Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

how bout bluetooth headphones?

will it consume more cpu???

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Well...I just restarted and the music keeps playing without stuttering with 3G ánd browsing. Let me try opening up more windows. So far so good...

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Well I'm pretty sure bluetooth headphones will use alot more cpu.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

This issue as usual is probably related to many things that just sum up and is probably not so easy to reproduce.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Bluetooth peaks at some 30 mA so I'm guessing lower power consumption for BT versus wired headphones at least. CPU is not that much of an issue, there's hardware for that, but something has to be going on, piping overhead at least. Seems like a very small overhead to me, certainly nothing to stutter over.

Bluetooth doesn't sound as good though.

@slender
Why would a player use more CPU for headphones as opposed to speakers? Why would the CPU care?

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Well a restart of the phone seems to temporary fix the problem...Ofcourse this really isn't a acceptable solution but for now it works with 3 browser windows and the FLAC rip without problems....

-edit-

Meh...The music stuttered and I hadn't touched my phone for a while...Something in the background is causing the stuttering...Maybe the internal memory is too slow?

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34863

Not sure. Maybe because of mixer. But there was another thread also. I´ll try to find it.

.edit
Here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36936
..edit
and also here
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36555

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

yikes!

Thanks man, that i agree, 2 apps are running in case of bluetooth headphones

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Start xterm and run top and observe it for a while. There should be pulseaudio and mafw-dbus-wrapper about 12-20 cpu.

.edit
And probably issue is not entirely because of CPU it's also about IO activity.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

"apparently nokia had to implement software eq for speaker"

Nokia has EQ and we don't?

*frowns*

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

pulseaudio eating about 25-26% and mafw around 10%


Anyways...It's pretty annoying that something that looks really simple can cause this much trouble...I really don't understand why Nokia didn't give any response about this problem

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

He only said the speaker had some sort of eq.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

No other processes using that much?

Bear in mind that not all are experiencing this issue as can bee seen from this thread.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Nope
The CPU usage stays pretty stable at around 30-40%

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

as a layman - not introduced to Unix/Linux even the GNU will ne very much unclear to a user. Its only the Unix geeks who understand what is GNU.

So GIMP is still pretty unclear.
along the same line - looking at it from a tool noob user point of view - ther are many Linux apps which just dont make any meaning - hell even I am sometimes confused by such nomenclature.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

#1 - I don't use the iPlayer..

#2 - I listen music while browsing.. And then I also minimize the web browser and play games on the N900 (Angry Birds, Drnoksnes..etc) with no stuttering at ALL...

#3 - Welcome to linux.. Also the N900 was never meant to be for the non-tech savvy people.. So if your gf can't handle this "issue" then the N900 is not right for her..

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

couple of questions for those who are not experiencing stuttering audio:

1. where are your audio files stored? microsd or internal mem?

2. how big is your audio collection on the device?

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

1. I have both music on MyDocs and on a 2GB microSD card.

2. I have about 200 songs...

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Does anyone know when you add a music file as your sms tone it comes out distorted, but when playing through the N900 built in Media player the same file is fine? anyone else get this?

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

I have observed music player freezing when opening ovi maps while listening to music.
I surfed the internet, yes sometime it halts the music.

My music is saved on 32 gb and not more than 12 tracks.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

GNU is Not Unix.

Apparently, you don't understand Google either.

You type in something, and hit enter. Then The Google Answers. It's like talking to God, except Google is more evil.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Can you post the make and ideally series of SD Card? Cheaper cards tend to have slower response times which can make a big difference in an already busy setup.

The other thought: do you have facebook widgets and lots of IM running as well? I seem to recall the facebook widget eating resource at one point.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Unfortunately it is not enough. renderer and browser sizes may easily reach 100MB and it can take a couple of seconds to swap out one of them.

BTW, for some reason that real time processes are use the same scheduler and doesn't use real-time priorities... the minimum "nice" is -11, sometime -5 but RT priorities starts from -20.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Tracker, I believe. Test again next day.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

N900 has only 256MB of RAM and music player (actually - renderer) and MAPS both are BIG crocodiles. You just open a swap hell for around 5-10-12secs and that halts music.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Sorry for being off topic - but for all those saying they never hear any music stuttering - did you do anything special to fix this? I've all my N900 fully up to date and my music player does indeed skip quiet often while multi-tasking with simple things...

~Jeff

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

My main audio listening is to The Economist, which releases its entire weekly magazine (which is pretty large) in spoken word format. I store The Economist download either on the 16 gb microsd card I have or on internal memory, and it doesn't make any difference -- in neither case do I perceive any stuttering. even though I multitask as much as I want, without thinking about it, while listening.

I also listen to Internet Radio, and I do have problems with it sometimes. I attribute those problems to bandwidth issues not having anything to do with the N900, but to Time Warner Cable or to the radio station broadcasting over the net.

I know from many years playing chess on ICC and FICS that even low-bandwith usage such as sending chess moves over the net, it is not unusual at all for various internet problems to affect transmission.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Best way to halt the N900 is to update podcasts in gpodder, and rss feeds in feedingit at the same time.

I've also found the N900 has the occasional skip when using GPS related software (Ovi Maps, Mapper, Google Maps in microB) and panucci at the same time.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Ah yes but its never that simple is it.

When I had problems on desktop Linux with sound stuttering when loading web pages, cranking alsa and mplayer to a higher priority than the web browser did nothing to help the situation.

Even now I have stuttering of the flurry screensaver if I leave a web page open refreshing in the background, I cranked flurry to the highest priority and it still happens, just not quite as bad but still annoying.

There are so many layers of processes that can be causing trouble, surely if it was simple Nokia would have already fixed it before launch?

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

i'd say that the audio codec used is the main reason for stuttering.

there's quite a difference between a lossless codec and a 224 kbit/s mp3 in terms of throughput needed :)

i have had no problems with 2-3 browsers loading simultaneously while playing music, and i mostly have mp3s.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

OK, guys with music playing problem (stuttering). I can suggest you one experiment. Warning: be prepare to switch OFF-ON phone in case of some trouble, but it should not harm your files. More probable, responsiveness may slightly be harmed until reboot/switch OFF.

1. Go to X-Term, become root
2. execute

renice -20 `ps|grep "pulseaudio"|grep -v grep|cut -b1-5`
renice -20 `ps|grep "mafw-gst-renderer"|grep -v grep|cut -b1-5`

and enjoy your music while browsing.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

thats no reason not to fix the stutter. my n900 stuters all the time, the fm radio also stutters

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

FM Radio always seem to be mono for me so I never use it.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

I agree with everyone that said the complaints are valid.
I'm a bit surprised that she did not have an issue with the size of the device though because almost everybody that I have showed my N900 to had some comment about the size and many actually said "It's nice but a bit too big"

Another N97 user said he does not like the slide mechanism because he wants the screen to tilt like on his N97.

I have also had some people comment that the screen is not sensitive enough because they are used to capacitive screens. (mixed users that have android phones and iPhones)

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

It would be nice if someone would weigh in who understands this stuff better. There are too many factors, but I can't help but wonder if there isn't a correlation between format and stutter. My theory:

Less to no stutter with .wav and .mp3

More stutter with other formats, i.e. .flac, .aac, .ogg

Internet radio stutter or silence (?) could be compounded by network issues. Supposedly, mp3's take the best, if not the only, advantage of the DSP chip's decoding ability, and .wav files mostly just pass through. Regardless, we need better info from everyone.

Also, as I have posted elsewhere, the rendering application might have a low priority level. See:

/etc/X11/Xsession.post/32mafw

for more details.

Personally, I'm using vorbis+ogg files @ ~160 kbps and I'm having little to no problems, but I am noticing a high CPU usage. I'm thinking about switching to 192 kbps mp3's.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

I dont suffer from stuttering,

Have you tried the WII web entry to play iplayer?

Apps are confusing just seems like an excuse, if i wan't an app, i look for it, read the description, if theres no description i come here, and then i go and download it :).

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Tried every version under the sun we have a 50mb fibre optic broadband so im pretty positive its not an issue our end since our itouch/phone/wii plays it with no problems.

Apps confusing seems like an excuse maybe in your eyes sure, but we aren't the only ones in this thread that have said this.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Well, I never know since when did Google become sysnonymous with understanding ?
Looking up any new term in google is not something a simple end-user will do at every turn.
Just because you understand it and I inderstand it doesnt mean a bit about "general understanding".

Anyway theres nothing to prove here, so move on.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

Yes, because everyone has the time to sit on here and peruse Google to try to find the application they need. I'm sorry, that is just a poor excuse.

You should be able to tell easily from App Manager what an application is for, but most descriptions are aweful. As I said, this is a Linux issue all around as I have the same problems on Desktop Linux. Basically its the age old problems that developers are not the best skilled at clearly describing what the thing they have written is actually used for, they tend to assume people "just know" or understand techno-babble.

Now I am not saying developers suck or anything like that, after all I am a novice developer myself and nobody is good at everything. My point is there should be a system in place where once you use an application you can provide feedback quickly and simply from your N900, that people can see when they look at that application in the App manager. The problem is Nokia chose plain Debian package management instead of a more suitable custom/hybrid solution, and switching to RPM is not going to fix that either.

Fact is, the existing methods for providing comments about packages on Maemo is dreadful. You have to dig around maemo.org to try and find it, its not really user facing at all, and the comments are all locked to specific package releases when being able to see comments about older releases would be useful if nobody has commented yet on a new one. It should be a basic function of Maemo itself to make it easy for people to search the packages and see what people think of them, on their N900, without faffing with the web browser. Ironically, even Apple did a poor job there in App Store, what I think is more suitable is basically a system like Cydia. Its more or less a web page, but its packaged into an application so you are not flicking back and forth between apps to install something (pretty relevant on the iPhone/iPod due to its lack of multitasking, but useful too on N900 to make it less confusing).

There is in fact at least one application that tried to do this on the N900 whose name escapes me. It shows the latest packages in the repositories but as it relies on the repos themselves, its far too slow to be practical IMO. This thing needs to be semi-independant of the repos so that its fast, web page fast, to navigate but links to the package so its a simple one-click affair to install. The whole package management is just slow and painful on the N900 and if I get asked one more time "this package is not provided by Nokia do you REALLY want to install it?" I will scream. For crying out loud, if I enabled the repository then OF COURSE I want to bloody use it. There are too many clicks and too much information in App Manager, most people just want to see "installing" and a progress bar. I am pretty anal about wanting to see EVERYTHING my computer is doing, but even I don't want to see a progress bar finish, for another to appear. Either show me the console so I can see EXACTLY what is going on, or show me ONE progress bar for the entire download, decompress and configure process. Anything else is just plain annoying.

Re: My GFs top 3 issues which stops her getting this phone.
 

I get stuttering too, very easily. If I am listening to something via media player, and am browsing even just one web page, with nothing else running, it will stutter :( I dont have anything sketchy installed either, im a noob user with nothign from testing or devels...