Experts Online

Want to add AVRCP support to GSPlayer? Here's the long-awaited solution!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:46:31 -0500

GSPlayer is a well-known, excellent, free (!!!!), constantly updated audio player application I’ve very frequently elaborated on (search my blog for my related articles).

Brand new beta of best audio recorder app Resco Audio Recorder out – really worth upgrading!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:09:49 -0500

It was about a month ago that Resco released the first beta of their brand new Resco Audio Recorder series (see review HERE).

The brand new version (beta 3) has just been released, available HERE and sports the following:

Problems with iPAQ 2190, 2490 & 2790 fixed
Don't go to foreground while phone call recording
Don't start recording upon

Resco has released first beta of their brand new and GREAT audio recorder application

Werner Ruotsalainen — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 02:23:29 -0500

Anyone that has read the Windows Mobile Audio Recording Bible knows Audio Recorder by Resco, one of the best audio recorder solutions for Windows Mobile.

Resco has just released a public beta of the brand new version of the application. It’s available here and certainly worth checking out if you like Resco Audio Recorder and want something better.

You can read the official “what’s news” list at the above-linked page. Here, I “only” elaborate on MY real-world, unbiased benchmarks and pros/cons list. I give special attention to providing a side-by-side comparison to PMRecorder, the best, free automated call recorder solution for Windows Mobile.

This also means you’ll want to read the PMRecorder article, the Windows Mobile Audio Recording Bible and, with the MP3 playback CPU usage benchmarks, the Windows Mobile Multimedia Players’ CPU usage Bible to fully understand this review; I don’t explain everything from the basics here. Also note that the pros/cons list only discusses the changes between the previous and the current version.

ROUNDUP: Bluetooth remote control (AVRCP) compatible media players

Werner Ruotsalainen — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:50:37 -0500

Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) is a very nice feature of Bluetooth. Accessible on Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)-capable Bluetooth Hi-Fi stereo headphones, they allow for remote controlling your media player on the Pocket PC: going straight to the next or back to the previous song or pause/resume or stop/restart the current one.

Now that I’m working on a big roundup of Bluetooth Hi-Fi stereo headphones, I’ve also thoroughly scrutinized the AVRCP capabilities of current Pocket PC multimedia players. In this article (which will be followed a lot of similar articles discussing AVCRP (and, naturally, A2DP) compliance of different stereo BT headphones), I elaborate on what you need to know about remote controlling your Pocket PC-based media player from the Plantronics Pulsar 590A stereo headset.

Unfortunately, current headsets are far from being compatible with all multimedia players and Pocket PC's. There are several multimedia players and Pocket PC's (more precisely, specific Bluetooth stack / A2DP / AVCRP implementations) not compatible with the Pulsar while it's compatible with other models and vice versa (for example, the built-in A2DP of the WM5-upgraded 2.01 hx4700 works just great with the 590A while it's almost useless with the Moto HT820). Therefore, what you read here mostly applies to the Pulsar only. Still, if you have (or, plan to purchase) a different model, this article will be really worth reading because it discusses a lot of additional hacks and tips - not only related to the Pulsar headset. For example, in addition to a lot of "which is the best media player I should look for", I also provide some dependable CPU usage statistics (playing a 112 kbps MP3 (Värttinä – Oi Dai / Oi Dai)) so that you will be able to compare the battery usage of each application (with and without the equalizer enabled – it’s only with TCPMP that enabling the equalizer caused some visible CPU usage increase. The CPU usage data was measured on my Pocket Loox 720; with WMP10, on my WM5 hx4700).

How do I take screenshots of great multimedia player TCPMP (or, any other decent video player) playing videos on my Dell Axim x5

Werner Ruotsalainen — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 01:17:13 -0500

Now, after publishing my roundup of capturing the screen of Pocket PC’s where I’ve also elaborated on the chances of capturing the screen of HTC Camera, I’ve received a question regarding doing the same with the great multimedia / video player TCPMP on Dell Axim x50v/x51v devices.

On these devices, by default, TCPMP playing videos can not be captured – the active video area shows the same symptoms as that of HTC Camera (that is, nothing can be seen on the capture, let it be captur

TUTORIAL: Make your Midi files sound much better with the just-released, free instrument (patch) set!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 04:16:06 -0500

It was just some days ago that in my (Pocket PC Thoughts-frontpaged) article on Midi players on the Pocket PC, I’ve elaborated on the question of playing midi files on the Pocket PC.

In the meantime, a lot has happened. First, the latest, 2.25 version of GSPlayer has been released (already supporting playing midi files through a plug-in). It’s (still) based on Timidity (please read the previous roundup to see what it means) and, therefore, doesn’t deliver any sound (instrument) quality enhancement – it’s just easier to use as an all-in-one sound player also supporting midi files.

What is very important, though, is that a brand new instrument set has also been released for Timidity by Wilson Seto , which lets for changing some of the original, lower-quality instrument patches to much more natural and better-sounding patches.

Updated the Midi player roundup – again

Werner Ruotsalainen — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 07:44:36 -0500

Updated the Midi player roundup – again. Now, I’ve put a LOT of example recordings (in WMA) in there so that you can listen to the sample midis without the need for installing the players. I've also greatly updated the comparison chart.

Playing Midi files on the Pocket PC updated

Werner Ruotsalainen — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 08:05:48 -0500

http://www.smartphonemag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1127&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I've heavily updated Playing Midi files on the Pocket PC – the complete roundup - make sure you check it out agan if you've already read the previous version.

Playing Midi files on the Pocket PC - the complete roundup

Werner Ruotsalainen — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:57:36 -0500

Many Pocket PC users would like to know how midi files (a form of storing music information used everywhere, even in low-end phones) can be played on the Pocket PC. This is why I’ve done some serious work, resulting in this roundup, which is highly recommended for anyone that wants to listen to midi music on his or her Pocket PC.

First, most “generic” players like TCPMP do not play midi files (as far as TCPMP is concerned, only later, commercial versions (CorePlayer) of it may receive Midi support (also see this thread)). Other generic players ditto. (Actually, no wonder most of them lack support for Midi. Playing Midi files requires a so-called ‘instrument set’ of your own, which can take 1-2 Mbytes and, unless you use / license third-party instrument sets, are very hard to create.)

Fortunately, there still are a great deal of programs to choose from. In this roundup, I elaborate them all.

HTC Album and Windows Media Player 10 on (HTC) PPC Phone Edition devices

HTC Album, HTC's own (pretty bad - see the Roundup of picture viewers/editors for the Pocket PC platform for more info if interested) Phone Edition devices, under WM5, are also able to play midi files. They use exactly the same midi libraries as HTC’s old Album (also shipped installed to, say, the Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720).

This, unfortunately, also means pretty bad problems (static or plain wrong instruments, as is the case with the Monty Python test midi file - I'll elaborate on the test files I used later) with playing midi files. Note that these problems are also present on the latest HTC Phone Edition devices (for example, the latest i-mate HTC Wizard ROM) – that is, they haven’t been fixed.

Therefore, if you’re seriously into playing midi files, I recommend switching to either the free GSPlayer 1.16 or, if you need it’s a bit better instrument quality and wider stereo, IntelliArt Midi Player 4.0.0.

Pros

Comes with some non-Phone Edition, camera-equipped devices like the Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 and with all WM5 Phone Edition devices like the HTC Wizard

Cons

Static, very annoying noise
Major problems with some of the instruments

This screenshot shows WMP10 on a Pocket PC Phone Edition device playing a midi (again, WMP10 will NOT play midi files on a non-Phone Edition device!), and this shows the properties of the midi file. The HTC midi-plug-in in WMP10 offers no advanced capabilities like individual channel en/disabling.

Note that some people have managed to “hack” the HTC Midi support to non-Phone Edition WM5 Pocket PC’s. Again, it uses a low-quality instrument set and should, therefore, be avoided.

Listen to the music of the great space shooter game Enslave without having to start the game!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 05:41:48 -0500

NOTICE: this article also contains some information on .mod players for the Pocket PC – that is, not only on Enslave itself!

It was just a few days ago that Enslave, the great, new space shooter game has been released.

The game, in addition to being a really great space shooter game, also has really great music. The music files can be found in the music subdirectrory of the game (which can be found, if you install it to the main memory, at \Program Files\Enslave or \Program Files\Enslave Demo with the full/demo version, respectively.

These files are simple MOD module files and can be played in any mod-capable multimedia players. That is, if you would like to listen to the music of the game without having to run it, just rename the contents of this directory (or just the individual file you want to listen to – the filenames speak for themselves) to '.mod'.