Tag / audio

by Kush Sharma

Android : The best music player out there

PowerAmp

This music player unlocks a whole new world for mobile audiophiles, including a 10 band equalizer, greatly expanded file support, and a somewhat customizable interface. Ever since Gingerbread days till now, Poweramp continues to be the most powerful music player for Android and has a huge fan following.

What works well on Poweramp

The interface is somewhat similar to the stock music app, but it unlocks several new features for advanced playback that should meet just about any need you might have on your phone or tablet. For example, instead of just using a long, nested set of commands, you can give quick commands like swiping to navigate playlists quickly.

Title Screen

Oh how wonderful the file support is. While listening to FLAC files on your mobile device is a little silly when you think about it (as most phones don’t have a good digital to analog converter chip), being able to equalize your music while listening on the go is fantastic if your music tastes vary. If you have great headphones to match, this is a fantastic way to bring out the best in your music when you’re on the go. As another plus, this app doesn’t seem to chew through as much battery as other music players do.

lockscreen

Lock Screen

Interface and Features

Once installed, you’re presented with a clean and easy to use interface. The UI is extremely novice-friendly giving you oversized media . Your music can be sorted according to the usual artist, album categories or you can choose folder view, which shows you all your music the way you have copied it on your phone. Tapping on this takes you to the playlist from where you can switch folders. The album art area also houses the shuffle and repeat toggle buttons along with a five star rating system.

Library

What makes Poweramp one of the most sought after music player is the long list of audio formats supported. The list includes mp3, mp4/m4a (including alac), ogg, wma, flac, wav, ape, wv, tta, mpc, aiff, which covers pretty much every format you can find audio in these days. The ability to customise the sound is also very extensive. We start off with a 10-band graphic equaliser that can be used to fine tune your music depending on what genre of songs you listen to the most. There are plenty of presets as well and you can also use the sound enhancements (like Dolby or HTC FX) that come with some phones in Poweramp. Besides that, you also have the option to adjust the bass and treble separately along with a volume limiter. You can also add extra effects like Stereo eXpansion, mono mixing and adjust the balance. Every change you make is noticeable provided you have a good pair of headphones. Other features include support for crossfading, gapless playback, queuing system, ability to update missing album art and even download lyrics of the song through the musiXmatch plugin.

Pros & Cons:

Pros

  • One of the best fully featured Android music players
  • Features equalizer for custom or premade presets
  • Super slick user interface with themes

Cons

  • Cannot play Podcasts

Performance

With the right pair of headphones, the audio quality is really good and beats any other player in the market. The equaliser and or audio effects make a huge impact on the audio quality and you can actually make out the difference between mp3 and flac files. One neat feature is the ability to parse .cue and m3u files. If you download radio shows, especially trance music, you’ll often come across one single file that’s an hour long. Cue and m3u files help breakdown this singular file into individual tracks so you can skip to the one you want without having to split the track physically. Gapless playback support is also present for albums that feature it.

EqualizerYou also get plenty of widgets for your homescreen to choose from, including a very nice lockscreen widget. You can customise the amount of information to be displayed on the lockscreen widget too, from album art to equaliser controls. Poweramp also gives you the option to change the theme. You get a bunch of them by default and you can even install third party themes from the Play Store. One feature that we feel should be added is a social component. Apps like MixZing allow you to play your music from your library as well as search for trending tracks around the globe. You can even see what your friends are listening to at the moment and rate songs so your friends can find them.

 

Verdict : Worth the download?

If you want to milk a better audio experience out of your mobile device and don’t want to carry around all sorts of unnecessary clutter like external amps in your pocket, this app is a good way to start consolidating your devices into one unit. Poweramp is available for as little as Rs129 for the full version, which makes it extremely good value. The app is compatible with Android v2.1 and upwards and is constantly being updated with bug fixes and support for the latest version of Android. If you have an Android phone and want to experiment with its audio, Poweramp is the most popular audio app in the Play Store for a reason and we strongly suggest you ditch the stock player for Poweramp.

Get it on Play Store

by Kush Sharma

How to: Hide your data in a Audio Song

sound-secret-files-newfile

Introduction

Due to the way different file types are read it is possible to have a single file that acts differently depending on how it is read. For example sounds & images are read from the header down whereas ZIP files are read from the footer up.

All sound files should work, but some are more unpredictable that others. Mp3s seem to be the most reliable so this tutorial will be using them in the examples (plus who doesn’t love mp3 songs). All the steps are same if you want to use an image(.jpg) instead of sound.

How to create one

Firstly get hold of a sound file you want to hide the data in (example sound.mp3), then gather all your files you want to hide and put them in a ZIP (example secret.zip).

Our chosen Sound and zip file:

sound-secret-files

Windows 7: Shift+right click in the folder containing the files will open command prompt in that directory Windows: Open command prompt (start->run cmd), then use cd to get to the folder where the files are stored. Linux: You know what to do, open terminal and move to directory containing files.

We now need to merge these files together, but we want to use a binary merge to keep the two files intact. With Windows copy command this uses the /B switch. (Binary Data)

Windows

Code:

copy /B sound.mp3+secret.zip newfile.mp3

Linux

Code:

cat sound.mp3 secret.zip > newfile.mp3

You should now have gained a new file called newfile.mp3. This should look identical to the sound you started with when opened with a media player, but with a secret payload hidden within. Here is the example sound containing a ZIP:

sound-secret-files-command

The two simplest ways to get your data back out of these files is to either change the extension from .mp3 to .zip or to open your chosen ZIP program and open newfile.mp3 within that. You should now be presented with your original files.

sound-secret-files-access-data

One more way of getting your .zip file back is to run this code:

copy /b newfile.mp3 file.zip

This is clearly not a secure way to store your data but as a quick and dirt solution to hide files it works well enough. If you are storing text documents in the ZIP then the contents of them will still be visible in a HEX editor looking at newfile.mp3. There are much better steganography tools that use encryption keys to securely store your data within other files.

This method only appends new data (from secret.zip, in this article) into after the footer identifier of mask file (sound.mp3). Good media player will only read from header to footer, and will not read further than that. So whatever data we add will not be read, and the original file will remain in good condition. only it’s size is changing because we add more data into it. The same applies to every file which has header and footer identifier (e.g. jpeg, png, gif, mp3, mp4, exe, and most of known file format).

by Kush

Use VLC to stream video and audio

VLC includes a fairly easy-to-use streaming feature that can stream music and videos over a local network or the Internet. You can tune into the stream using VLC or other media players.

Use VLC’s web interface as a remote control to control the stream from elsewhere. Bear in mind that you may not have the bandwidth to stream high-definition videos over the Internet, though.

Broadcasting a Stream

To start broadcasting a network stream, click the Media menu in VLC and select Stream.

In the Open Media dialog, select the media you want to stream. You can select one or more files on the Files tab, select a CD or DVD on the Disc tab, or even capture video from a specific device on the Capture Device tab. For example, you could stream your desktop by selecting Desktop on the Capture Device tab.

Click the Stream button after selecting your media.

The Stream Output window will appear. The first pane just lists the media source you selected – click Next to continue.

vlc-stream

On the Destination Setup pane, you’ll need to choose a destination for your stream. For example, you can select HTTP to listen for connections – other computers can connect to your computer and watch the stream. You can also select UDP to broadcast to a specific IP address or range of IP addresses.

After selecting your destination, click the Add button. You may also want to activate the Display locally check box – if you do, you’ll see and hear the media being streamed on your local computer, so you’ll know it’s playing correctly.

After adding a destination, you’ll be able to customize its settings. With the HTTP destination, you could specify a custom path – but the default one will work fine.

vlc-stream-http

You can also tweak the transcoding settings – by transcoding to a lower quality, VLC can save network bandwidth.

Click Next to continue to the Option Setup pane – you probably don’t need to tweak any of the advanced options here. To start streaming, click the Stream button.

vlc

 

If you selected the Display locally option, the media will start playing locally on your computer.

If you have a firewall enabled, ensure that VLC is an allowed program or no computers will be able to connect. If you’re trying to stream over the Internet, you may also need to forward ports on your router.

 Connecting to a Stream

To tune in to a stream, click the Media menu in VLC on another computer and select Open Network Stream.

Assuming you used HTTP, enter an address like http://IP.Address:8080.

(If you specified a custom path for your HTTP stream in the Path box, you’ll need to specify the custom path here. For example, if you specified /path as your custom path, you’d enter http://IP.Address:8080/path in the box here.)

After clicking Play, the stream should start playing. To control playback remotely, try setting up VLC’s web interface. If you encounter an error, make sure VLC isn’t being blocked by a firewall on the streaming system.