I have an Apple Watch and I basically only use it at the gym to listen to music and keep track of my workouts. That way, I don't have to carry my phone with me. Apple does a good job with music by allowing me to easily sync my playlists for purchased music, not just storing temporary files in apps like Tidal or Spotify.
Since my main phone is a Pixel, I'm willing to give the Pixel Watch a try but only if it can deliver the same music experience. So, how does music syncing work? Can I download files directly? How do you create playlists? What codec is used? If I have Sony, will it play over LDAC and AptX or just SBC?
Hi,
You can play music during fitness session
I use nav music app to download music in my pixel Watch from my pixel 7 Pro
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How does music playback work on the Smartwatch 3? What software does it use to play back music, and does it support FLAC files? Also, how many hours of playback can you get?
Megalith said:
How does music playback work on the Smartwatch 3? What software does it use to play back music, and does it support FLAC files? Also, how many hours of playback can you get?
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It's very convenient to use Play Music on the SW3 when paired with your smartphone. Walkman works well (with my Xperia Z3) although I can't begin to play music from it (as yet I know how to) with Walkman because it thinks I'm trying to access music from the watch itself, which is unfortunately not the case, Play Music has the option to "Play from phone" or ("Play from Watch" -> which would require headphones paired to the watch itself.) As for Flac files, I have no idea, but my phone recognizes and plays Flac, and Walkman can change the song from the watch.
Thanks for the info. I've been thinking about getting one so I can forego my smartphone while jogging or cycling. I guess the lack of FLAC isn't a deal breaker, particularly when you consider the watch only has around 4GB of storage.
it does play flac files, even hi-res ones
I mainly purchased this watch so I don't have to bring my phone with me to the gym and still listen to music via BT headset.
A couple of questions:
1. Is there a shuffle option for your entire playlist? (I can only shuffle w/in an album from one artist. )
2. Can I select individual songs download into my 360? (Seems like the whole album gets downloaded).
3. How much space is in the watch?
4. Can I make playlist?
I may sell this watch if I can use it in the gym like I want to.
Thanks!
Its not a standalone device!
simply dave said:
I mainly purchased this watch so I don't have to bring my phone with me to the gym and still listen to music via BT headset.
A couple of questions:
1. Is there a shuffle option for your entire playlist? (I can only shuffle w/in an album from one artist. )
2. Can I select individual songs download into my 360? (Seems like the whole album gets downloaded).
3. How much space is in the watch?
4. Can I make playlist?
I may sell this watch if I can use it in the gym like I want to.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The watch cant store music or download music.
You'll need a phone for those and you can control music (remote) by your watch.
Moto 360 is not a standalone device
nijom said:
The watch cant store music or download music.
You'll need a phone for those and you can control music (remote) by your watch.
Moto 360 is not a standalone device
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Click to collapse
Pretty sure I know this watch isn't a standalone device. I'm using Google play music to download to my phone, and have it store downloaded music to Wear for offline playback.
I'm at the gym without my phone playing music to my BT headset from my watch.
I just want to have a playlist and the ability to upload individual songs.
simply dave said:
I mainly purchased this watch so I don't have to bring my phone with me to the gym and still listen to music via BT headset.
A couple of questions:
1. Is there a shuffle option for your entire playlist? (I can only shuffle w/in an album from one artist. )
2. Can I select individual songs download into my 360? (Seems like the whole album gets downloaded).
3. How much space is in the watch?
4. Can I make playlist?
I may sell this watch if I can use it in the gym like I want to.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Yes you can shuffle a playlist, once you open Play Music on your watch find the playlist you want and then swipe it left and that screen will allow you to shuffle that playlist. There is not an option to shuffle all the music on your watch.
2. You can select playlist to be downloaded to your watch so what I did was created a few playlist with the songs I wanted and set those in Play Music to download to my watch. However you can not pick individual songs on their own.
3. The watch has just under 4GB of storage. This is for operating system. apps and music (2.9 GB for apps and music is what I have). I have over 100 songs from Play Music on my watch and they use about 765mb
4. YES, best way I think to get the music to your watch.
Just a note this will greatly reduce battery life. While mowing my yard, about 1 hour I can burn through about 40% of my battery using bluetooth. Better than carrying my N6, but can be an issue for some.
---------- Post added at 02:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:56 PM ----------
nijom said:
The watch cant store music or download music.
You'll need a phone for those and you can control music (remote) by your watch.
Moto 360 is not a standalone device
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not true at all, it can download music from Play Music and store it on the watch to be played back via Bluetooth from the watch.
IMHO, this feature works but it's bare minimum. I too bought the watch primarily for this use case (streaming music to BT headphones while jogging). Your best bet is to rely on playlists and use the BT headphone controls to change tracks.
You'll probably find that loading music onto the thing is a total PITA. It takes forever and it automatically stops transferring when the battery drops below 50%. It can't transfer when it's on the charger. The result is a ridiculous and frustrating experience. Needless to say I'm less than impressed with this feature's implementation, but it does work and it allows me to jog without my phone which is nice.
Hi! Loving my new phone with everyday that passes by. But, I'm having a really weird issue.
I have a music track (Hotel California) in flac (16bit) format on my phone. Although it does play on google music, there is no sound output in either the speaker or the headphone jack. But when I use my bluetooth headphones, it plays flawlessly. Interestingly this is happening to only that one particular track.
I have 90% of my music on the phone in flac and even the 5.1 channel flac files play perfectly. Apart from this one song! (this happens with only google music)
But when I use Neutron Music player, the song plays. But again not with google music. AAAHHH! It's frustrating!!!
P.S. It is happening with some other tracks too. Perhaps hardware decoding?
As title says, this is going to be a Chromecast Audio review from the point of view of a Squeezebox user. As such, it will mostly be comparing CCA and Squeezebox. I'm also hoping some other CCA users see this and might be able to chime in on some of the shortcomings I'm having with CCA.
Overall, I'm liking CCA better than Squeezebox. CCA sync is dead on, and I have 6 rooms going. My squeezebox setup was a mix of PC and android devices running various squeezebox player software, and the sync would always be off for the first few seconds of a song. Occasionally, audio would get out of sync and starting and stopping playback was necessary. I listen to a lot of podcasts, some of which I pay for, and Squeezebox doesn't support HTTPS for podcasts. CCA is so easy to use for podcasts, it's increased my already high amount of podcast listening by quite a bit. Another benefit of CCA and podcasts, since I'm using the same app I listen to podcasts with on my phone, playback is synced. I used to listen to part of a podcast in the car on the way home from work, then have to scrub through podcast on squeezebox to find the spot I was at. Not the largest inconvenience in the world, but it's nice that I don't have to do it any more.
Now on to the shortcomings of CCA. Two things that worked with Squeezebox that are important features to me were mixing local files with tracks from Spotify and Last.fm Scrobbling. I have a large music library and quite a bit of it isn't available on most streaming services. Google Music let's you upload your local library and stream it, so I'm trying to match the Spotify/Local file functionality this way. So far, it's working pretty well, but that leads to the scrobbling issues. If I play music from my phone, the app seems to time out and stop live tracking what is playing, thus the scrobbling app I have also starts to miss playing tracks. This happens even when the phone is plugged in to charge. As a work around, I'll play music from my PC using Google Play music on chrome with a chrome extension to scrobble. This works great, except now the only thing I can control with my phone is play/pause and volume. If I want to add tracks to playlist, change songs, etc, gotta walk over to the PC. With squeezebox, I could control the music with any device, and switch between devices doing the controlling with no issue.
There are programs, like Kodi and Emby, that have the ability to cast music. I'm pretty sure they also have plugins for Last.fm. So they would seem to solve scrobbling and controlling with multiple devices. I'm not 100% clear on whether they can play local files as well as tracks from Spotify or Google Music (or any other streaming service for that matter) on the same playlist. I think my next project is going to be setting up Kodi or Emby and seeing if I can get the functionality I want.
Another minor thing about CCA I'm not liking is that you can't control volumes until after playback is started. If I'm playing music in the evening before heading out with friends, I'll turn the volume up. Then in the morning, if I want to play something to get me moving, I have to hit play and then pause as fast as possible so my eardrums aren't blown out. I'm going to have to start teaching myself to turn down the volume when I stop playing music...
I have my personal music library on a NAS and play it all through BubbleUPnP App on a range of android devices. Best option I have found for anybody in the family being able to control all the music collection from any device.
I'm trying to match the Spotify o download music from insta-downloader.online l file functionality this way. So far, it's working pretty well, but that leads to the scrobbling issues. If I play music from my phone and I heard very nice in my app the music
Yeah this is App https://insta-downloader.online/ on a range of android devices, In my opinion is very nice
I want to play music and podcasts on my watch (local files), without needing to have my phone nearby (i.e. not within bluetooth range). A few questions:
1. The Spotify app allows me to download playlists, but not albums? Does anyone know a way to directly download Albums? Or perhaps I have overlooked something?
2. I'm not aware of a podcast player app that can be installed on the watch that allows variable speed playback on the watch. I don't see a way to have the Samsung watch app music player adjust the speed of playback. Any suggestions?
On a separate, but semi related topic. If both the phone and the watch are on the same WIFI network, but NOT within bluetooth range, is there any way to control a phone podcast app and stream the audio from the phone to the watch---and thereafter listen to the audio from the watch via bluetooth headphones?