Galaxy S Wifi 4.0/5.0 Sound Quality

[TexasRockbox]

Headphone sensitivity may have something to do with the varying reports of hear/don't hear internal noise. Keep in mind that the SGP 5.0 is a computer. Computers tend to be noisy devices requiring all sorts of space-adding and cost-adding shielding and filtering to be truly quiet.

Using no EQ or other enhancement with the SGP 5.0:

If I use a Sony MDR-EX700LP (genuine) the noise is easily heard. If I use a Sony MDR-EX90LP (genuine) the noise goes away. The EX700 are much more sensitive.

While the earphones have a different frequency response, I can repeat the experience with several devices. (BTW: The Clip Zip is very quiet)

[parchping]

Originally Posted by TexasRockbox

Headphone sensitivity may have something to do with the varying reports of hear/don't hear internal noise. Keep in mind that the SGP 5.0 is a computer. Computers tend to be noisy devices requiring all sorts of space-adding and cost-adding shielding and filtering to be truly quiet.

Using no EQ or other enhancement with the SGP 5.0:

If I use a Sony MDR-EX700LP (genuine) the noise is easily heard. If I use a Sony MDR-EX90LP (genuine) the noise goes away. The EX700 are much more sensitive.

While the earphones have a different frequency response, I can repeat the experience with several devices. (BTW: The Clip Zip is very quiet)

How do you know that the noise doesn't lie with the headphones?

Steve

[Lagoo56]

Ah! I just noticed the hissing sound,but it only happens for just a few seconds after passing the lock screen,thats probably why I never noticed it much.

[Thoughts]

I hear it clearly with the stock headphones. I also hear it with my old sony mdr-v6.

Maybe one workaround is getting headphones that seem to mitigate the problem?

Is there any chance that a software fix can help or is this just something we will have to live with. It is not the end of the world but it would be nice to eliminate the noise.

[Thoughts]

I have noticed it is more pronounced some times. Probably when the processor is working more. That might explain why some don't notice it right away.

[gupti]

I hear the hiss on my 4.0, but mostly in a quieter setting.

What annoys me more is the bass distortion if you have the lower frequencies' balance raised in the User EQ (stock player). It happens with multiple earbuds, and I do not think it's the audio file quality, as most of my music hovers around 160 kbps, and the distortion can be heard with 320 kbps files. My Rockboxed Nano does not have this problem with the same earbuds and files, even if the bass is raised by 9dB in the sound settings, unless it's a lower quality song with a lot of bass. Is this problem fixed by voodoo?

[TapperP]

Install SteveS's custom kernel and the Voodoo controls. No hissing, better audio quality, and much more control over volume (it can get crazy loud). And yes, much better bass. Also try using Poweramp -- has a superb equalizer and is a much better music app than the stock player in general.

My 4.0 is a music playback beast after doing the kernel/voodoo mod! =)

[gupti]

I've used PowerAmp, but there it's an amplified hiss when EQ is enabled. I will install voodoo, but I'm saving the original kernel for an experiment.

[Lagoo56]

I use both PowerAMP and Rockbox and I have no complaints. The SQ is pretty much on par with my 5th Gen iPod Video,but these two music player apps just offer better sound settings than Rockbox alone on the iPod.

[Marvin the Martian]

Rockbox works fine for me.

[murph]

I've used PowerAmp with my budget smartphone before and finally got around to adding it to my 5.0 last evening as I wasn't satisfied with the stock player sound and all I can say is "WOW"!

Huge improvement in quality/volume and sounds great with "EQ"!

Funny thing is I have a 1 month old set of headphones which I burned in for 60 hours before using. After listening with PowerAmp cranked for 60 minutes, they "opened up" even more now. Didn't realize it until listening to the radio app. Wow!

[jamaljan]

i've used poweramp and don't find any difference in sound quality when i'm using the original player and poweramp player. :S

[mattg3]

Originally Posted by jamaljan

i've used poweramp and don't find any difference in sound quality when i'm using the original player and poweramp player. :S

Poweramp in volume alone was worth the purchase not counting the great EQ potential.You can also stack up the EQ app and use it along with poweramp to add bass boost and virtualizer.

[jamaljan]

^ but i don't find any difference in sound quality, is it because i'm using the free version?

[gupti]

I ran a few tests before and after I installed voodoo. I'm not sure if it may be me, but half the time I test voodoo, it gives me the same result as if I used the stock kernel.


The voodoo icon is in the notification bar when I do each test, and it looks like it's running.

[sandro87]

Originally Posted by gupti

I ran a few tests before and after I installed voodoo. I'm not sure if it may be me, but half the time I test voodoo, it gives me the same result as if I used the stock kernel.


The voodoo icon is in the notification bar when I do each test, and it looks like it's running.

Interesting..

[-SteveS-]

Originally Posted by gupti

I ran a few tests before and after I installed voodoo. I'm not sure if it may be me, but half the time I test voodoo, it gives me the same result as if I used the stock kernel.


The voodoo icon is in the notification bar when I do each test, and it looks like it's running.

There's something wrong with your setup (audio card?, sound levels? cables?). Only the first test seems ok, the others look too bad. The noise is way too high and you can't appreciate nothing.
Vodoo improvements are mainly correlated to the possibility of changing analog gain to reduce hiss, so if you keep android digital volume to the maximum and analog volume low, you don't experience hiss. But to test, you keep high both volumes so you'll see only small differences due to dac direct and clock tuning, but they are small.
Another thing are the added features like bass boost and hw parametric eq (soon will be available)

[gupti]

Originally Posted by -SteveS-

There's something wrong with your setup (audio card?, sound levels? cables?). Only the first test seems ok, the others look too bad. The noise is way too high and you can't appreciate nothing.
Vodoo improvements are mainly correlated to the possibility of changing analog gain to reduce hiss, so if you keep android digital volume to the maximum and analog volume low, you don't experience hiss. But to test, you keep high both volumes so you'll see only small differences due to dac direct and clock tuning, but they are small.
Another thing are the added features like bass boost and hw parametric eq (soon will be available)

I don't believe there was anything wrong with my setup. I tested multiple PMPs with the same cable and sound card and there were no odd results. For volume, I set all of them to just below -20 dB by using a 1KHz, 16 bit, 44.1 Khz sampling WAVE file at 0.1 amplitude (I believe the SGP was set at -7 dB analog, the stock was at 29/30). All my tests were with the EQ off and with airplane mode on. The tests you see in the picture are 2 voodoo tests, and 2 stock tests.

While listening to music, I sometimes changed the volume and there was a "hop", where it lowered (or raised) a bit more than it normally should, and if I changed the volume again, it lowered/raised to what it normally should. The cause of this might be because Voodoo is sometimes deactivating for some reason, and changing the volume makes it "kick in" again.

[gupti]

I should have posted this earlier, but here are the results of the tests I conducted. They are in no way professional, they are just for a rough comparison of the 4.0 before and after Voodoo. Please note that I did not accept the Voodoo test results that didn't work as they should have (explained in the above posts).

In the attached zip file, there are six RMAA saves, three tests for each.

[ScandaLeX]

Maybe it's me. I don't know how to test sound the way some of you here do. What I do know is I'm not remotely impressed with the volume of anything that's not music on SGP5.0. More times than not when watching youtube, I have to keep checking to make sure the volume is all the way up cause it just seems incredibly low to me.

Watching movies using HBO Go, I MUST use a headset--other than than, volume is atrocious.