Strange Audio File Sound Bug

[Pyth7]

Hi, I have a series of audio files in both wave and flac formats from the same album. These files have sound through both Bluetooth and the 3.5 jack, but NOT through the Samsung J37 Android 8.1 phone's own speaker. Anyone know what might cause this? The problem is isolated to this album.
Thanks!

 

[AugieTN]

Is it a humming sound? or some other sound?

 

[Dannydet]

Could be a setting for excluding sound duration? What app are you playing these with?

 

[Pyth7]

Could be a setting for excluding sound duration? What app are you playing these with?

Poweramp originally, but the Samsung music player has the same problem. A friend of mine duplicates the problem on his phone of a Galaxy a71 5g that has Android 10 or 13. Thanks for your reply!

 

[svim]

How odd those files won't play on the phone's speaker but are OK elsewhere. One good thing is this appears to be an isolated problem that's apparently repeatable and not some kind of glitch that pops up occasionally.

-- Is this problem happening with both wav and flac files, or just one format?

-- Have you tried re-ripping the album, perhaps using a lower level of bit rate?

-- The Poweramp app has a pretty extensive Settings menu. Have you tried changing any of its audio playback options to see if that's a factor?

 

[Pyth7]

Is it a humming sound? or some other sound?

Absolute silence from the phone's speaker.

 

[Pyth7]

How odd those files won't play on the phone's speaker but are OK elsewhere. One good thing is this appears to be an isolated problem that's apparently repeatable and not some kind of glitch that pops up occasionally.

-- Is this problem happening with both wav and flac files, or just one format?

-- Have you tried re-ripping the album, perhaps using a lower level of bit rate?

-- The Poweramp app has a pretty extensive Settings menu. Have you tried changing any of its audio playback options to see if that's a factor?

The problem is with both wav and flac files.
"re-ripping" I have the music in both original published CD and downloaded formats. I tried using the downloaded wavs first of course when the problem showed up. So then I extracted the CD tracks via Goldwave to wav files, but the problem still existed. I've extracted many CDs that way and they've all played fine my phone.
I'm stubborn, so then I recorded a track from my CD player via the input jack on my computer's sound card. Too weird, because the problem STILL existed!
"lower level of bit rate." No, I haven't tried that, but I will once I figure out how.
"Poweramp" The same problem happens with Samsung's ubiquitous music player, but I'll try that too thanks!

 

[AugieTN]

Absolute silence from the phone's speaker.

The problem is with both wav and flac files.
"re-ripping" I have the music in both original published CD and downloaded formats. I tried using the downloaded wavs first of course when the problem showed up. So then I extracted the CD tracks via Goldwave to wav files, but the problem still existed. I've extracted many CDs that way and they've all played fine my phone.
I'm stubborn, so then I recorded a track from my CD player via the input jack on my computer's sound card. Too weird, because the problem STILL existed!
"lower level of bit rate." No, I haven't tried that, but I will once I figure out how.
"Poweramp" The same problem happens with Samsung's ubiquitous music player, but I'll try that too thanks!

Since you're talking about ripping and ...Absolute silence from the phone's speaker.

Could it be a DRM issue you're facing? Just a thought from you have posted

 

[Pyth7]

Since you're talking about ripping and ...Absolute silence from the phone's speaker.

Could it be a DRM issue you're facing? Just a thought from you have posted

Good question, but keep in mind the problem happens with the original files downloaded from the publisher too.
Those, like all the copies I made, play only through the 3.5 jack or Bluetooth. So, I have to ask myself, why would a publisher publish something that can't be heard on the original file?
Thanks again!

 

[olbriar]

Have you confirmed the files are actually playing with phone speakers as the output? Switching back and forth between outputs during playback should confirm this. It playback is halted while speaker output is chosen will narrow down the problem. Perhaps it's output gain and it's not enough to drive the speakers. I can think of no reason a playable file would be choosy about the output source. It's an intriguing problem. I wish I was clever enough to solve the problem.

 

[Hadron]

Is it all of the files on this album, or just some? "Just some" would be very weird, but then this is weird anyway.

The fact that it plays through the 3.5mm jack but not the speaker is especially odd. If it only played through BT or USB then it would suggest that the phone's analogue output was not working for these files but digital outputs were, e.g. the internal DAC not processing the files. But the speaker and the 3.5mm jack are just 2 different analogue outputs. I would expect that switching between the two would just be controlled by the switch in the jack socket (that detects when the jack is inserted): if that broke then it could explain sound coming from headphones but not speaker, but that wouldn't depend on what file you were playing.

So what does that leave? Either some software thing, or the phone having different DACs for speaker and headphones, one of which can process the files and one of which can't. The trouble is that both of those sound unlikely! Where in the chain would there be a bit of software that says "ah, there's something about this file that means I should not output sound if the output device is the speaker but fine if it's the headphones"? Your music player seems unlikely to do that, and I can't really think what else might. So maybe the phone actually does have a separate DAC for the headphone socket (though that sounds more expensive to make, whereas the J series were budget phones) and for some reason one of them can't process the files? But since you are ripping them then presumably things like bitrates etc will be the same as for other albums you rip? And I don't think DRM is likely, since I'd expect that to stop it ripping rather than produce something which plays fine through one device but not another? So yeah, maybe look at the files and see whether there is anything obviously different about bitrates or sampling (your music players should be able to give you information about the files), but I can't think of anything that really makes sense here.

 

[svim]

So puzzling. It's apparently limited to just those files so that's good but determining the source of the problem is a real challenge. All your other audio files don't have this problem so blanket statements that there's a problem with your phone or the media player apps are really conditional. The only common thread that pops up is both you and your friend are using Galaxy phones. Both being made by Samsung. This is of course mostly making a completely unfounded accusation -- even more unfounded since, from a software standpoint, each phone is running a completely different version of Android but a possibility as far as hardware- and software-based codec/decode support that's inherent to each phone (i.e. each model has its own unique hardware/component configuration. This being a Samsung specific problem because of some obscure audio playback decoder issue that's only being triggered by some also obscure aspect to these particular audio files is a possibility, Samsung loves to be unique.

But all that aside, is there something different in these particular audio files regarding their content? Something that differentiates them from your other audio files?

 

[Hadron]

Actually that got me thinking: the 2 formats you mention are supposed to be natively supported, but what happens if as a test you rip one of these files to something else: mp3, aac, ogg or whatever? Sure, lower quality than flac, but just to test whether the format matters?

 

[svim]

Any chance you can post one of those problematic audio files so we can download it to see what happens on our phones?