ANC / Noise Cancellation not working at all? - HTC U11 Questions & Answers

I wonder what HTC thought about advertising noice cancellation, it really does nothing in my opinion..
I also tried using "fake" noise (white noise videos, hair-dryer) and switched between on and off, no difference!
Is my U Sonic broken or is it really that bad?
Also the "ear analyze" - really a thing or does it just equalize treble?

I'd say it works like 15% it's nothing special especially after talking on QC35s or MDR-1000x

celtaV said:
I wonder what HTC thought about advertising noice cancellation, it really does nothing in my opinion..
I also tried using "fake" noise (white noise videos, hair-dryer) and switched between on and off, no difference!
Is my U Sonic broken or is it really that bad?
Also the "ear analyze" - really a thing or does it just equalize treble?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried making a few different profiles? First one try to make sure you are in a very quiet room. While playing music you can definitely hear a difference when turning USonic on and off. Second profile in a somewhat noisy room and try that. When creating profiles not only does it analyze you ear canal but also the outside noise. I mean it isn't drastic but there is a difference.

Have you tried making a few different profiles? First one try to make sure you are in a very quiet room.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Already did so, the line it generates looks very similar to the first one with some background sounds.
What I also noticed: When you stop the music the DAC still is active, with ANC activated you can hear some quiet white noise that stops quickly. This should be the "active" noise cancellation but it really is bad.. That feature seems to be a real disappointment to me, otherwise the phone is great!

Sorry to resurrect this thread but I just got my HTC U11 recently...
Is the agreed position that the ANC on HTC U11 + USonic is pretty much useless?
I ask because, I have owned a Sony Z5C and still own a Z3 tablet and a set of similar Sony NC earphones - that only work with a limited set of Sony devices.
With the Sony setup I can definitely hear a difference in background noise e.g. computer hum or Air con noise at work or Train hum noise on commute definitely gets reduced considerably as soon as I toggle NC on.
But with the HTC, I cannot tell any difference between NC enabled or disabled....
I spoke to HTC support and they have agreed to send me replacement Usonic - but will take 3-4 weeks!!

It worked for me, blocking some(low frequency) airplane engine and office air conditioning noise for me. Although not very effective.

Sorry for late reply - forgot to subscribe to thread.
I just got some Bose QC35 in the end - can now switch between my Z3C tablet and HTC U11 seamlessly..and pretty good NC too

It's not "not working at all", as an in-ear headset, Usonic offers good sound quality but I admit the anc functions is a bit weak on this.
It is somewhat capable of reduce the constant low frequency noise such as when you're on a plane or in a train. It however cannot block all the noise, you may consider it as "noise reduction", not completely "noise canceling".
I have the JBL RA C, compares to Usonic, the ANC is much better on JBL.

Related

Noise Cancelling

Hi peeps,
I had an idea on the airplane today. I am sitting there wishing my headset would cancel the noise instead of deaden the noise. When I realized that my Android's microphone could listen to the noise and send negative sound waves to the earphones resulting in noise cancellation. Can someone build this application?
There should be a range control to control what type of noise i canceled and a control that would allow more or less cancellation. And of course the volume to the headset should still work. Would be nice if movies and audio files could also be played.
Also, don't attempt to make money on this idea because I am claiming this idea for the open source community.
I was actually thinking about this the other day. I cant really see much of a reason the normal mic couldnt be used to cancel ambient noise
Great idea, can't imagine the mic being high enough quality for this to be effective.
I think using the handsfree mic would be a better option as the phone spends most of its time in your pocket.
mercianary said:
Great idea, can't imagine the mic being high enough quality for this to be effective.
I think using the handsfree mic would be a better option as the phone spends most of its time in your pocket.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im not sure about others but my phone is basically always in my hand. I text like crazy and rarely have time to put it away
mercianary said:
Great idea, can't imagine the mic being high enough quality for this to be effective.
I think using the handsfree mic would be a better option as the phone spends most of its time in your pocket.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure about the mic quality until someone tries.
My earphones don't have a mic and it wouldn't be to much trouble to leave it out of the pocket when using the noise canceling feature. Could also be done so the phone mic only cancels the noise it hears to and the boom mic would still work normally. So the person on the other end would hear less noise.
I need someone to write the program?
No developers wanna try? I'll be a tester.
Noise cancelling wouldn't be that easy, the delay of capturing, processing and creating the cancellation sound stream would make the sound cancelling ineffective. Have a look on wikipedia for "Active Noise Control".
Such a feature would be damn amazing though. I hope someone might be able to prove me wrong.
NeoAcheron said:
Noise cancelling wouldn't be that easy, the delay of capturing, processing and creating the cancellation sound stream would make the sound cancelling ineffective. Have a look on wikipedia for "Active Noise Control".
Such a feature would be damn amazing though. I hope someone might be able to prove me wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would think the delay would be very small and not noticeable, but maybe I am wrong?
Instead of active noise cancelling for all sounds, some sounds are predictable once sampled. The hum of an airplane for example doesn't really change that much. Woulnt someone be able to sample a ~5 second clip and then process that, and repeat it?
Sent from a touch tone tele-phone.
bivio said:
Instead of active noise cancelling for all sounds, some sounds are predictable once sampled. The hum of an airplane for example doesn't really change that much. Woulnt someone be able to sample a ~5 second clip and then process that, and repeat it?
Sent from a touch tone tele-phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah maybe you could have a noise canceling app or something that you run and it listens with the mic and makes a sample to use while you play your music or whatever, then just listens for changes, loud noises, etc to actively cancel rather than constantly listening and using everything.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
Maybe that could be the difference between a paid and free app.
Free = just cancels out bacground noise
Paid = cancels out background noise and "impact sounds"
Sent from a touch tone tele-phone.
As previously stated, i doubt active noise cancelling would really be that effective due to many reasons, mic quality, latency issues, etc.
As for pre-recorded noise cancelling, there's probably a reason it hasn't been done yet. It's probably either incredibly hard to do, or incredibly ineffective.
...although, i'd love to be proven wrong
Yeah, this is just too precise a task to do with anything but real-time electronics. A typical noise cancelling setup uses an inverting op-amp that sends an inverted signal at the exact time that it is generated. Any latency at all (anything above a few nanoseconds) would cause an echo effect that would be worse than the noise. There's just no way a microprocessor could sample the sound, analyse it, and generate an inverted signal in software that would be anywhere near fast enough.
As for eliminating random noise based on some pre-sampled or randomly generated noise (white, pink, etc.), we have that already. It's called treble.
Gene Poole said:
There's just no way a microprocessor could sample the sound, analyse it, and generate an inverted signal in software that would be anywhere near fast enough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think you need to analyse anything just invert the signal and feed back out. But I do understand your point. These processors are doing millions of operations a second so I would hope just maybe it is possible? Maybe the sound processing chip has a built-in invert function? This is just my humble opinion and if you are in fact a person that does this for a living I submit to your wisdom.
there is an app called sound canceller that does this.
however, it seems not to work very well supposedly because of the API having a delay to playback
There seem to be some serious misconception about Noise Cancelling here. So listen to Gene Pool, he knows what he's talking about. Please read up on your wave physics and NC details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_cancelling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise-cancelling_headphones
Gene Poole said:
... A typical noise cancelling setup uses an inverting op-amp that sends an inverted signal at the exact time that it is generated. Any latency at all (anything above a few nanoseconds) would cause an echo effect that would be worse than the noise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I almost agree, apart from that your measure is about 6 orders of magnitude (10^6) off! At 1000 Hz, it should be enough with a delay that is slightly less than double that frequency for a 180 degree phase shift. I.e. ~1 ms (millisecond).
sonwon said:
I don't think you need to analyze anything just invert the signal and feed back out.
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Click to collapse
That's right, and this make the electronics very simple, so yeah, it's probably easier to just buy yourself a pair of noise cancelling head/ear phones. (Why not ALL head/ear-phones doesn't already have built in NC, is beyond me. But I guess its a big difference between "descent" and "good" NC...)
xd4d3v said:
there is an app called sound canceller that does this. however, it seems not to work very well supposedly because of the API having a delay to playback
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like I said above, you just need to make sure your App is running with higher priority than everything else, to minimize the latency. I suppose putting the phone in "Airplane Mode" would help... But ANYTHING running on your phone would create latency, as anyone running MIDI keyboard software on a PC know all about, where a latency of 40 ms is already annoying and very noticeable. While it is nearly impossible to obtain latencies less than 10 ms on a normal operational PC without special low latency HW.
Here are some interesting sound apps:
https://market.android.com/details?id=org.liberty.android.noisecanceller
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.idroidbot.acousticsfilter
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.idroidbot.ispectral
(I have not tried any of these, so I can't really recommend them.)
On the last note. Most phones already have built in NC HW, so if you can figure out how to use that, you would probably have something very interesting going. For example see my post on the noise-cancellation problem on the Samsung Galaxy S2.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1384756
E:V:A said:
That's right, and this make the electronics very simple, so yeah, it's probably easier to just buy yourself a pair of noise cancelling head/ear phones. (Why not ALL head/ear-phones doesn't already have built in NC, is beyond me. But I guess its a big difference between "descent" and "good" NC...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That, and NC is only "decent" at most anyway. It's good to listen to music and such in public transports but absolute crap to use when you're in a quiet room at home. I wouldn't want NC technology to be implemented on "audiophile grade" headphones (audiophile jokes apart).
Has anyone tried any of the apps that E:V:A listed? If so, how did they work?
If this helps, my Galaxy Note cancels noise during calls, and it is done with the onboard mic itself obviously.
Regarding how good is it: I was on a railway station with trains arriving and departing, passengers moving around with trolleys and public announcements in loud volume when my friend called and he thought I'm in my apartment. I made him listen to the noise but he could hear nothing.
This happens all the time!
(also, the friend v.akhilverma here, purchased note himself)
Noise cancellation is far more complicated than just inverting an input and summing it with the output. If it were that simple then there would have been low cost noise cancellation headphones a very long time ago.
That being said, we live in an era of mega-powerful DSPs everywhere. Your phone's ARM processor is even powerful enough to do the DSP necessary for simplistic noise cancellation. I am writing a noise cancellation app right now and should be done with it in a few weeks. I will post a link here when done.
By some rough initial performance metrics it should be completely feasible to run a software noise cancellation algorithm with a 12 tap IIR filter and a minimal RLS equalizer. I've already written the C code to do the noise cancellation, and I just need to port it to NDK and find a way to have it run on the phone when audio is playing (and not when audio is not playing).
I'll post a link here when it is working.

Buzzing/Humming Sound

Hey All -
I ran a quick search and didn't find this problem. I wanted to document it for posterity.
My phone makes a buzzing sound. I've seen it in every ROM I've tried so far (seems to be a hardware problem).
The sound is faint, is unaffected by media volume, and goes away when wifi is turned off. The phone appears to shut off the sound hardware when sound hasn't been played for a while in order to save battery. This makes the buzzing stop. But if a notification comes in, or there is a quiet part of a song, you can totally hear it.
It exists regardless of the ROM I have installed.
The sound is like what you'd hear in an older computer with something called crosstalk. Back in the day, (and to an extent still), various components in the hardware would generate EMI and would affect the sound quality in sound cards. For example, I had an Adlib card that would buzz a little every time the hard drive would read/write to disk.
This sounds just like that.
Anyway... just vote in the poll/comment if you're having this problem. Please post to the thread if you have a solution. I'm not expecting much though. I'm pretty sure I'd basically need a new phone for this to go away.
I get a very slight buzzing in my phones, completely unaffected by wifi. Only happens with my CX300 in-ears, any open earphones i havn't heard any noticable buzzing (though have no tried any type of headphones yet). Using Voodoo sound, lowering the amplifier dB gain and putting the media volume up reduces it a touch.
I grabbed a pair of iphone earphones and the nexus s earphones to test it with some more types, no noticeable buzzing. Also, both their sound quality is appalling in comparison to cheap sennheisers.
Yeah, that's different than me. It sounds like your CX300s might be dying.
I've got some Klipsch S4i ear buds and Bose QC3s that both have the same problem. Its loud and clear enough though that I'm sure I could hear it with cheaper headphones.
I can turn the volume all the way to zero and still hear it. When I turn it up, it doesn't make it louder though, which is "nice".
I've been all over the voodoo sound settings and nothing helps.
That's a shame, your phone probably suffers a noticeable case of leakage between the components. Could this possibly be classified as a defect and be fixed/replaced under warranty?
Also, my CX300s have no hiss on a higher quality dac and it was noticeably louder on my old nokia. I guess they're just more sensitive, they are only 16 ohm after all. No drama for me
It might qualify as a defect. I'd have to bug Samsung I guess. I could see Samsung just telling me to deal with it. It doesn't make a lot of business sense to replace a $500 phone because the headphones hiss when wifi is enabled.
It would sure make me a lot happier about buying Samsung stuff in the future though.
That's really weird about your headphones. Unless the audio quality on the CX300s is far superior over the iphone/nexus s ones, I would expect them all to behave the same way. Even then, it would be very subtle. Maybe the Nexus S doesn't ground the headphone jack very well for your headphones?
You could give them a call/email and see how it works out, but you'll probably be left without a phone for a few weeks if you send it so probably not worth it for you either.
Definitely far superior in comparison, but not nearly superior earphones Possibly a grounding issue, could even be just an unlucky set of Sennheisers that i got and have always been like this. They are out and about anyway, take a good beating and have been rock solid. Hopefully soon i'll be getting a decent pair of headphones for home use, funds allowing.
My laptop does the same thing, I'm thinking it is just interference with the headphones and your phone. might also be a lose wire or something in the phone or headphones :/
I know that this is old tread, but I had the same problem and solution might help someone.
In my case, the source of the buzz was charger (poor power supply filtering in cheap switching sources). I bought some cheap car charger/dock, and whenever I plugged my phone into it I would get lots of buzzing noise. Of course, I used it every time when in car, so I did not notice correlation for a while.
Using better charger solved my problem.
If by any chance you are charging your phone while you listening to music and getting lots of buzz, try disconnecting power cable to phone and see if there is noticeable difference. If there is, you found your problem.
Thanks for letting us know grejigl. Although not the source of my particular (non) issue, i can see it helping out someone else down the road.
I'm running on battery power when it happens to me. I'm pretty sure its caused by something related to WiFi because as soon as I shut WiFi off, the buzzing is gone.

Surface pro microphone issue

i got surface pro on the first day morning. and I found this microphone problem hours ago when I first make a Skype phone call with my friend.
My friend told me that there is very loud background noise. So I make some tests with several recorder app in different room and tried to unplug power . And the noise is not caused by fan. The background noise is big enough to be noticed (very big in some sense) and sound like electronic noise. Like electromagnetic interference.
So I wonder if you guys have the same problem? or I guess I need to replace for a new one.... I always get bad luck on electronic stuff...
Could anyone try it out? thank you.
2haoxiaoyi said:
Could anyone try it out? thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Record the sound, post a clip. Frankly, I doubt unusable background noise pickup by the mic would be acceptable, so it's not at all likely all of them do this.
For kicks, did you crank up the mic boost or levels? Perhaps you just need to lower them...
I am having the same issues, lots of backround noise.... I am going to mess around with the mic levels when I am in a quiet location, and see how It goes. I'll post back soon.
When I tried to record an audionote in (the full version of) OneNote, I noticed that there was a LOT of background noise, like the mic levels had been turned up way too much. Turns out that was exactly the case: by default, I had been set to a 24dB gain boost! Silly Microsoft.
Setting gain to 0dB and microphone level to 75 worked just fine for me.

Earpiece quality?

Does anyone have some information about the earpiece quality?
On the Nexus 4 the quality was very low as on lower volumes interferences from the wireless signal could be heard. Also i don't like phone on which the lowest volume is still much too loud.
Any experience would be very appreciated.
No we dont have any information. The phone isn't even in peoples hands with the exception of media sites.
Just wait until you receive the device and conclude for yourself (or wait for others for a full-review)
Mine's in my hand. The earpiece quality is excellent, it's very loud and clear, the best I've ever encountered!
zephiK said:
No we dont have any information. The phone isn't even in peoples hands with the exception of media sites.
Just wait until you receive the device and conclude for yourself (or wait for others for a full-review)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Got my phone right here.. Already have it for like 6 hours (has been shipped today)... Did not test the headphone output yet...
Sound quality is excellent through earphones..Plenty loud..Im pretty impressed with the speakers to..More bass and clarity than the N4.. Turn the volume up on Dead Trigger 2 or listen to some dance music and you will see what i mean.
Ok, thank you very much for your answers :good:
I'm only interested in the earpiece volume. It's nice if the speaker is loud enough but i don't want the earpiece on low volumes too loud. Even more i like it if it's very quiet for on the lowest levels as i'm not all the time in a noisy environment.
If the earphone output is also quite low on the lowest level i'd appreciate that a lot. I had troubles with every Android phone so far, except the HTC One X+, beeing too loud. (And don't start a flamewar. Some people can't get it loud enough and some like phones who are able to adapt to the ambient).
Hi,
Can you tell me if you can control the volume with a wired headset ? (much like the iPhone... and unlike my Nexus 4)
Thanks !
Mine has stopped working...still makes a sound when maximising the volume but I cant hear anything in a call.
Is the Nexus 5 compatible with HD Voice on T-Mobile USA?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
not as bad as N4
When on a call on the call volume is low you can hear a faint distorted signal. It kind of sounds like the phone is working on other tasks in the background more than a distorted signal to me. It's faint but kind of annoying when you realize it. The N4 was worse though.
Has anyone else noticed this is or is it just me?

Z3 Top Speaker Crackle/Buzz

Hey all,
Is it normal for the top speaker to buzz/crackle when certain sounds are played, particularly those that are somewhat bass heavy?
A good example would be the stock notification sounds, as a lot of them cause this. In particular, the Polaris notification sound makes it rattle like crazy. The Aquila ringtone causes it too. These are just 2 of many examples I could pick out.
Test it yourself, is it normal?
Info
istrikerx said:
Hey all,
Is it normal for the top speaker to buzz/crackle when certain sounds are played, particularly those that are somewhat bass heavy?
A good example would be the stock notification sounds, as a lot of them cause this. In particular, the Polaris notification sound makes it rattle like crazy. The Aquila ringtone causes it too. These are just 2 of many examples I could pick out.
Test it yourself, is it normal?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No
ask for replacement cause it s weird hardware issue!
:good:
Geeks Empire said:
No
ask for replacement cause it s weird hardware issue!
:good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is my 3rd replacement too...
Edit: I opened up my faulty z3 due to be returned, and it also has the issue with the top speaker crackling.
Seems to be normal then. I assume with the top speaker being responsible for the lows, it just couldnt handle the bass at high volumes.
Same here
I just had my first replacement and the problem persists :crying:
I just got the Xperia Z3 this week and noticed this issue as well. I'm a little disappointed because I expected more from the purportedly improved speakers but I guess I'll live with it for now.
I also noticed that the Z3 gets pretty warm if you play music via walkman with the speaker volume at the max. What also bothers me is that there is speaker noise when using the camera app, even with sound disabled.
yeah, my Z3 has the same issue
Even if you are phoning with load speakers on max volume it crackles.
i have the same pb
my top speaker crackles during some calls at max volume...
I hope this is a software related problem...
any news on this?
Well, I don't really have "crackle" but there's a noticeable "static noise" from top speaker whenever it is active (like when watching a movie/video or even when talking to anyone), especially at high volume setting. More than in any other smartphone that I've ever used. And what's more disappointing is that I am currently using a replacement unit, the original unit had EXACTLY the same issue. I really, REALLY hope that it's a software issue and Sony will be able to improve it with future updates and it's NOT because Sony used low-quality speaker or amplifier components
I have top speaker issue after 2months...the speaker crackling sound get higher.,,and really annoying.,, sometimes not even hearing.
What to do?
My phone got 6month older??
How to solve?
Can I go for replacement?
So this is generic Z3 issue bad move for such a pricey phone...
Count me in too..

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