Checking in again. So the equalizer has been done for a little while, but I got ahead of myself and started working on album art downloading. Now that's nearly done, and I should be releasing an update fairly shortly.

The album art is fetched from Last.fm, and can be found under the options menu. Album art doesn't download automatically, you'll have to choose 'download album art'.. That way people worried about their data plans, or preserving their current a;bum art don't have to worry. Also, you can download album art for individual albums.

The equalizer is looking good, and working pretty well. The only issue is that although AMP works fine with DSP manager, the equalizer in AMP doesn't. It seems like either you use DSP manager or the AMP equalizer, but not both. Anyway if you've got a stock rom you won't have a problem, but if not, just disable DSP/3rd party equalizers, or don't use the AMP equalizer. Have fun with that!

Now that album art downloading has been implemented, I've got a better handle on how that stuff works. I should be able to add lyric downloading as well as scrobbling pretty soon. I'll have to be wary not to go down the unfortunate path Andrew Neal had to with Apollo (he got stooged by some douchebag lawyers for getting lyrics from a site that a competitive music player was affiliated with). But you can look forward to lyrics fetching soon.

I'll be busy over Christmas, so I hope to get the next feature set out before then.

You can give me an awesome Christmas present by downloading AMP. To make it more awesome, tell all your friends about it too!

Heres a giant list of feature requests, bugs and other stuff, and a bit of a summary of how I have/will dealt/deal with it:

1. Fix album art stretched on larger screens
Done.

2. Add enqueue feature
Done.

3. Editable/renamable/creatable playlists
Done.

4. Make Google Play Music playlists compatible
Harder than I thought.. Not gonna bother for a while.

5. Fix notification controls for all Android versions
Done.

6. Add lockscreen controls where possible
Hmm. I've added them but they don't seem to work on all devices.

7. MP3 tag editing
Looked into this extensively. Probably not too far away.

8 Album art downloading
Pretty much done!

9. More persistent image caching
Well, the image caching is pretty good as it is.

10. Fix bitmaps going dead when service stops
Fixed.

11. Make sure gapless works correctly
Works on 4.1+, not available pre 4.1

12. Fix music skipping on screen unlock
Problem with custom rom. Don't blame AMP!

13. Add stop/cancel button where possible
Meh, no need anymore, pausing idles the service, and it stops after a minute.

14. Add landscape mode
Added!

15. Support tablet screens
Supported!

16. File/folder browsing
<Siiiiiiggghhhh> I genuinely can't be fucked with this at the moment. I know that's disappointing to a lot of people, but it's like telling the Red Bull F1 team to build a giant statue of a penguin. With no funds. Oh and a race is in progress..

See they would probably do an awesome job, but it would distract them from all the other awesome shit they're doing, it would take ages, and the race would suffer for it. They'd probably get sacked from their day job, and lose a lot of race fans along the way.

17. Put the widget text above the controls rather than below
Put.

18. Fix force closing when scrolling in album list.
Fixed.

19. Add 'genius' type smart playlists
Eventually.

20. Add genres category
Later.

21. Sort artists by 'artists album' or add category
Apparently a lot of people want this. I keep forgetting, but I'll try to make it a priority.

22. Recently added list
Done.

23. Add 4x2 & 2x1 widgets
Finished the 2x1, not sure what to do with the 4x2..

24. Lockscreen controls on more devices
I think I mentioned this already. I've tried, not sure how successful though.

25. Change viewpager tab strip to 'less distracting colour'
Changed.

26. Improve the icon
No.

27. Media volume control throughout entire app
Done.

28. Remove lockscreen controls once service is idle
Done.

29. Widget transparency options
In progress..  There's a couple of bugs with this, which I've been working on. In the mean time the widget is 30% opaque.

30. Customisable headset controls (including plugging/unplugging jack)
I intend to add this shortly, I can see that it's useful to a lot of people, and it won't be hard to do.

31. Fix the navigation to conform to Android standards
Fixed. The navigation was overhauled recently and makes way more sense.

32. Artist art for artist list
Meh not sure how much I care about this.

33. More customisation options & a settings menu
Again, lot's of requests. I don't want to make AMP so customisable that it looses it's feel.. I like AMP the way it is, but there is scope for some customisation. Some music players over do it, and they feel bloated..

Anyway I intend to add a couple of themes, and some other options in the not too distant future.

34. Create an activity for viewing the 'now playing' queue
Will do.

35. Add ratings & play counts
A little way off in the distance.

36. Support soft-keys
Honestly don't really know what this means. I'll look into it.

37. Lyrics fetching
Lyrics fetching will be easy now that album art downloading has been implemented. Not too far away.

38. Scrobbling.
As above, easy to implement. Hopefully I'll have scrobbling before too long.

39. DLNA Support
This is pretty complex and beyond the scope of AMP at this stage. I don't have the skills or the time to look at DLNA/UPNP support at the moment.

40. Google cloud music support
When Google release an official API, I'll look into implementing it in AMP.

41. Add an equalizer
Equalizer has been added. Gets a bit funky when used in conjunction with DSP manager, but you can use one OR the other.

42. Support DSP manager
Supported.

43. Replaygain
Complex DSP stuff is again beyond the scope of AMP at the moment. AMP uses the standard android media player and the API's available. Adding these kind of features will require completely reworking the way AMP decodes audio, which mean accounting for all the different filetypes etc. and their handling. This may happen in the future, or not at all.

44. Crossfade
Crossfade is a little easier than replaygain. I don't know if I'll implement it because I personally don't think it adds much value to a mediaplayer.

45. Dynamic range compression
As for 43.

46. Car mode / dock mode. Hehe docking.
This would be pretty easy to do. I should look at it before long. I imagine huge play/pause/next/previous/shuffle/repeat buttons, and not much else!

47. Add a 'search' feature
This probably isn't all that difficult, but not that sought after either. I'll keep it in mind though.

Well, if you got through all that you've done well. Feel free to send in your suggestions/feedback.


Get AMP here:

AMP - Play Store

Or here:
AMP - Amazon App Store

Follow me on Google+
Google+

Here's some pretty pictures:

Jiu Jitsu, The Walking Dead and an Equalizer!

I've been busy - recently started learning jiu jitsu, and did some Thai boxing classes.. I still manage to find time to feed my pet (AMP). The only other thing holding me back - someone put me on to the walking dead, so naturally I have to watch that as much as possible.

[Spoiler] I have to say - judging by his beard, it seems Rick has only been in a coma for like.. 3 weeks. It didn't take long for his wife & best mate to start banging (obviously due to their overwhelming grief). Unless they were already banging from before the whole apocalypse. Also, they probably haven't showered for ages. And what if she gets pregnant? Jeez. [/Spoiler]

Anyway:

I should have another update for AMP by the end of the coming weekend.

I haven't checked in for a bit, but I thought I'd let you know how the progress with the equalizer is going:

I've managed to get it working (mostly), but a few bugs remain, and I haven't looked at landscape mode or optimizing it for tablets yet.

The equalizer currently looks like this:

Obviously I also need to do a bit of work on the UI.

So far, I haven't looked at any advanced features such as crossfeed, dynamic range compression etc. Once the music folder browsing is on it's way, I'll have better control over the audio, and I'll endeavour to implement some of these features.

I've also been bugfixing - A few people have advised that clicking on the notification bar doesn't do anything (3.0+ - 4.0 devices). This has been fixed and will come out in the next update. A Couple of other force close bugs have been fixed as well, and I've further optimized album art loading.

Album art downloading is something else I've been investigating a fair bit, so I should be implementing that in the not too distant future.

Any suggestions on the equalizer (and AMP in general) are more than welcome.

If you haven't got it already, you can download AMP here:

AMP - Google Play Store

AMP - Amazon App Store

Follow me on Google+ if you'd like to stay informed:

Google+

I passed my exam! (And other AMP related stuff)

Huge sigh of relief. Today I got my mark back for my structural design exam. I called my lecturer and asked how much I owe him..  he laughed and told me I got exactly 50% on the exam..

The way I see it, I balanced the whole coding/study/hitman thing with absolute perfection. 4 days to prepare for an exam, and not a single measure of effort too much!


So, now that all that's out of the way, what's happening with AMP?

Well, after the last (relatively major) release v1.1.0, I've had mostly positive feedback. There are a couple of minor bugs, and people are still looking for folder browsing and other promised features, but the feedback on the UI and navigation overhaul has been overwhelming (and good).

I've been working on fixing a couple of those bugs, and I'm happy to see it's crashing a lot less often. I'm yet to implement the widget transparency selector, but when I do it will come with a few more widgets, in different shapes and sizes.

I've taken a little bit of a step back from it all with the latest release, due to pressures at work (gotta get some engineering plans out before Christmas) and relaxing a bit after finishing exams. Oh and Far Cry 3. This has given me time to realise that I can slow down a bit with AMP, especially now that it's stable, and work more thoroughly on feature implementation & bug fixing. This should mean that future updates will be better tested, and more new stuff will be included in each update.

The things I'm working on now include:

• Music Folder Browsing
• Equalizer
• Widgets
• Bugfixes
• Album Art & Lyric downloading
• Car mode
• Compilation album sorting
• Genres

The music folder browsing remains the toughest one. I'd like it to integrate seamlessly with the rest of the app, but remain optional for those who don't use it.

Anyway, keep sending me your feedback, and telling your friends about AMP. We're up to 3000 downloads now, and still going strong.

Thanks for your support. To keep up to date, follow me on Google+:

Google+

You can get AMP from the Amazon App Store now:

AMP - Amazon App Store Link

And on the Google Play Store:

AMP - Google Play Store Link

Here's a pic of AMP on the Nexus 4:

AMP v1.1.0 Released to Play Store

I'm wrecked and I have to go to bed! I've worked all weekend on AMP to get some major bug fixes & improvements out.

A snapshot of the lates update looks something like this:


+ Many bug fixes
+ Support for landscape mode & tablets
+ Support DSP manager
+ Better navigation (navigation overhaul)
+ Honeycomb+ lockscreen controls
+ Semi-transparent widget
+ UI overhaul

-- Temporarily removed 'All Songs' from list of albums :/
-- Still working on customisable widgets :/

I'm pretty much dead inside now, but I'll be working on it again tomorrow after & in-between work ;)

I hope you guys continue to use & enjoy AMP. Tell all your friends!

Stay tuned for a better blog post!