my cryptic title almost says it all & I noticed this issue with some long mp3s of audio books. It seems to be an issue of android (or some underlying “audio api” that all apps use) as it happens with several apps:
When I play the mp3 and then change the play position via the timeline, it jums to a seemingly random wrong position in the track. That is, it still shows the time (/timeline position) i tapped on correctly but does not play the audio from that time.
I verified that the mp3s play fine on my PC so I am assuming there must be some issue with the codec or similar that the PC manages to read properly but Android does not?
I will try to reencode the mp3s and see whether this helps but I was curious whether anybody has an idea or did experience similar issues at some point?
I usually listen to (long) podcasts using AntennaPod, occasionally skipping to specific positions. At least there I have never noticed this problem. I’m not sure if the app or the OS is responsible for the decoding, so trying something sturdy like VLC might give a clue.
My best guess why this might happen is that the mp3 files are VBR (variable bitrate) encoded. Depending on the player software it can be difficult to accurately determine the location to jump to. Trying to recode them as CBR (constant bitrate) might at least shed some light on the exact nature of the issue.
I used AudioAnchor (advertising itself as audiobook app) before realising that I can just add a folder of MP3s as a “local” podcast (or similar) in AntennaPod → both apps had the same issue. trying VLC right now. man, why does it want access to ALL data?
Well, it’s supposed to play files, so it needs access to them. It probably does not support the newest Android API for restricting access to specific locations, yet (just guessing there).
… maybe one day …