application then it will be independently controllable, as I can confirm by my test using PowerAmp to turn the volume down and leave Google Music Player to play at the normal system volume.

You also mentioned the fact that you used 2 programs on your previous operating system. I'm not sure what you're definition of "multiple-instance" is but to me it would be 2 programs open which have the same name and identity and probably a different system identifier to allow you to use 2 instances of the same program at once. You said "gsplayer and coreplayer play nice with each other" which leads me to believe you had to open 2 different programs at once in order to gain the functionality you needed, so I'm not sure why you mentioned operating systems and multiple-instances like these are normal practices for developers to enable their applications to do...in any mobile operating system... As I said before its better to have a little patience before reacting.

I hope you are enjoying your audio book and enjoy the rest of your day.

I'm still not very satisfied, since players on android seem to use a central volume and tend to interfere most of the time (though there are exceptions for some combinations of players).
Like I've said, on windows mobile players have their own independent volume level and don't tend to interfere with each other most of the time. So for windows mobile it seems to be the exception for players to interfere with each other, while for android this seems to be the rule.

I've spent hours trying out various players on android and so far I've only managed to get two players working somewhat decently (meaning they have been playing and going through the playlist for a fair amount of time without problems).
In my experience it was much easier to achieve my desired combination of player apps on windows mobile.

I find it frustrating that there are so many apps on android to play music and not a single one I've found so far has an option in the settings to toggle whether or not the volume can be set independent of the volume of other apps. I can understand that they might have this as a default behavior, but I don't understand players with many settings don't have a setting to toggle this off for people who use multiple apps that generate audio and who want to manage the volume independently.

Also, google music player is excluded from consideration right away, because it doesn't even have the ability to select an entire folder (including subfolders) for playback. Such basic features are really a minimal requirement, otherwise it can't be taken seriously as a music player app.

If my posting sounds a bit whining, I'm sorry about that, but I hope you can understand my frustration of trying out dozens of player apps for many hours and achieving rather meager results for all that time and energy put into it (given that it took much less effort to achieve my goal on windows mobile).

I was talking about multiple instances because I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be practical on a mobile system, just like it can be practical on a computer. On the computer, it's usually no problem whatsoever to run multiple instances of the same program side by side (winamp, vlc, bsplayer, etc..) and I reckon it should at least be an option in programs on a mobile system like android (or windows mobile for that matter). Simply because it can often be very useful to have the ability to run and use a particular program multiple times side by side. Perhaps with the exception of video, as a smartphone usually doesn't have so much space on the display that you can watch two videos at the same time (like you can easily do on the computer).

 

[dohduhdah]

I know (by accident) that i can stream audio (via an audio sreaming app) while PowerAmp plays local audio but i havent tried using two players to play local audio files at the same time. Im sure it would be possible though unless theyre tryin to play the same file(?)
Think i saw someone suggesting a DJ app though which would seem perfect for playing two sources and using a cross-fader to mix the volume :thumbup:

There is no reason multiple programs (or multiple instances of the same program) should have any issues playing the same file simultaneously.
When two programs try to modify the same file at the same time, then you obviously run into problems, but reading a particular file from disk/flashmemory by multiple applications usually works fine.

I've tried 3 DJ apps and that might indeed be an option with a cross slider to manage the volume level between the two players, but it seems the problem is that most of those players don't tend to support multiple playlists.

Edjing for android (a dj app) looked pretty nice, but I ran into problems after trying it out for a while, it would suddenly jump back at the splash screen it shows when you start it and become unresponsive for an unreasonably long time (multiple minutes). The better apps at least remain responsive at all times, even when it does things in the background that take a while (like scanning a large folder of mp3s).

Most annoying are apps that start by attempting to search 64 gb of memory on the phone for mp3s and become unresponsive for half an hour or so without any possibility to stop this behavior (except for going to the task manager and terminating the app completely) or to toggle off this 'feature'.

 

[funkylogik]

Yeah understood mate
Cant you point/tell those apps which folders to scan like on poweramp so they dont waste time scanning the whole card?

 

[SkyJackpot]

Tbh that sounded (read) very passive aggressive mate. Try n keep things cool eh :beer:

Well that's just going to have to be left up to interpretation as I started 2 paragraphs with "I'm glad" (which I presume you think I didn't mean) and i even wished the poster a good day at the end.

Alot of things online or while typing on something like instant messenger can be misinterpreted when you can't see the persons face but I'm afraid in this case the only thing I didn't do is put smiley emojis after every paragraph.

He seems to be okay, thanks for your concern

 

[funkylogik]

Lol even that seemed sarcastic! Yeah i know what you mean mate, text can be taken in the wrong way because we cant see the persons facial expressions. Sorry man (not sarcasm lol) and have a greAt life (not sarcasm) lol :beer:

 

[SkyJackpot]

Hi.

Is there an audioplayer app for android that has an option somewhere in the settings that allows one to run multiple instances of the app simultaneously?

I want to run two or more audioplayer apps side by side, so I can listen to an audiobook while listening to instrumental music.
Of course I want to be able to manage the volume of each of those instances separately, so I can play the music at a lower volume to ensure it doesn't interfere too much with listening to an audiobook.

Also, are there audioplayer apps that have an option somewhere in the settings to toggle the app to have a volume setting independent of other apps?
So I can run this audioplayer and a different audioplayer side by side and being able to set the volume for each of them separately

As per your first post, I made a small test of PowerAmp and Google Play Music running side by side playing an audio book and volume levelling controls in PowerAmp to simulate background music. I understand you don't like Google Play Music player but I hope you can find some other music players that you do like and see how you feel about them

It doesn't work, or at least not with the trial version of PowerAmp

 

[dohduhdah]

As per your first post, I made a small test of PowerAmp and Google Play Music running side by side playing an audio book and volume levelling controls in PowerAmp to simulate background music. I understand you don't like Google Play Music player but I hope you can find some other music players that you do like and see how you feel about them

Well, as you can see in the video, the main volume in poweramp still influences the volumelevel of the audiobook playing in google play music and that's exactly what I dislike.
The preamp does allow independent control, but that's somewhat more limited compared to the main volume control. Also, poweramp seems prone to interfere with other players as far as I can tell. I can't even get it to work with google play music like you do, perhaps because I'm using a different version (I use the trial version of poweramp).

 

[dohduhdah]

Yeah understood mate
Cant you point/tell those apps which folders to scan like on poweramp so they dont waste time scanning the whole card?

Sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. I think an app should at least have a way to abort this if it starts by scanning the entire flashmemory for media.

 

[funkylogik]

I use the pro version of PA and while i cant say how it mingles with other apps, i can confirm that its volume control is exactly the same as using the phones volume buttons so youre right, pre-amp gain is the only independant volume control u have there :thumbup:

 

[dohduhdah]

I'm using a HTC OXP with android 4.1.1.

Sometimes it works reasonably well to play multiple mp3s.
Like for instance, winamp and jetAudioBasic don't seem to interfere with each other. JetAudioBasic also has an equalizer with pre-amp, so this does allow one to lower the volume somewhat compared to the volumelevel of winamp.

So far I find that JetAudioBasic has the most features and seems to work best as an audioplayer, especially given that it's a free app.

But it would really simplify things if it had an option that allows one to run multiple instances.

On my previous smartphone, HTC Touch Pro, that runs windows mobile, it seems the audioplayers are better. I use pocket player, coreplayer and gsplayer and they work nicely together. Each has an independent volume level and they can also handle big playlists (thousands of mp3s) and large mp3s. Some of my mp3s are rather big, like almost 2 hours for the biggest one (single track) and such unusual files can crash players sometimes:

Dorian Blues in G by La Monte Young on Just Stompin - Free Music Streaming, Online Music, Videos - Grooveshark

After some more testing I have to say that winamp is the best as far as interference is concerned. Winamp never seems to stop other players when it advances to the next track and winamp is never stopped either when other players advance to the next track.
Jetaudio never causes other players to stop, but other players (like poweramp and n7) do cause jetaudio to stop.
Vlc is similar to winamp in that it doesn't interfere with other players, but featurewise it's very limited (as one might expect with a beta version).

Now at least it seems I do get 3 players working simultaneously reasonably well. VLC, N7 and winamp.
N7 and winamp have a preamp which allows me to lower the volume independent of other players.
Only other issue with N7 (apart from the fact that it's unfortunate it interferes with jetaudio) is that you can't select a folder for playback if it has subfolders with mp3s rather than actual mp3s.
Anyway, I've sent some suggestions to the developers of winamp and n7, and I hope they will improve upon those players so they either are less prone to interfere with other players or allow running multiple instances.

 

[dohduhdah]

After some more testing I have to say that winamp is the best as far as interference is concerned. Winamp never seems to stop other players when it advances to the next track and winamp is never stopped either when other players advance to the next track.
Jetaudio never causes other players to stop, but other players (like poweramp and n7) do cause jetaudio to stop.
Vlc is similar to winamp in that it doesn't interfere with other players, but featurewise it's very limited (as one might expect with a beta version).

Now at least it seems I do get 3 players working simultaneously reasonably well. VLC, N7 and winamp.
N7 and winamp have a preamp which allows me to lower the volume independent of other players.
Only other issue with N7 (apart from the fact that it's unfortunate it interferes with jetaudio) is that you can't select a folder for playback if it has subfolders with mp3s rather than actual mp3s.
Anyway, I've sent some suggestions to the developers of winamp and n7, and I hope they will improve upon those players so they either are less prone to interfere with other players or allow running multiple instances.

Hmmm, vlc is still too unstable it seems.. after a few hours of playing it suddenly freezes. Fortunately I've found another player that looks suitable. It's called rocketplayer and it's the first one I've found that has an option in the settings to specifically ignore other apps during playback.
I will have to do some more testing with it, but it seems like either the combo
{N7, winamp, rocketplayer} or {jetaudio, winamp, rocketplayer} should work together.
I've also tried playerpro but it seems prone to interfere with playback in other players when it advances between tracks.

 

[SkyJackpot]

I've sent some suggestions to the developers of winamp and n7, and I hope they will improve upon those players so they either are less prone to interfere with other players or allow running multiple instances.

Seems like the developers of Winamp will have to take all of these suggestions and program them with great speed, judging by the reviews of Winamp in the Google Play store

I'll stick with the number 6 top ranked application called PowerAmp, I'm not prepared to deal with applications which are poorly programmed, although I'm glad you're able to overcome these things and it works for your HTC.