[Galaxy S I9000 General] K_19:
Hey all,

I typically never register and make my first a complaint/help post, but this problem has been plaguing me ever since I first got my Galaxy S Vibrant from Bell (i9000m) a week ago and now I'm pretty much desperate in looking for a solution, as music listening happens to be a HUGE part of my Smartphone experience. I love the phone with everything else thus far after coming over from iphone 3G and definitely wouldn't want to change the phone just because of this problem... but it's becoming way too persistent for me that I'm actually considering switching back to Apple (even though I don't want to).

Here's the problem: The music player seems absolutely incapable of smooth playback of music for whatever reason. In my ~10 years of music phone experience (I got the first ever mp3 phone released here in Canada - the Samsung Uproar, many years ago actually), this phone is the first to have such problems. Here are some symptoms and settings, music playing on both the stock music player as well as btunes that I downloaded and paid for:

- MP3/AAC files stutter/skip seemingly at random. Not majorly but for half a second or so at different parts of the song. Happens somewhat consistently, every 4 minutes or so, but at random.

- Here's an interesting thing; the ability for FLAC playback is one of the main reasons why I purchased this phone, and so far it's incapable of doing so properly. EACH AND EVERY FLAC song I have stutter/skips at a certain point for 3/4th of a second... and the funny thing is that this seems to occur at exact same point of each song.

- Before any of you question the point, 95% of these are self-ripped FLAC/mp3 files from my own cd's, using EAC. I'm an audiophile and know well how to rip songs properly, so I know this is 100% NOT the problem of the files itself... especially since they play perfectly in every single music player software/mp3 player/cellphone that I've ever used.

- This happens in both stock touchwiz and launcher pro UI that I'm currently using.

- Happens in both stock player and btunes as mentioned earlier. Interesting thing about FLAC files; I mentioned before each files skip at same parts of the song... interestingly the stock player and btunes seem to skip with these files at DIFFERENT parts of the song, yet the part where they stutter/skip is still the same for each player. So for example, Song A would skip on stock player at 3:31 point of the song each time, but that same Song A would skip on btunes at 2:23 point of the song every time...

- I do have beautiful weather widget running, and will test it out soon to see if this is the problem (haven't got around to doing so yet and don't have headphones with me atm)... but even if it is, it would seem appaling to me that a widget and a simple resource-light music player can't coexist... doesn't make sense to me and kind of misses the point of a high end smartphone.

- I'm not going to use Airplane mode as a solution, since this pretty much misses the point of the smartphone as I've said above. Besides, I've tried it already and music STILL stuttered/skipped!

- As I have high end headphones/IEMs such as Audio Technica ESW10JPN and Shure SE530, it's definitely not the headphones, and they work flawlessly in any other player.

- Drag and drop, media player, Kies, you name it... every method of transfer of songs gives the same problem.

- Internal SD card, External SD card... doesn't seem to make a lick of difference either.

- I have the stock JG9 firmware that my phone came with. I would download the new one that is apparently out for my i9000m version (JH2) if Kies ever detects the damn thing (it's never there as an update)...

So any clues on how to solve this annoying problem. As I've said, this is the ONLY problem I've had with my unit (my GPS is fine, and phone runs lag free) and its a darn shame because music playback is a huge part of my smartphone use. Is this likely a firmware problem? Or just a problem with memory use? If I don't have to I'd REALLY rather not root the phone but if that solves it for certain then I'm actually willing to look into it... that's how desperate I am to solve this problem. :o

I'd appreciate any input in this matter... thanks in advance.