Cracking in Audio Playback with 8.1 Update

Desynthesis

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May 12, 2014
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We actually have a thread on this in Xbox Music, but as the community has eventually found, it's not an Xbox Music problem, so much as an 8.1 problem, so I thought it'd be worthwhile to share it here.

"Cracking" is the common name for a fraction of a second of music, seemingly chosen at random, in audio playback after a song ends but before the next song. As it has to happen between songs, you obviously won't encounter it if you play only one song at a tile (upon which the player simply stops). You can think of it as the "opposite" of gapless playback (hah!) in that regards. It's generally characterized by always being present so long as the same method of playback is used--in my case, not streaming music (so, not Pandora or presumably Xbox Music streaming), played through headphones. If you don't have such a "crack" when you normally do, it's not because the problem isn't occurring--you've simply finished a song that had moments of very low sound, and as such, the "crack" just happened to play an inaudible fraction of a second.

What makes this problem interesting isn't all the various strange issues with Xbox Music, some of which have been addressed. The problem manifests on multiple music playback apps (and for some very unfortunate people, also streaming apps). It's that there don't seem to have been any cases of this occurring back in Windows Phone 8.0. Which is sensible--how would Microsoft hope to sell a smart phone where music playback is always characterized by a often-loud CRACK between songs? That's about as attractive as a badly-skipping CD player.

This problem, instead, seems to be the consequence of something in 8.1 being incompatible with the playback system in many or most 8.0 phones. I'd like to hear if anyone who had phones immediately launched with 8.1 (like the Lumia 930) have the same problem--I suspect they don't. And there isn't really any indication that Microsoft is aware of the issue (I'd love to be proven wrong, particularly here).

So, that's the gist of it. A particular bug of the release of 8.1, that hasn't been corrected with Cyan, is a playback glitch with music stored on the phone itself. It seems 8.1 has a long list of problems in introduces into the ecosystem (most of the high-profile post-8.1 patches seem to be corrective in nature), so here's another one to add to the list. And hopefully it sheds some light on anyone who encounters this hard-to-describe bug.
 

anon(8150199)

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Oct 18, 2013
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It's not just music, it's everywhere! And especially this app, while excellent (and free), is driving me insane. The skips almost always occur at the end of every tracks!

Edit: I'm on the 920, and it's been like this since 8.1 was available in DP. Neither Cyan nor 8.1.1 fixes it!
 

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