Hi all
I just got my international GS3 from O2 as a swap for an HTC One X. The One X seemed to have a fault where audio on the left channel was slightly louder than the right. After multiple replacement units all having the same problem, and even display models in shops and 2 friends One X's all showing the same bias, I realised it's just a fault with the phone.
I'm quite amazed to find the GS3 has the exact same problem. Before anyone asks, I have done every sort of test to rule out deficiencies in my hearing, the headphones and the source files, using multiple players, devices, headphones, files and even people's ears. The bias is inherent to the device.
I cannot work out why the GS3 and One X both have this problem, yet my ancient Sony W810i still has perfect stereo balance (OK, the sound is not very rich, but at least it's even). Incidentally, I tried mono mode on the GS3 and the problem persists.
Has anyone experienced this? The imbalance is only slight, but it's most noticable in podcasts, where the voices speaking seem to be in the left side of your head. This is especially noticable on larger headphones, and with bassier voices.
I'm open to rooting the phone if there's a solution that way around (probably will root soon anyway to get CM), perhaps a line of code somewhere where values can be adjusted. Relying on balance controls in individual media players (like PowerAmp) is not a solution, I want a global fix for all applications that use sound (I live on BeyondPod, video players, TuneIn Radio, Spotify and FM Radio).
Thank in advance for any tips, or even just careful testing of your own GS3s to see how widespread the problem is.
Thanks,
Simon
Related
Hi All,
When I use headphones (tried 3 different pairs) whenever I listen to any audio output, whether from a game, mp3s, radio, system noises, there's always a lot of static and/or hiss. It's in the background and not too terrible but I'm thinking there's something wrong with the hardware in my Photon. I tried taking out the battery and it made no difference.
Anyone else have this issue? Should I return it? Any advice?
Thanks!
I use Moto bluetooth headset to listen and don't have any additional noise over what would normally be there (say, compared to what it sounded like on my EVO).
Do you get this background noise through the phone speaker as well or just the headset? Might be something with the audio plug on the phone.
If you have tried other headsets and the phone speaker is either doing it or not, wouldn't hurt to take it in to a Sprint store and have them check it out.
Thanks CCallahan. I exchanged it and the new one doesn't do that so I guess it was just a fluke.
I have the same thing going on, with headphones only. Guess it's just the luck of the draw
Sent from my MB855 using XDA App
I would exchange it. I guess it is the luck of the draw. My new photon has been less buggy overall - not just with this issue. The other one wasn't terrible but there were a lot more fcs and hard crashes. Could be just coincidence but with the audio jack issue too seems like there just might be bad ones out there.
While watching youtube or playing video via SD card from my Nook Tablet (rooted indirect method, 1.4.0) I get a very annoying static/popping noise before the audio plays at the start of a video or when resuming from a pause. This is only present when headphones are attached. Almost like the device mutes the headphones while no sound is present then clicks/pops/buzzes for a split second when audio is detected before playing. This is happening with three different pairs of headphones and multiple browsers/players. The noise is in relation to the volume set on the device... If I turn the device up to max the static is louder then if the volume is set at half. I see this problem while the device is charging and also when it is not.
Is this problem common and people are dealing with it or am I alone? I did a forum search but didn't see any posts relating to my question.
thanks for any comments.
I have the same issue, and it is rather annoying. I am hoping it is a software issue with the rom, where the ramp between dc and audio is not being handled correctly. It would suck if we had broken hardware
Did you happen to try headphones before rooting?
Maybe related to my "clicking" I get when my NT is sleeping with WiFi on... hopefully a software bug and not shoddy design/materials.
seanchronnery said:
Did you happen to try headphones before rooting?
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Nope, seems unlikely that would screw with it though.
seanchronnery said:
While watching youtube or playing video via SD card from my Nook Tablet (rooted indirect method, 1.4.0) I get a very annoying static/popping noise before the audio plays at the start of a video or when resuming from a pause. This is only present when headphones are attached. Almost like the device mutes the headphones while no sound is present then clicks/pops/buzzes for a split second when audio is detected before playing. This is happening with three different pairs of headphones and multiple browsers/players. The noise is in relation to the volume set on the device... If I turn the device up to max the static is louder then if the volume is set at half. I see this problem while the device is charging and also when it is not.
Is this problem common and people are dealing with it or am I alone? I did a forum search but didn't see any posts relating to my question.
thanks for any comments.
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I think it's a software issue. We all have noticed it at some poont.
thin wired headphones
I've noticed this before with thin wired headphones, especially when around a computer. Thick wired headphones with more insulation / protection are a bit less likely to have this problem.
... just a thought... might not work in this case.
Nook Color was just like that. cm7 make it perfect.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium
Yup! It happened for a long time. I realized that it cause by the sleep mode of sound chip but it is a software bug... -_-
Last time I use it for the song picker for the annual dinner event and it keeps pop pop pop before start playing. I solve the problem by minimizing the volume but not stop playing.
Finally someone makes a thread about it! I noticed it very early on when I bought my Nook Tablet in last December. It bugged me a lot. I couldn't find much about this problem; all I could find was a similar problem reported with Nook Color. The description of the problem looked so similar that I assumed Nook Tablet has inherited it... I hadn't registered on XDA forums then and decided to live with my assumption.
It has nothing to do with root. I discovered it after rooting it, reverted back in hopes of curing it, it stayed. It persisted when it auto-updated to 14.1. I was hoping this was one of the bugs B&N fixed with the update, but apparently their only motive for the update was to block users from side-loading apps.
This annoying audio issue manifests in at least two different ways. With some headphones, NT emits bursts of hisses before starting the playback. With others, there's no hiss but there's a pop. The hiss is more bothersome than the pop. I have tried with a few different headphones, and only on one I hear the hiss. On the rest, I hear the pop. I don't know why it behaves differently with different headphones. Maybe it's something to do with impedance.
My take is that NT turns off the audio at the hardware level whenever it doesn't detect any audio playback. It comes back on with a prelude of a pop or hiss. The idle period needed shut off audio is very little (maybe 1 second or so). Maybe it was done to conserve battery. This makes playing any musical instrument app very frustrating. Once you pause before playing another note, you automatically get a prelude of a pop or a hiss.
Speaking of musical instrument apps, another thing that makes NT quite unsuitable for enjoying those is a lag/latency between hitting the touchscreen and hearing a sound.
Is there any other way to fix it as we wait for a stable version of Cyanogen ROM? I'm not sure. I have seen some lines dealing with audio on build.prop. I don't know editing which parameter to what value would help things, so I didn't mess with them. Maybe someone more knowledgeable would like to try? I will try myself if I can learn more about it.
Hi all! I have been reading alot of post about Streak's low quality sound output, and I'am experiencing it too, when I plug in my head phones there is no hissing sound, but when I click play or receive a call hissing sound starts and does not end till audio output end.
There is alot of post from people that have the same issue, I will Quote them below. I'm posting this because everyone that has posted this issue has been "overrun" with other people posts that they do not have that background noise.
I just want to expand on this problem, could it be Android version, or perhaps different hardware? Any suggestion is welcome.
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gadaga said:
Hi,
Personally I find that whatever I use as earphones, I have a hard time accepting the noise level on the streak. When playing music at a medium volume, the noise is really very very present.
I suppose there is no work around is there? Doesn't this bother you for serious listening?
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donalgodon said:
The sound quality is absolutely abhorrent in comparison to the Galaxy SII or any other smartphone I've ever used, including the HD2, Vibrant, several Nokia devices, etc.
There is a constant and definitely audible signal noise in the Streak that really bugged me. As a recording engineer, I can definitely hear the difference between the audio systems on the two devices. When the playback system kicks in, you can literally hear the hiss in the background. When the playback stops, the hiss vanishes. Upon further investigation, it seems that this is a known issue that found its way into several reviews. If I hadn't heard it for myself, I'd have not believed how terrible it actually sounded, and frankly, it's SO bad that I find it inexcusable on such a high-end device.
I sold my iPod and bought a larger MicroSD to use my phone as my main portable media device, and the Streak really let me down.
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hp79 said:
If it's boosted, wouldn't that cause more noise since noise will also be boosted?
I'm having the same problem. Hissing noise in the background. I also got mine couple days ago. I bought it when it was $200 unlocked from dell.
I'm on stock 347. I should have tested the earphone when I had 351.
It makes the hissing noise in music, internet radio, wherever sound is being played. It has a constant level of hiss noise even if I raise the music volume or reduce it to minimum.
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I believe it's the hardware. Doesn't matter what OS level you're running (I've experienced it on 2.1, 2.2, 2.3)
I've actually found it to be more tolerable on the Dell oem headphones when compared to my nice headphones (etymotic research er6i)
cyapalmpos said:
I believe it's the hardware. Doesn't matter what OS level you're running (I've experienced it on 2.1, 2.2, 2.3)
I've actually found it to be more tolerable on the Dell oem headphones when compared to my nice headphones (etymotic research er6i)
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I hope its OS because some don't have this issue, maybe MIUI 2.3.2 Rom wont have this problem (when they fix the problem with headphones not being recognized).
And yes, on Dell oem headphones it is less noticable but compared to 50-100$ better headphones, Dell's are low quality, although they are one of the best in box headphones that comes with device.
I have some basic knowledge in Java and C. Could anyone point in the right direction so I can try to edit/tweak some setting of audio output. Any info would be appreciated.
It's also noticible on the S7 and venue. At least on the S7 you can only really notice it in a room that's completely silent, but at least for that i'm talking about the external speakers.
All I can say is that it's pretty much not noticible for me as long as it's not silence/very low volume music. At least for me it's very easy to drown out the hiss by raising the volume as it does not/minimally scales with the volume.
Keep in mind that the speakers/headset jack simply do not recieve power when not in use, the hiss on them could be part of the inherent design of it. It might be noise after the DAC as it doesnt scale anywhere near 1:1 with the audio. But I'm just blindly guessing
TheManii said:
It's also noticible on the S7 and venue. At least on the S7 you can only really notice it in a room that's completely silent, but at least for that i'm talking about the external speakers.
All I can say is that it's pretty much not noticible for me as long as it's not silence/very low volume music. At least for me it's very easy to drown out the hiss by raising the volume as it does not/minimally scales with the volume.
Keep in mind that the speakers/headset jack simply do not recieve power when not in use, the hiss on them could be part of the inherent design of it. It might be noise after the DAC as it doesnt scale anywhere near 1:1 with the audio. But I'm just blindly guessing
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Did they came up with any fix for S7 and Venue?
In DSC rom update there is a line that says:
I'm using MIUI so can someone confirm if this changes anything?
_n0p_ said:
v1.0
[*]DSC Gain tool. Controls audio driver parameters.
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The V has pretty much no perceptable hiss, and I believe the V and S5 share the same audio drivers (dont quote me on this), it might merely be a hardware issue on the S5.
I cant really say much about the S7's headset out, as it's rather unwieldly to use that way.
Also I'm very sure that it ISNT dependant on volume, like previously mentioned unless your current headset is loud to begin with, just turn up the volume and it drowns out nicely.
But yes it will be noticable on the quiet parts of music or during track changes.
tl;dr: turn up volume, V's got a cleaner output
Equipment tested on:
S5: CM7.2
S7: SD7-r9 (514-xx)
V: SD4-250 (408)
headset: iphone in ear headphones
I think its just the poor SNR ratio of the streak, its only -79db or something, its very poor.
Scroll down in this Dell Streak review to see RMAA audio benchmark measurements.
_n0p_ said:
soul_train, 100% hardware issue.
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Makes me sad
Ok, so I have the Samsung Galaxy SIII. The US variant may not have the Wolfson DAC, but I don't care. As much as people deify Wolfson, this thing sounds absolutely amazing all the same and I love it. In fact, I love its sound more than that of any player I've had, soundcard/DAC + amp, and so on. Not all will agree I'm sure, but to me it's just that good. The really neat thing is, it sounds amazing just on its own driving my HD555s directly (well, they are pretty sensitive.) It doesn't seem like anything is lacking in any frequency range, the soundstage is great, and so on. There's just one problem: that god-awful volume control! It only has seven or so positions so I frequently find that it's just plain wrong. It's either just quiet enough to be annoying with the balance a bit off or it's just loud enough to be physically painful to my ears. There's no in between.
I keep playing around with various solutions, but still haven't found anything that could be called 100%. Firstly, I've been using MP3Gain to change the volume level of my MP3s in a basically lossless manner (it just changes the frame volume setting without reencoding) but this is kind of a pain because I have a few other formats in my library still. Well, I primarily use PowerAmp and it recently added ReplayGain support, but... Something is just plain wrong with its ReplayGain support I think. It seems to be lowering even things that are already set to 89dB thanks to MP3Gain for starters (and the ReplayGain tag basically says +/- 0dB or at least it's no more than 1.5dB when it says to change it -- yes I remembered to remove the ReplayGain tags and rescan all of my collection after changing the volume via MP3Gain and it's worth noting that Foobar2000 on my PC has absolutely no trouble whatsoever.) Worse, the whole point of using it was to try to get it just right, so I add just a bit of gain (initially +3dB, but I think I've tried other values trying to get things just right) and it just seems to be way off. Regardless, I just haven't been able to find a value that's quite right for dealing with the issue either positive or negative. (And negative has its own troubles since it means I have the volume maxed or close to it and then something else blasts my ears at full volume...)
So more recently I got the idea to try one of those in-line volume controls. It's nothing more than an audio tapering volume pot and two 3.5mm connectors (one female with at least the decency to be gold plated but as it was soldered into the board and there was very little room to work with I left alone, the other I replaced from the original low quality connector and cable to a very short bit of Canare L-4E6S + Rean 3.5mm male connector.) The problem is, I ended up with roughly 200 ohms being the "just right" volume setting and that wasn't even far down on the pot. Unfortunately, the end result is a sound where the bass is bloated and just plain bad, the mids are recessed thanks in part to the bass, the highs are pitiful, and the soundstage is basically gone. Well, it's not meant to drive these headphones through what ends up being an impedance adapter. Regardless the result was horrible.
I've also tried third party apps that try to take over the volume control and give you a finer control including the demo version of a commercial one that I've seen suggested elsewhere in these forums. Nope. The result there was actually kind of interesting. It not only didn't work, but it seemed to actually be rounding to the OS's nearest value and pretending to give me a fine control instead... Frankly I'm just not sure that there is any way such an app can actually give one such control as it gave me the impression that basically the OS was overriding it in the end and that while it surely thought it was doing something it wasn't really.
I just can't seem to get through to any of the people on the software side of things. I've suggested to the author of PowerAmp that the program should have its own volume control to compensate for the crappy OS volume control, but no response. I've suggested in the CyanogenMod forums (I'm not sure where else) but only one person responded and that just to agree. No one seems to even be really looking at the suggestion, but then it's forums, not any proper suggestion form. Which is just pitiful because CM has generally always been good for compensating for these types of things that Google misses. Really I don't know what else to do though.
The whole situation is pitiful. How in the world have they managed to go through so many years and so many versions of Android with this horrible volume control? I know it at least dates back to Android 2.2 because I used to have an Archos 43 with the same issue. Ok, I understand that in the past people weren't really using them for music a lot, but these days a lot of people do and it can be a pain to carry an amp with you all the time. (Besides, why in the heck should I have to use an amp when it can drive my headphones directly perfectly fine AND I like the sound? It's just wasteful...)
Anyway, is there any solution left to try that I haven't thought of? My SGS3 is running CyanogenMod, so suffice it to say that it is definitely fully rooted to the point that I can even remount the root and system partitions as writable if I want to, so I can do just about anything in that respect, but at this point I can't find any other options to try.
Hi guys, I was a member here back in the windows mobile days, I figure this is a good place to ask some questions.
I have a LG v60 and while using Sony MDR-7506 headphones I clearly notice a distortion and noise creeping in at some point when I move the volume slider. It's only noticable while the HI-FI Quad DAC is on and mostly on the left ear. It's very easy to hear with MDr-7506 as they are very bright and reveil top end easy. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed anything like this, or perhaps I'm having a hardware problem. I've tried UUAP with bit perfect and the noise/distortion is even more clear with that app. I can duplicate the issue with an audio signal generator playing a frequency. The distortion noise is not there on low volume and not aperant on high volume, it's somewhe in the middle but very obvious and audible to me with Sony MDR 7506. Also noticable with 32ohm beyerdynamics 770. Perhaps hardware problem or quad DAC plus low impedance headphones matching issue, I'm confused and hoping some of you might be able to help. Thank you in advance
I haven't noticed this with any of my headphones. I usually use a pair of Focal Clear (55 ohm). I'm no expert but I'd guess it's a hardware issue. If you have time you can try flashing older (or newer) firmwares to see if that has anything to do with it (I'm on an updated T-Mobile variant).
pongalong said:
I haven't noticed this with any of my headphones. I usually use a pair of Focal Clear (55 ohm). I'm no expert but I'd guess it's a hardware issue. If you have time you can try flashing older (or newer) firmwares to see if that has anything to do with it (I'm on an updated T-Mobile variant).
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Thank you for replying, your Focal Clear is just above the 50ohm trigger for the Quad Dac. I bet they sound great with the V60 dac. I'm having issues with some of my 32ohm headphones not being amped properly and having to trick the DAC using an extension cable.
I wasn't aware of being able to flash older firmware on the v60, I'm on a Bell Canada model LM-V600TM and currently running V600TM10q firmware. I used the LG Bridge software to update it once since I got it. There's an update available so I'll try that next.
I suspect that's it's something related to the Quad DAC as it's only there when it's enabled, with certain headphones it's painfully obvious. Its right at or just above the volume I prefer to listen at. The MDR-7506 and dt770 250ohm both make it possible to really hear the noise floor on most recordings, exaggerated high frequencies could be the reason for that.
I would appreciate any links or info on downgrading the North American V60. I love this device, it's my first Android and I didn't know that the bootloader was locked or crippled when I got the V60. I spent many years in the jailbreaking iOS community. Apple removing the headphone jack was the main reason I gave up iPhones. It's good to hear that it's not all v60s that act this way
I found a thread on here that seems to be about the same issue, I posted here before I found it, hopefully it helps shed light on this. There's ppl from Germany that report the same noise problems so it's not just me.