My test was Rage Against the Machine: Renegades of Funk.
On Pandora the crackle is there most the song (High quality - direct ear-bud connection). I purchased via Amazon MP3 and there is no such crackling.
Is it possibly an AAC decoding issue? Pandora uses some form of AAC as far as I remember.
The audio playback quality of my device is terrible, anyhow. Much degraded vs. my old Droid. Especially if I try to enable any audio effects via the settings... like Bass Punch. Keep all those effects turned off! :-\
[UPDATE] I converted the 256 kb/s MP3 track (see above) to a 64 kb/s AAC+ (HE-AAC, like Pandora uses) file. I used AudioCoder. On my BIONIC, using Google Play Music, the AAC+ file has the same crackling as in Pandora (but to a slightly lesser extent). The MP3 file in Google Play Music does not have the crackle. This is evidence that may suggest the AAC decoder on the BIONIC (and other Moto hardware) is the problem.
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