Ok, where are the Android geeks?
 

So I got myself a Galaxy S3, and its awesome! Well...almost everything is awesome...except the audio it puts out in may car! I am running a bone stock audio system...I know its not great...but my old iPhone 4 sounded way better through it than the GS3.

It sounds hooooooorible!

I am running CM10 mod w/ Power Amp. I run the DSPmanager for an EQ as well, and I'll be damned if I can get a setup that at least sounds halfway decent in my car...either through bluetooth or a wired connection!

Anyone out there have a really good setup they can recommend?


The other trouble is Spotify...I love it, it hates my car. I cant control volume with it.

AOKP. 'Nuff said. (Biased here as I maintain AOKP for the SGS3 variants). No issues here and compared it directly to a 4th gen iPod touch.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

What music playback app do you run? Any EQ app as well? (Beats, etc)

My go RAZR and my RAZR HD both through power amp, sound great .. Some songs on very very high notes I can hear a whistle crackle sound.. But other wise my setup sounds great

IM running CM10 right now cuz there isn't any AOKP love for my phone. I am using poweramp.

Might switch the car's headunit over to PowerAmp too. I hate how all these music apps use stupid on screen "knobs" to adjust crap. Give me a damn slider.

I use the same phone, and use spotify. My fix for the volume was basically switching to fm and back to bluetooth. And for that brief second you can change the volume.

Stock AOSP music app from the market. No EQ apps as they are all bullshit. The only EQ's you should mess with/use are going to be on the HU or if you have a proper amp. Software EQ's are garbage and Beats is just a bunch of horseshit. Excuse my language here, just really have a deep hatred for software based EQ's.

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What phone?

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Disable ALL DSP and EQ settings, including any 3D or any other nonsense. Try the default player as well and see if sound quality normalizes. Also dont havethe phone volume all the way up it will cause clipping.

I use Google Play and save my music local.. From there I can play and use the in app EQ if needed. It sounds decent when connected.........but

The one problem i've been hating with the GS3 and BRZ headunit is the bluetooth disconnects and music cutouts.. I shop ROMs frequently, so it could be a local issue, but I cant seem to find a consistent location to park the phone and keep the connection connected.. Any Roms people have good luck with?

I had a feeling about the software EQ horseshit.

Moreover, being that the beats headphones have such a hefty price tag, and sound no better than the 10 year old sony set that i have already had me thinking it was just a big marketing ploy.

EVO 4G LTE. Or the HTC Jewel as it's known.

Hm. I'll look at the hardware and see if it can handle Jellybean. If it can I could do a port tonight.

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It runs CM10 (4.1.2) flawlessly :) I'd love to learn how you do ports.....

It's an HTC One X but with a bigger battery, aluminum chassis, and microSD card slot (up to 64GB).

On a side note, I picked up one of the cheap Ca-Fi copies. It's sitting on my counter... Got any free days soon?

Probably redundant but make sure your HU is set to Fr-S and not TC, but you have probably already checked that. I actually just put CM10 on my GS3 yesterday and also use PowerAmp, but havent had a chance to test it out on my HU yet.

Only thing is, I have the x940bt installed. I will check the sound quality on my HU and if it turns out to sound like shit, I think the problem lies with the ROM itself and not the HU.

Yup, it's FR-S.

Flashing to AOKP now!

I have used a Galaxy S2 on my BeSpoke unit and it works fines. I can adjust the volume fine. sounds pretty decent. Even the song infor displays instantly.

Compared to the iPhone 5 it works slightly better. Less jitters. For some reason, it can take up to 10+ seconds before the song info gets displayed. Anyone know of any workaround? I've already tried deleting the phone and re-pair it with the same issue.

FWIW, I'm running PowerAmp on my Android head unit and the equalizer actually DOES work. If I cut the frequencies below 120Hz, then my subs don't play. Of course, hardware based equalizers will always trump software, but a vast majority of head unit equalizers (both Android and not) are software based.

SO I got the latest build of AOKP up and running just fine, and i am about to do some audio tests on itm with {Power Amp and Google play...but I've noticed I get a USB error on the FR-S head unit when i try to connect via USB. Bluetooth hooks up just fine though.

Maybe change the USB modes on your mobile under USB settings. Same when you connect to a PC.

Ok same deal on the audio test..my old iPhone is a night and day difference. The iphone sounds soooooooooooo much better. The GS3 is totally flat, and the audio controls on the head unit do little to change that. I dont know what to do to set this thing up right!

I had the opposite experience. My lady's iPod Touch sounded completely flat compared to my EVO LTE. Can you put Beats onto your GS3?

I can...but i am trying to avoid software EQ's all together if possible. I have tested with both Google play & Power Amp. Google play is ridiculous. The sound if washed out with mid range, and no bass whatsoever.....and seemingly nothing can be done about

With Power Amp I can improve things...but I just cant do anything with getting close to a full bass. Its either extremely low range so all it does is distort....or nothing at all.

You might have to take the opposite approach, by raising the gain in the MP3 files themselves, then turning down the frequencies other than the ones (bass) you want to raise.

MP3 files have a gain tag to tell the player how much "preamp" gain to apply to the source. The problem with this is that if you go too high, the MP3's will "clip" or produce sound out of range. I personally use MP3Gain (software) to maintain an even gain across my large library. It will analyze the MP3 after you apply a gain level to tell you if it will clip or not as well. Batch processing is also a breeze.

good to know! Thanks!

Sooooooooo....

I flashed my GS3 back to stock, installed Power Amp and tried it...

Instant success! Sounds awesome.

I dont know what it is about CM10 and AOKP Jellybean that caused it..but this did the trick. Now i have to get to the bottom of this so i can run mods again.

FYI, I tested the audio in my car and there was no sound at all. I did a bit of research and found of that it is CM10 itself and not the car. There is a setting in the rom that is corrupted or something and either doesnt play sound at all or it plays but at very low power, which might be what you are experiencing. Only thing we can do is wait for the next version or nightly of CM10 that fixes the bug.

Shame because CM10 and AOKP are so awesome...

ya it sucks. right now Im rolling with Serenity, with is basically a Note II port. Not as cool as AOKP or CM10....but being that I use the GS3 for music so much....that means AOKP and CM10 are useless to me....for now.

Pandora sounds perfectly fine via bluetooth with my HTC EVO LTE. All the other music I play I run through Winamp Pro and it sounds great as well.

On the latest CM10 nightly build, bluetooth bass was fixed. The previous fix was to make a call, hang up and then full fidelity was restored.

My Galaxy S3 sounds amaizing through pandora. Jelli and music loaded on the phone. Way better than my old Iphone 4. I am running the pioneer avh4400 though. Not using any other apps from the phone. The stock HU isnt really up to the task when it comes to this. Swap it out when youre ready and let the music move you.

I've used the Amazon Cloud Player and SiriusXM through my Droid X over BT to the standard FR-S headunit. The sound is great, only issue is I have to do the "adjust the volume immediately after selecting BT" trick mentioned above.

For people who are wondering, this is a ROM issue. I don't understand the cause of it, but I do know that for whatever reason, using certain music apps with AOSP-based ROMs (like CM10 or AOKP) gives you no volume control on the normal, non-Bespoke head unit. I normally use Spotify, so I've tested it with a number of phones:

T-Mobile GS2 on CM10 - no volume control, only shows "BTA" on the head unit

Galaxy Nexus on stock 4.0, 4.1, or 4.2 - volume control works, will display "STREAMING AUDIO" under "BTA" when BT audio is selected

Galaxy Nexus on CM10, AOKP, SlimROM, LiquidSmooth, Paranoid Android and Bugless Beast - no volume control, only shows "BTA"

VZW GS3 on stock or modified stock ROMs, ICS and JB - volume control works, MIGHT display "STREAMING AUDIO", sometimes it doesn't but volume can still be changed

VZW GS3 on CM10 - no volume control, only shows "BTA"

Nexus 4 on stock 4.2 - volume control works, shows "STREAMING AUDIO", but the phone likes to unpair itself every time I start the car.

I've also tried a couple of these with Rhapsody and Rdio and the head unit responses are the same or similar. In fact, Rhapsody will actually show the artist and song for a split second when it starts playing, then it disappears. Google Music seems to work across the board.

So basically if you want to use any of the decent streaming music apps and want volume control, you'll have to use a stock or stock-based ROM. I don't know if this is the same case for pre-ICS phones/ROMs, though.

My VZW Droid X is stock Gingerbread 2.3.4 (has to be stock for BYOD reasons). I get the BTA, volume knob doesn't work except for about 5 seconds (which is OK). Buttons (pause, tracks, etc) work in some apps, not in others, hit or miss.

I do not have a S3. I use an s2 and iphone5. I used bluetooth on both and i cannot tell a difference in audio quality. i used the usb on the iphone and still no better/worse. Maybe because scion fixed something with the audio with my car batch?

I will try with hp touchpad webos and rooted dualboot CM9 ICS, when i get a chance, to hear any difference. I sadly do not have access to any other phones to test, but will be on the lookout if any coworkers get any other phones.

I just tested a HTC One X+ with the bluetooth, and it sounds great!!

Meanwhile, the forums over ate XDA-Developers in the HTC One X+ Q&A section is alive with people uset over very poor quality sound over bluetooth with it!

tested my hp touchpad with both webos and CM9 ICS rooted. both sound great. Webos sounds the best out of all my bluetooth devices. The phones sometimes has serious stutter issues when connected via bluetooth. Not sure why. It is unbearably worse than radio static.

I'm running Xenon HD on my G Nexus and I have very limited issues. Takes a minute to automatically connect when I start the car and sometimes song info won't show up. But sound quality is always good. Try out that ROM. Should be available on XDA.

Thread necro FTW..

The stock FR-S UBB port......does this thing only work with iPhones? I get a "USB Error" when I plug any other android phone into it.

Did you set the android USB connection to "disk drive" or the like? That tells android to allow file system access to the SD card (or internal storage).