From The Tips Box: Fixing PowerAMP Crackling, Opening Envelopes

Readers offer their best tips for stuff.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using the contact tab on the right.

Fix PowerAMP Crackling on Android

John shares an issue he had with our favorite music player for Android:

I really like PowerAMP on Android, but I’ve been having one problem with it: the audio keeps crackling when I try to play music. This doesn’t happen in the default music player. I searched countless forum posts to try to solve the problem. They said I could:

• Set the Audio Buffer Size to “Huge” in Settings > Audio > Advanced Tweaks
• Set the Audio Thread Priority to “Highest” in Settings > Audio > Advanced Tweaks
• Turn off Beats Audio or other equalizers (I don’t have any on my phone)
• Turn off the equaliser in PowerAMP

It was the last one that got me — I hadn’t touched the equaliser in PowerAMP; it was already flat and everything else was at the default! Well, I finally realised that the equaliser and tone control was still ON by default — the buttons in my PowerAMP theme were just deceptive. Once I touched them (the three “Equ,” “Tone,” and “Limit” buttons on the left), they turned off and the crackling completely went away!

Open An Envelope Without Damaging the Letter

Thomas shares a tip for snail mail:

A short tip on how to quickly open an envelope:

1. Flip to back side
2. Tear up the corner
3. Flip to front side, tear open the edge (as shown above)
4. Facing the front side, tear down against the back side