🎧 Timbre

High-Fidelity, Bit-Perfect Lossless Music Streaming for Android

Pure uncompressed 24-bit/192kHz studio masters. Cloudflare Edge Hi-Res lossless routing. Direct Userspace USB DAC hardware output. The player your earphones were built for.

💖 Foundation & Upstream Credit

Timbre is an audiophile-focused fork built upon the magnificent foundation of BitChord. This project would not be possible without BitChord and its creator, Kushagra Singh. We extend our deepest heartfelt gratitude to Kushagra and the BitChord community for their brilliant open-source engineering, sleek player architecture, and beautiful modern UI.

🧪 A Humble Note on Hardware Testing & An Open Call to Audiophiles

I am not an advanced or veteran audiophile by any means—I am simply an audio lover and developer passionate about pristine music reproduction. All physical testing and bit-perfect pipeline tuning for Timbre so far has been carried out on a modest, entry-level Moondrop Chu II DSP, which is currently the only IEM I own!

Because Android's audio ecosystem spans countless combinations of USB host controllers, DAC chipsets, and OTG implementations, I warmly welcome and invite seasoned audiophiles and community members to put Timbre to the test. Whether you use portable dongle DACs (Fiio, Qudelix, iFi, Moondrop, Questyle, Cayin), desktop stacks (Topping, SMSL, Schiit), or high-end IEMs/headphones:

• Test your hardware: Put the bit-exact switching, UAC1/UAC2 direct transport, and 24-bit librempeg path through its paces.
• Report bugs & quirks: Log unexpected sample rate drops, USB handshake issues, or player behavior quirks via GitHub Issues or our Telegram Community.
• Suggest features: Share ideas for audiophile-focused options and pipeline improvements.

Every single report, logcat, and piece of constructive feedback is deeply appreciated and will directly shape future releases!

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🚀 What's New in Timbre v1.8.4: Full Upstream Sync, Audiophile Bluetooth Truth & Artwork Preload

Timbre v1.8.4 brings our largest milestone yet, synchronizing 176+ commits from upstream BitChord v1.8.1, enforcing absolute audiophile technical honesty across Bluetooth transmission, guaranteeing lossless priority resolution during rapid skipping, and pre-warming queue artwork for instant 0ms track transitions:

1. 🔄 Full Upstream BitChord v1.8.1 Synchronization

• All-New Welcome & Onboarding Experience: Features Timbre Cyan audiophile styling, personalized Listen Together profile setup, and streamlined Google account linking with YouTube Music.
• Search Swipe Actions: Swipe search history tracks to instantly enqueue next or last.
• Detailed Song Info Inspector: Deep metadata dialog displaying album details, release dates, view counts, likes, and comments.
• Wear OS Companion Management: Full watch connection and streaming settings directly within Settings.
• RTL & Synchronized Karaoke Lyrics: Flawless bidirectional RTL typography and fluid word-by-word sweep animations.

2. 🔷 Truthful Bluetooth Hi-Res Audio & Anti-Crash Architecture

• Technical Truth for Bluetooth Audio: Bluetooth A2DP audio (including LDAC 990kbps and LHDCv5 1000kbps) travels through Android's AudioFlinger mixer and undergoes lossy psychoacoustic compression. Timbre enforces strict technical honesty:
  • Emerald Green (#00E676) is strictly reserved for true Bit-Perfect Direct Hardware DACs (USB DACs with hardware bypass).
  • Electric Cyan (#00E5FF) designates Hi-Res Wireless (🔷 HI-RES WIRELESS (LHDCv5 / LDAC)), explicitly noting (Lossy Bluetooth transmission via AudioFlinger) and stating No — Bluetooth LHDCv5 encoding in the bit-exact verdict.
• Zero-Crash Telemetry Fix: Eliminated a recursive feedback loop between BluetoothAudioTracker and PlaybackService.applyOutputRoute() that flooded Android's message queue and crashed the app during Bluetooth route changes.
• Instant Active Codec Detection: Real-time detection of connected Bluetooth devices and codecs (e.g. realme Buds T500 Pro -> LHDCv5 24-bit / 96kHz) on launch, route changes, or opening the pipeline dialog—without needing earbud disconnect/reconnect.

3. 🎯 Strict Lossless Priority Resolution on Rapid Skip

• No More Premature Lossy Fallbacks: Rapidly skipping tracks now strictly honors your configured Lossless Priority Resolution Window (losslessTimeoutSeconds).
• Clean Track Handover: Clearing stale lossy stream choices when skipping to track position 0 guarantees that FLAC modules (Tidal, Qobuz, Lossless Bridge) are given full time to resolve before any lossy YouTube fallback can trigger.

4. 🖼️ Queue Lookahead Artwork Pre-Warming (Instant 0ms Cover Art)

• Instant Artwork on Skip: Sequential, bounded queue artwork prefetching pre-warms full-resolution 1200px artwork (PLAYER_ART_PX = 1200) for up to 4 upcoming tracks.
• 100% Network Priority for Hi-Res Audio: Deferring artwork downloads by 2.5s after playback starts and spacing requests by 300ms ensures that FLAC stream resolution and audio buffering enjoy completely uncontended bandwidth. Subsequent track skips render artwork in 0ms from local cache.

5. 🎨 12 Dynamic Glass App Icons

• Choose between Liquid Glass, Samsung Glass, and Pixel Glass across Standard, Dark, Clear, and Clear Dark variants directly from Settings → Appearance → App Icon.

6. ⚡ Audio Stream Continuity ("Missed Beat" Stutter Fix)

• Resolved tail-end audio stutter during the last 5–10 seconds of streaming tracks, ensuring continuous playback from cache without mid-stream invalidation.

7. 💾 Seamless Auth & Source Backup & Restore

• Full JSON portability for YouTube Music session cookies, channel profile IDs, Discord tokens, and custom streaming sources for effortless one-click device migration.

8. 🛡️ Hardened Lossless Bot Infrastructure

• Re-secured @Timbre_Lossless_Bot with fresh credentials and strict private chat guards for reliable token generation.

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🏛️ Timbre Audiophile Architecture

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                       Timbre Audiophile Signal Path                     |
|                                                                         |
|   Track Requested: "Hotel California" (Eagles)                          |
|                                  |                                      |
|                                  v                                      |
|   +-----------------------------------------------------------------+   |
|   | 1. Cloudflare Edge / Addon Resolver                             |   |
|   |    Direct match: 24-bit / 192kHz Studio Master FLAC             |   |
|   +-----------------------------------------------------------------+   |
|                                  |                                      |
|                                  v                                      |
|   +-----------------------------------------------------------------+   |
|   | 2. librempeg / FFmpeg Native Decoder (AudioSink Float32)        |   |
|   |    Decodes natively into unquantized Float32 (24-bit mantissa)  |   |
|   +-----------------------------------------------------------------+   |
|                                  |                                      |
|                                  v                                      |
|   +-----------------------------------------------------------------+   |
|   | 3. Direct Bit-Perfect USB Transport (AudioFlinger Bypassed)     |   |
|   |    Streams direct PCM bitstream -> Moondrop Chu II DSP / DAC    |   |
|   +-----------------------------------------------------------------+   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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🎛️ Timbre Studio: Complete Feature Suite

1. 💎 Bit-Exact Certification Badge & Live Signal Path Inspector

• What it does: Live signal-path verification indicator located in the Audio Pipeline inspector and below the seekbar.
• Badges:
  • 🟢 BIT-PERFECT: Bit-Exact Signal Path: Confirms audio bypasses Android's system mixer (AudioFlinger) and reaches your hardware DAC unresampled at its native bit depth and sample rate.
  • 🟨 Framework Mixed (AudioFlinger) / A2DP: Indicates when Android's system mixer or Bluetooth codec is managing the audio.
• Interactive Inspector: Tapping the badge summons the real-time Audio Pipeline Dialog showing input vs output bit depth, sample rate, channel count, negotiated buffer size, and active hardware sink.

2. 📡 Bluetooth Codec Telemetry

• What it does: Automatically detects and displays active negotiated Bluetooth A2DP codecs (LDAC, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD, aptX, AAC, SBC).
• Telemetry Provided: Reports exact active transmission bit depth and sample rate (e.g. 24-bit / 96kHz for LDAC at 990 kbps), verifying whether your Bluetooth stack is transmitting lossless or compressed audio.

3. 🔌 Direct Bit-Perfect Mode (USB DAC Passthrough)

• What it does: Direct userspace USB audio streaming for external USB DACs and Type-C DSP earphones (e.g., Moondrop Chu II DSP, Fiio KA11/KA13/KA17, Moondrop Dawn Pro, Apple USB-C Dongle).
• Audiophile Benefit: Bypasses Android's mandatory 48kHz audio resampler completely, feeding bit-exact 24-bit / 96kHz / 192kHz integer or float PCM directly to the DAC hardware chip.

4. 🛡️ Purist Mode ("Lossless or Nothing")

• What it does: Strict audiophile gatekeeper. When enabled, Timbre strictly refuses lossy YouTube audio fallback (128–160 kbps Opus/AAC).
• Behavior: If a studio FLAC master stream cannot be resolved within the Priority Resolution Window across edge workers and addons, Timbre automatically skips past the unplayable track to the next song instead of ever playing lossy audio.

5. ⏱️ Priority Resolution Window (0.5s – 8.0s)

• What it does: Customizable slider controlling how long Timbre waits for Cloudflare edge workers and lossless addons to match and return a 24-bit FLAC stream before proceeding.
• Flexibility:
  • 0.5s – 2.0s: Ultra-fast starts on high-speed home Wi-Fi and 5G connections.
  • 3.0s – 5.0s: Recommended sweet spot for mobile roaming and average networks.
  • 5.0s – 8.0s: Ideal for Purist Mode to ensure deep catalog edge searches across rare recordings finish before skipping.
• Fallback Race Optimization: If the priority window expires while Purist Mode is off, Timbre races the FLAC search against YouTube resolution; if FLAC completes before YouTube, lossless plays immediately without stalling.

6. 🧠 Audio Buffer Sizing

• What it does: Controls the internal memory buffer size allocated to the AndroidX Media3 AudioTrack PCM sink:
  • Low Latency (~250ms): Fastest tactile response to seeks, track changes, and pause/resume.
  • Standard (~500ms): Recommended general listening buffer with optimal balance of latency and stability.
  • Audiophile Stable (~1500ms): Allocates an ultra-deep buffer immune to micro-stutters during Android backgrounding, high CPU contention, or aggressive OEM Doze power-saving.

7. 🔀 Bit-Perfect Rate Switching

• What it does: Dynamically reconfigures the hardware AudioTrack sink on the fly to match each track's native container sample rate (44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, 176.4 kHz, 192 kHz).
• Why it matters: Eliminates non-integer sample rate conversion jitter (e.g. converting 44.1kHz audio to 48kHz) when connected to external DACs with dedicated dual-crystal oscillators.

8. ⏩ Queue Lookahead Engine (3 to 20 Tracks)

• What it does: Configures how many upcoming tracks in your playlist/album queue are resolved in advance.
• Concurrent Execution: All upcoming tracks are resolved in parallel over the network (~1–2 seconds total). Rapid skipping never cancels in-flight jobs, ensuring subsequent songs are pre-resolved and ready for instant playback.

9. 🌐 Lossless Pre-warming Network Mode

• What it does: Multi-state selector (Off, Wi-Fi Only, Any Network) controlling background audio pre-caching.
• Benefit: Automatically saves mobile data by restricting background byte pre-warming to Wi-Fi while still allowing instant playback.

10. 💾 Pre-cached Songs Count (3 to 50 Songs)

• What it does: Configurable slider determining how many upcoming tracks have their audio bytes pulled and verified onto disk cache under true #alt cache keys.
• Cache Retention: Pre-cached FLAC tracks are stored as Origin.LOSSLESS, preventing premature garbage collection and listing them in your Library's Cached songs folder.

11. 🎚️ FLAC Dynamic Normalisation

• What it does: Multi-tier volume safeguard (Off, Preserve Dynamics, EBU R128 Peak Safeguard).
• Benefit: Prevents sudden jarring volume spikes across recordings from different mastering eras without compressing acoustic dynamics or flattening transients.

12. 📊 Live Decoded PCM Telemetry (Stats for Nerds)

• What it does: Live diagnostic overlay showing genuine physical data rate (e.g. 1,411 kbps for 16/44.1, 4,608 kbps for 24/96, 9,216 kbps for 24/192) alongside active server, container format, and buffer health.

13. 🌐 Cloudflare Edge Health & Latency Monitor

• What it does: Live multi-provider latency dialog testing round-trip ping times across Lossless Bridge, Cloudflare Edge, YouTube Music, and JioSaavn with persistent connection pooling (<50ms re-test latency).

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⚡ The Problem Timbre Solves

Platform / Setup	Limitation	How Timbre Solves It
YouTube Music / Spotify	Heavily compressed lossy audio (128–160 kbps Opus/AAC). Smeared transients, flat dynamics.	Replaces lossy audio with pure 24-bit / 192kHz studio FLAC masters from Cloudflare edge workers.
Tidal / Qobuz / Apple Music	$11–20/mo subscription fees, DRM lock-in, heavy battery drain, no YouTube Music playlist integration.	100% free, open-source, DRM-free, battery-efficient, and imports YouTube Music playlists seamlessly.
Android Audio Pipeline	Default Android system mixer forces 48kHz resampling and truncates 24-bit studio masters down to 16-bit integer PCM.	Precision AudioSink routes bit-exact unresampled PCM directly to external USB DACs and Type-C DSPs.
Stock Mobile Players	Cold track transitions, buffering stalls during rapid skips, lossy fallbacks.	Concurrent Lookahead & Pre-warming caches upcoming FLAC streams on disk for instant, zero-delay skips.

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🎧 Hardware Compatibility

Verified bit-perfect unresampled digital output across:

• Type-C DSP IEMs: Moondrop Chu II DSP (Native 24-bit/96kHz), Moondrop Free DSP, Tanchjim Tanya DSP.
• Portable USB DAC/Amps: Fiio KA11, KA13, KA17, Moondrop Dawn Pro, Apple USB-C Dongle, Questyle M15, iFi Hip-DAC.
• Desktop DACs: Topping E30/E50/DX3 Pro+, SMSL SU-1/DO100, Schiit Modi+.
• Bluetooth Codecs: Sony LDAC (990 kbps / 96kHz), Qualcomm aptX Adaptive, aptX HD, AAC.

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📲 Download & Install

Download signed release APKs directly from GitHub Releases:

Build	Architecture	Description
Timbre-v1.8-3-arm64.apk	arm64-v8a	Recommended for 99% of modern phones (fastest, optimized native 64-bit binaries).
Timbre-v1.8-3-universal.apk	Universal	Universal package compatible with all Android devices.
Timbre-v1.8-3-armeabi-v7a.apk	armeabi-v7a	Legacy 32-bit ARM devices.
Timbre-v1.8-3-x86_64.apk	x86_64	Android emulators, ChromeOS, and x86 devices.

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💬 Community & Links

• Telegram Community: t.me/Timbre_Community
• Token / Stream Bot: @Timbre_Lossless_Bot (generate your personal authenticated FLAC stream URL)
• Documentation & Addon Directory: sksalapur.github.io/Timbre
• Bug Reports & Feedback: GitHub Issues