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Poor Bluetooth audio quality

I just got the tmobile variant s6 and immediately went to test the Bluetooth audio stream on my 2015 gs350. I noticed a crackle in the audio. It is minimal but quite noticeable at high volume. This is disappointing as my Sony Z3 had excellent BT audio quality on my gs. Anyone else notice this?

neles86 said:
I just got the tmobile variant s6 and immediately went to test the Bluetooth audio stream on my 2015 gs350. I noticed a crackle in the audio. It is minimal but quite noticeable at high volume. This is disappointing as my Sony Z3 had excellent BT audio quality on my gs. Anyone else notice this?
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I do not seem to have that issue over my car's bluetooth. T-mobile also.

I'm getting good audio quality via my Sony SBH80 aptx BT headset. Perhaps you can play on the Sound Alive equalizer.

Just wanted to let you know that I am having this same problem. When streaming music in high quality from Google Play, the treble is all crackly and distorted. It's really disappointing. I'm going to do some testing today against my old m8 and using non-streaming music. But never had this issue before.

It's probably the fact you are streaming audio. Try some high quality downloaded music, like from Spotify. I've no issues at all.

I am also having the same issue with the Verizon version of the S6. It sounds terrible over my car Bluetooth when streaming but sounds good through my bluetooth Bose headphones. I didn't have any trouble with my car Bluetooth with my iPhone 6. I really hope Samsung gets this sorted out with a software update.

I too am having issues with streaming bluetooth. I think that my issue with it is amplified, because I normally listen to music only on my Magnavox Turntable, and the sound from that console is unbeatable by any electronic streaming or mini-speaker. My son bought me a bluetooth speaker for my birthday last year, which was very nice of him, but the sound just does not compare to the 1970's technology.
Maybe I'm just old.

Do you happen to have any bluetooth le devices, like a fitbit, attached at the same time? I tried disconnecting my garmin vivosmart and there's a dramatic improvement.

evanl81 said:
Just wanted to let you know that I am having this same problem. When streaming music in high quality from Google Play, the treble is all crackly and distorted. It's really disappointing. I'm going to do some testing today against my old m8 and using non-streaming music. But never had this issue before.
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Same here. Lowering the treble help a tiny bit but what's music without treble . I've tried disconnecting my pebble watch but no dice. I really don't want to go back to aux.

In my car, before I disconnected the Garmin, I found that adjusting the toggles in Play Music - edging the first dial two toward Treble and the other dial three toward Instrument helped a bit.

I noticed the crackling on treble as well. As evanl81 suggested, I disconnected my Moto 360 (switched it to airplane mode), toggled the phone's bluetooth to have a fresh connection to the car, and the crackling is gone by at least 90%!
Very disappointing. Didn't have this problem with my Nexus 5. I'd very much prefer to not have to disconnect my watch every time I get in the car

palmboy5 said:
I noticed the crackling on treble as well. As evanl81 suggested, I disconnected my Moto 360 (switched it to airplane mode), toggled the phone's bluetooth to have a fresh connection to the car, and the crackling is gone by at least 90%!
Very disappointing. Didn't have this problem with my Nexus 5. I'd very much prefer to not have to disconnect my watch every time I get in the car
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That would be a problem. I'm starting to think that we are wirelessly connected to too many things!!

So it looks like my pebble watch was the problem. Seems i can't have other BT devices connected while connected to my car. Once I put my pebble in airplane mode, then off/on the BT radio and all is good! Sucks but at least it's a workaround.

I'm trying to use AutoInput and Tasker to automate the disconnection and reconnection of my watch when connected to the car bluetooth right now, still working out the kinks though. :\ Endless little things and inconsistent behavior.
It would be fantastic if this gets fixed by Samsung at some point!

stureiney said:
That would be a problem. I'm starting to think that we are wirelessly connected to too many things!!
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No, I have a Nexus 4 with 5.0 and now with 5.1 and its connect to LG g watch, a parrot ck3100 and auki bluetooth reciber and the quality is perfect. With S6 I only connected to my LG g watch and auki and the audio quiality is a ****.

i don't know about bad audio quality for bt but i get audio cut outs and choppiness when using my jaybird bluebuds. it gets really annoying. i noticed it happens in wide open spaces too like when i'm outside but not near any walls or enclosed areas. if i'm indoors, it works perfectly fine. i remember reading about the way bt works and the signal needs to bounce off other surfaces or something like that in order to work properly. i had this same issue way back in my OG Droid days and there was a build.prop edit to boost the signal by giving bt higher priority.
anyone else have this problem? i'm on VZW variant btw.
other than this issue, bt audio sounds perfect. i also use Viper to give the audio volume a major boost.

I'm having the same issue on my car audio.
It was perfect with the Nexus 5, very disappointed to have this with the S6.

I just got my sg6 have a samsung gear live and bluebuds x I get crackling sounding high end, very annoying, coming from an HTC one m7 with the same setup and had zero problems, really hope they are able to fix this!
OK so I enabled the tube amp setting and nothing else, it seems to have made a huge difference. I can now listen to music without cringing. Hope this helps.

Ok, I made a few findings about the issue. I also have a moto 360 connected to the S6 and the crackling is so high that is imposible to hear music with a minimum of quality.So i tried with the watch off or in airplane mode and the crackling is still there but sometimes it dissapears after connect and disconnect the bt devices but not always. Now, the elephant in the room:
I have a Samsung Hs3000 bt stereo headset and the music quality is superb even with te moto 360 connected. The magic is that this particular device has aptx codec included. So if you have an aptx bt device the quality its going to be there. For no aptx devices i'm trying an experiment: i remember from the nexus 7 2013 and other android phones that bluetooth audio quality was bad since kitkat and the problem was bluetooth compression was too high. There are two files that control this behaviour: audio.a2dp.default.so and bluetooth.default.so. If we could edit this two files maybe we could fix this. If someone can help me and tell me what program can i use to edit this files on my computer i'll try to fix it myself.
Enviado desde mi SM-G920F mediante Tapatalk

Just wanted to follow up on this thread - I recently switched to the Note 5 (which I love) and also got a Huawei Watch. When the watch is connected to the phone and the phone is connected to bluetooth, the sound quality is really horrendous. So I'm guessing it's something with the BT smart implementation in Samsung phones or something? It's really annoying. I too tried to work out some stuff with AutoInput, but it's a huge pain. The only real workarounds are to put the watch in Airplane Mode or just disconnect through the Android Wear app. And unfortunately there are no shortcuts through AutoWear. Oh well.

Audio Quality

Appears awful when compared to my s5. Any Base makes vocal go almost to a pint you can't hear it and too much vocal results in tinny Base.
I've rooted and put v4a on the phone,but it's still awful with that too. Hoping a kernel with audio enhancements such as boeffla may make things better though?

you rooted S7E already?? WOW

I don't care about the audio quality of the noise coming out of that little noisemaker they call "speaker" but when I plug it in my car with the AUX cable, it seems to me so far that I have to fiddle with EQ much more than on my Note 5. The audio quality of LG Flex 2 was better than S5, Note 5 better than Flex 2, S7E... ? I don't know yet. Probably better than Flex 2 but it can't touch Note 5. IMHO
Note 5 has Wolfson chip AFAIK.What's in the S7E I don't know.

riso123 said:
Appears awful when compared to my s5. Any Base makes vocal go almost to a pint you can't hear it and too much vocal results in tinny Base.
I've rooted and put v4a on the phone,but it's still awful with that too. Hoping a kernel with audio enhancements such as boeffla may make things better though?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
V4A? May i ask how did you managed to install it on a enforcing kernel?
Could you please provide steps...

Player04 said:
you rooted S7E already?? WOW
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How?

Guys, check the kernel and ROM forum. Root has been available since Saturday.
V4a works by flagging a zip file that makes changes to v4a to allow it to work with kernel selinux enforced set, then put v4a in compatible mode. It sounds awful though for some reason.
Would highly recommend using neutron from the play store as I found this produces far superior sound quality.

Oh I should mention root is only available for exynos version and not snapdragon.

I find the audio fine using the music player neutron and have setup soundalive and UHQ upscaler and tube amp pro.
I use Sennheiser MOMENTUM In-Ear
http://en-uk.sennheiser.com/momentum-headphones-in-ear
Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Aux Cord Noise~?
I'd love to know if I am the only one experiencing problems with using an auxiliary jack cord?
It's littered with noise no matter what. Headphones sound great though...
I returned my first device thinking there was a physical problem with the port only to find the same problem in this one.
5 different auxiliary cables purchased and tested all poor quality only on this device.

bey0nd said:
I'd love to know if I am the only one experiencing problems with using an auxiliary jack cord?
It's littered with noise no matter what. Headphones sound great though...
I returned my first device thinking there was a physical problem with the port only to find the same problem in this one.
5 different auxiliary cables purchased and tested all poor quality only on this device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, same here. Switching on UHQ upscaler in sound setting fixes it. Sometimes, however, I have to toggle it off and on to get rid of the hissing noise.

GermanGuy said:
Yes, same here. Switching on UHQ upscaler in sound setting fixes it. Sometimes, however, I have to toggle it off and on to get rid of the hissing noise.
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I appreciate that, I'll have to try and let everyone know if that works.. I saw threads on other websites with no answers so really, thank you.
Seems rather odd even samsung support has no idea about this either.

But Samsung uhq upscaler work only with Samsung headphones (like level on wireless pro), so possibility of using this feature is limited

GermanGuy said:
Yes, same here. Switching on UHQ upscaler in sound setting fixes it. Sometimes, however, I have to toggle it off and on to get rid of the hissing noise.
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Identical issue for me as well. Thought I was going insane...tried three different aux cords and tried cleaning inputs in the car and on the phone. Headphones work fine. Toggling UHQ upscaler fixes the issue for me too. Very annoying....but glad I'm not the only one.

I am extremely disappointed with the S7 Edge's audio quality. First of all, the bundled earphones are bad and be it any file - FLAC UHQ 24 bit or an MP3, the sound pis very muddy. They fail to do justice to the lows and highs. Speaking for the device, my dad's Galaxy S5 sounds wonderful with heavy bass without compromising on the highs and the same goes with the Note 3. Samsung should have used a decent DAC and software to make the sound good for such a premium device. Even the low end Samsung devices have a good DAC.

abhijeetlokras said:
I am extremely disappointed with the S7 Edge's audio quality. First of all, the bundled earphones are bad and be it any file - FLAC UHQ 24 bit or an MP3, the sound pis very muddy. They fail to do justice to the lows and highs. Speaking for the device, my dad's Galaxy S5 sounds wonderful with heavy bass without compromising on the highs and the same goes with the Note 3. Samsung should have used a decent DAC and software to make the sound good for such a premium device. Even the low end Samsung devices have a good DAC.
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Click to collapse
If you want a phone for Audio get a ZTE Axon 7, HTC 10, LG V20. Only devices that are aiming for great audio quality :good:

abhijeetlokras said:
I am extremely disappointed with the S7 Edge's audio quality. First of all, the bundled earphones are bad and be it any file - FLAC UHQ 24 bit or an MP3, the sound pis very muddy. They fail to do justice to the lows and highs. Speaking for the device, my dad's Galaxy S5 sounds wonderful with heavy bass without compromising on the highs and the same goes with the Note 3. Samsung should have used a decent DAC and software to make the sound good for such a premium device. Even the low end Samsung devices have a good DAC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
liam_davenport said:
If you want a phone for Audio get a ZTE Axon 7, HTC 10, LG V20. Only devices that are aiming for great audio quality :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is nothing wrong with the DAC. It has a low noise floor and the frequency graph is almost completely flat. The headphone amp however is nothing to write home about. On the Exynos version you can at least edit the mixer.xml file to reduce the gimping Samsung did to the volume level to get a much louder sound without distortion. My RHA MA 750i have plenty of bass without the need to EQ etc.
Oh and the stock buds SUCK ASS

Galactus said:
There is nothing wrong with the DAC. It has a low noise floor and the frequency graph is almost completely flat. The headphone amp however is nothing to write home about. On the Exynos version you can at least edit the mixer.xml file to reduce the gimping Samsung did to the volume level to get a much louder sound without distortion. My RHA MA 750i have plenty of bass without the need to EQ etc.
Oh and the stock buds SUCK ASS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't feel like rooting the phone! I regularly use S Health and Knox.. I hope Samsung fixes audio in the next update (if that's possible).

abhijeetlokras said:
Don't feel like rooting the phone! I regularly use S Health and Knox.. I hope Samsung fixes audio in the next update (if that's possible).
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Click to collapse
Definitely not a need to root BUT if you do, you can still use S Health and Knox with Helios ROM (Stock with optional mods).
They won't. They've gone with the "good enough" approach with the audio rather than wanting to be the best.

Galactus said:
There is nothing wrong with the DAC. It has a low noise floor and the frequency graph is almost completely flat. The headphone amp however is nothing to write home about. On the Exynos version you can at least edit the mixer.xml file to reduce the gimping Samsung did to the volume level to get a much louder sound without distortion. My RHA MA 750i have plenty of bass without the need to EQ etc.
Oh and the stock buds SUCK ASS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What changes can be made to improve this?

riso123 said:
What changes can be made to improve this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just flash Zubi's sound mod.

LDAC is at 32-bit?

Hello, I've been using the LDAC codec with my Hidizs AP80. When I go into developer options it says it's running at 32-bit/96kHz. I thought the LDAC codec only supported 24-bit/96kHz. I noticed at 32-bit, and the Optimized For Audio Quality option, I sometimes get stuttering in busy environments, but it doesn't happen at 24-bit.

I did a quick Google search. What does this portable music player have to do with a smartphone?

nabbed said:
I did a quick Google search. What does this portable music player have to do with a smartphone?
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I am streaming my music from my OP6 to my Hidizs AP80 using the phones LDAC codec implementation. I'm just wondering why this phone is able to transmit at 32-bit/96kHZ. I thought LDAC could only do 24-bit/96kHz.

jonny30bass said:
I am streaming my music from my OP6 to my Hidizs AP80 using the phones LDAC codec implementation. I'm just wondering why this phone is able to transmit at 32-bit/96kHZ. I thought LDAC could only do 24-bit/96kHz.
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Click to collapse
Probably an error in reporting - or zero idea, also possible.
BTW, my Sennheiser HD650 heaphones sound just fine with a 24bit/44kHz output from my Soundblaster Z card. Should I be worried?

nabbed said:
Probably an error in reporting - or zero idea, also possible.
BTW, my Sennheiser HD650 heaphones sound just fine with a 24bit/44kHz output from my Soundblaster Z card. Should I be worried?
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Click to collapse
No reason to be worried lol. Whatever you're satisfied with. I'm just trying to figure out the limits of LDAC on the OP6.

jonny30bass said:
No reason to be worried lol. Whatever you're satisfied with. I'm just trying to figure out the limits of LDAC on the OP6.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for a patronizing answer Mr. Audiophile

nabbed said:
Thanks for a patronizing answer Mr. Audiophile
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Click to collapse
Wasn't trying to be patronizing. My bad. What I meant is people sometimes don't notice a difference between 24-bit/48kHz and 32-bit/96kHz. I notice a small difference. I did some more digging and apparently the default LDAC settings on most android devices seems to be 32-bit/96kHz. Don't know why LDAC isn't advertised as such.

jonny30bass said:
Wasn't trying to be patronizing. My bad. What I meant is people sometimes don't notice a difference between 24-bit/48kHz and 32-bit/96kHz. I notice a small difference. I did some more digging and apparently the default LDAC settings on most android devices seems to be 32-bit/96kHz. Don't know why LDAC isn't advertised as such.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, no problem. I just noticed my sound settings in Windows was set to 44kHz, probably for some weird compatibility reason for a game. In fact, I remember that was the reason. As for your curiosity, I have no idea bro. Sorry.

Nice pairing
jonny30bass said:
I am streaming my music from my OP6 to my Hidizs AP80 using the phones LDAC codec implementation. I'm just wondering why this phone is able to transmit at 32-bit/96kHZ. I thought LDAC could only do 24-bit/96kHz.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do the same, and owning several dap (cowon plenue, and Onkyo PD S10b), I must admit this pairing us quite decent for the price, of course it requires good IEM, and easy to drive, to enjoy it plainly, but some Dunu or Moondrop are doing the job pretty well. I think OP6 have a snapdragon and a huge RAM, and there is plenty of great improvement done by OnePlus to maximize the audio experience ( EQ for exemple)

OP6 sound is pure ****...
I presume you guys use Viper4sound...

İ dont use external dac but my poco f1 shows 32bit/96 kHz with my ldac speaker

Audio in jack

The quality of the sound with the Jack is not poor but even worse !
I got so disappointed by the sound in headphones through jack, compared with other even simple devices is awful.
The response is flat and the 3D sound is terrific, this should be a phone dedicated ALSO for gaming but quiet disappointing.
Moreover the phone is certified Hi-Res audio ... and it looks like a bad joke !
I bought it recently, I made several tests trying to find out if I had to make a fine tunning or something else, I tried several different headphones, even the Hi-Res Xiaomi Mi in-ear Pro but nothing good comes out.
Thinking to change it asap, unfortunately because over all I like all other specs and I feel enough satisfied.

Magnitudine said:
/snip
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What headphones did you use? And btw. this is audio out, not in.

grt67DFqyu said:
What headphones did you use? And btw. this is audio out, not in.
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Yes it's audio through jack, right.
About which headphones I used you can read , it's written.
I'm still trying to find out a tuning but mostly in 3D the perception is so flat.
I can say that before this phone I used : S10+, Rog Phone 2, X2 Pro, P20 Pro (just to have a compare with my latest competitors)

I'm using the audio jack with a FIO FH7 inear headphone with Poweramp, in this player you can activate the Hi-Res Output and the Sound is better than all i've ever heard on a smartphone. I've you use Spotify or something else that sounds boring with the same track like on Poweramp.
I think most players don't activate the Hi-Res output and thats the problem.
Good luck.
Jodes

Hi
The problem is with the region you have set if it's in the EU including the UK then change it to something like USA or St Helens as it's due to the recommended limit of 85db set by the EU. If found helpful please press the thanks button.
Hrishabh

I agree that the sound is quite flat, especially with the hi-fi audio option activated.
One thing I think is that it might be related to headphone impedance. I run Etymotic ER-4P's using an aftermarket cable without the normal 100 ohm resistor. When I add an adaptor with a 50 ohm resistor in series, the sound becomes more dynamic and the soundstage is bigger.
In a way it's logical, because many hi-fi headphones (especially large ones) have a higher impedance.
Running audio mods such as narsil and viper4android allows me to correct the sound a little bit.

Hrishabh2005 said:
Hi
The problem is with the region you have set if it's in the EU including the UK then change it to something like USA or St Helens as it's due to the recommended limit of 85db set by the EU. If found helpful please press the thanks button.
Hrishabh
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly. Change region to Belarus and audio output will go to another level.

PITERQ said:
Exactly. Change region to Belarus and audio output will go to another level.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where is the setting to change region?

I do not activate the high resolution because it is marketing (like other Smartphone) and in presets of "sound effects" I put it in Voice because in intelligent it is quite weak both in speakers and with speakers. I tested them with SoungMAGIC E10C and Sony MDR-1Am2 and the sound is quite acceptable as long as you know how to equalize according to the songs that one listens as well as the player (local vs streaming), the headphones that you used I also used for a while And they are bad, sincerely Xiaomi does not know how to make audio and the only thing it does to make them believe that it knows how to handle it is to buy the aforementioned "Hi-Res audio" certification

@popoyaya settings > additional settings > region

A great DAC and not being able to use it ...

The Pixel 4a has this DAC, which as you can see is a great DAC, its specs are even better than many HIFI portable audio players. Well, for the uninitiated, android acts as a bottleneck in this case, as it always limits the audio output to 16bit 48khz (using a low quality resampler for the benefit of performance)
Is there any way I can use it decently? Because Google apparently has no intention of doing anything, it hasn't even shared any information on how to use the DAC, and I don't like the idea of having to use an external dac even though the 4a has a headphone jack.

I'd like to know too. Doesn't Viper4Android help get more out of it? I'm getting pretty great sound with that + PowerAmp.

Makishima said:
I'd like to know too. Doesn't Viper4Android help get more out of it? I'm getting pretty great sound with that + PowerAmp.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mmm I need to know how you set the audio settings, the output audio is resampled to 48khz? have you set the output in HD?

You mean my settings in PowerAmp or Viper?

Yeah.. It seems that Hi-res potential is not implemented in the stock ROM. Everything is mixed into 48 kHz...

.: SID :. said:
Yeah.. It seems that Hi-res potential is not implemented in the stock ROM. Everything is mixed into 48 kHz...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. Is there any custom Rom that implements it?

Also, have you tried Ainur Narsil? Perhaps it does what you want. I'm just unsure whether it will work on Android 11, it seems development is paused.

Makishima said:
Also, have you tried Ainur Narsil? Perhaps it does what you want. I'm just unsure whether it will work on Android 11, it seems development is paused.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not aware of any custom ROM which supports hi-res. If you know, please tell.
I've tried ainur but without success. And smth was even corrupted because sound became worse.
Mary be community should raise an issue for Google.

.: SID :. said:
I'm not aware of any custom ROM which supports hi-res. If you know, please tell.
I've tried ainur but without success. And smth was even corrupted because sound became worse.
Mary be community should raise an issue for Google.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've no idea actually. I'm interested in this stuff, but not so much as to notice worse quality with the 48khz Android output. And yeah, that's why I haven't tried Narsil, it doesn't seem to be too well tested in A11 and we don't even have a proper TWRP in case something goes wrong. Still, I am noticing a difference with my modded Sony NW-A45, but it's not like it sounds better, it sounds different perhaps.

Poweramp is terrible. You need an app that bypasses androids software. Usb audio player pro is the best available. It plays bitperfect audio. Neutron is second, it can also play bitperfect audio. Both apps can output 32bit/364kz at whatever rate the Track allows. Uapp plays MQA as well