distorted sound with my Samsung Galaxy S9+ after update

[Peter Jackson]

Just updated note 9 to pie, volume and sound quality bad, any updates, is this a Samsung problem or pa issue. 

[w3wilkes]

On 3/6/2019 at 4:41 AM, Peter Jackson said:

Just updated note 9 to pie, volume and sound quality bad, any updates, is this a Samsung problem or pa issue. 

What was updated? I would say that what was update is the problem.

[Peter Jackson]

Updated to pie version 9, so your saying that the O/S is the problem, not much I can do about that. 

[Naittsirk]

Yes, as of now PA plays back only 16bit on samsung phones running pie

[RFTC]

Dear Poweramp team

...any update on this side? Still suffering from distorted bass sounds on the loudspeakers :-(((. Can we expect updates from Poweramp. Using Google stuff as a (bad and unwanted) alternative at the moment ...thanks for letting us loyal users know...

[maxmp]

Settings / audio / output / your output / Restore defaults. There are no any distortion on speaker for default settings on Samsung pie devices.

[RFTC]

9 minutes ago, maxmp said:

Settings / audio / output / your output / Restore defaults. There are no any distortion on speaker for default settings on Samsung pie devices.

Hi Maxmp

thanks for your answer - but I'm not using Poweramp to ignore TONE and EQ settings (which has been the value add of the app for years now)...then I could go back to Google and co...sigh.

Thanks anyway. But I assume I'm not the only one (as the thread let's me guess).

[andrewilley]

If it's a boosted bass EQ setting that is causing your problems, either try high-res output mode or decrease the pre-amp gain  to give a bit of extra headroom.

Andre

[RFTC]

2 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

If it's a boosted bass EQ setting that is causing your problems, either try high-res output mode or decrease the pre-amp gain  to give a bit of extra headroom.

Andre

Thanks Andre

I have already told everyone in this thread how I tried to resolve the problems (cf first page). I invested hours without a result and won't repeat. I was assuming, that any of the developers would fix this new problem that everyone has in loudspeaker mode after the Samsung update. But it seems impossible to solve -  it's a petty. Was the one and only player with a good sound, no matter if on loudspeaker or headphones. 

Good luck.

 

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, RFTC said:

I have already told everyone in this thread how I tried to resolve the problems (cf first page).

Fair enough, sounds like a general Samsung Pie issue then - although Max reported above no particular issues with speakers on his test setups. Did you try following his advice and setting output back to defaults? Otherwise, as I said, reduce the pre-amp gain and don't over-boost bass. (EQ/Tone may turn off by default when you set defaults on Pie though, which I think Max mentioned in another thread)

Andre

[Rainytears]

It happens to me same after updating pi, galaxy s8+ and build 826

I turned off eq and made options default but still problem remained.

[blaubär]

The limiter should help, but I'm afraid it doesn't.

 

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, blaubär said:

The limiter should help, but I'm afraid it doesn't.

I don't know the technicalities of how the limiter works, but I'm wondering if it acts a bit like ReplayGain and it reduces the original input data if it hits digital 100%, so as to allow more processing room further down the chain? This issue with devices distorting bass on Samsung Pie seems to be a separate specific problem though, which I suspect too many people are reporting for it to be down to individual settings. Max has said he can't reproduce it on his Samsung devices, and it certainly not should happen with the audio output and EQ settings at default.

Andre

[blaubär]

1 hour ago, andrewilley said:

I don't know the technicalities of how the limiter works, but I'm wondering if it acts a bit like ReplayGain and it reduces the original input data if it hits digital 100%, so as to allow more processing room further down the chain?

I could think of two ways a limiter could work :

- what you described, that would be a sort of dynamics compressor, as shown in the wikipedia : 

- it could preventively reduce the pre-amplification by the amount of the highest eq increase minus headroom

But it seems it does neither.

[andrewilley]

yeah, the limited could be dynamic - but if it's post-EQ, then any clipping introduced by bass boost beyond 100% would still create distortion.

Andre

[blaubär]

3 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

but if it's post-EQ, then any clipping introduced by bass boost beyond 100% would still create distortion

Right. So it would have to be before the Equalizer.

[andrewilley]

What would make most sense to me would be for the limiter to adjust the user's requested EQ curve dynamically, to prevent the current settings taking any given output range over 100%. e.g. if the input signal at any given time was already 100% in the 31Hz range already, don't apply any further increase based on the 31Hz slider.

Andre

[blaubär]

6 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

What would make most sense to me would be for the limiter to adjust the user's requested EQ curve dynamically, to prevent the current settings taking any given output range over 100%. e.g. if the input signal at any given time was already 100% in the 31Hz range already, don't apply any further increase based on the 31Hz slider.

Andre

Ok, that would be possible. But if the user wants to increase bass, why not decrease all frequencies accordingly ? That way the relative  bass increase would stay.

[andrewilley]

13 minutes ago, blaubär said:

Ok, that would be possible. But if the user wants to increase bass, why not decrease all frequencies accordingly ? That way the relative  bass increase would stay.

Intelligent limiters can skew the dynamic EQ pattern I guess, but a simple reduction of the overall input gain would might more sense. Hopefully Max can say how it works anyway.

Andre

[maxmp]

You can amplify frequencies as much as the headroom in the dynamic range allows. In case of disabled/not supported/failing DVC or in case of full scale signal (volume ~ 100%) there is no headroom for amplification and signal is either limited by limiter or just clips.

Note that for bluetooth on default Android 8 settings, volume is always=100% and no headroom exists. This is why Disable Absolute Volume option is recommended for BT, though on some Samsungs ROMs this option is broken and doesn't work.

Extra headroom then can be added by reducing preamp and thus reducing overall max possible volume.
There is also per-output setting in Poweramp (No Headroom) which is by default OFF - this provides some headroom (6dB) by default, but you can amplify Basses or other frequencies much more than these 6dB in Poweramp (and get clipping).

[blaubär]

3 hours ago, maxmp said:

signal is either limited by limiter or just clips

So the limiter limits BEFORE the equalizer, so that signal after amplification by the equalizer doesn't exceed the maximum allowed value ?

[maxmp]

Limiter processes after all other stages (as we don't want >0dB signal on output, no matter what stage introduced it).

Btw, recent Samsung Pie firmwares (ro.build.changelist >= 15516145) now support DVC + Hi-Res up to 192kHz and that will be in the next 829 build.

[blaubär]

57 minutes ago, maxmp said:

Limiter processes after all other stages (as we don't want >0dB signal on output, no matter what stage introduced it).

So that assumes that up to that point no distortions due to high as settings have occurred, but would occur in further processing.

[andrewilley]

23 minutes ago, blaubär said:

So that assumes that up to that point no distortions due to high as settings have occurred, but would occur in further processing.

I assume internally PA uses a higher bit depth to allow for lots of headroom during processing, but then has to convert back down for output (which from what Max says, is where the limiter comes in, and will reduce the overall gain if it would otherwise start to clip).

Andre

[maxmp]

@blaubär Imagine you have some music. Music is usually already occupies whole available 16bit dynamic range (values from -32768 to 32767 or close to this (or -32767 to 32767, depending on audio engineer view on that - differs a lot across devices/software). Now you amplify bass a bit and you get value, saying, 35000. You can't send 35000 to the DAC as max value is 32767. So instead you send 32767 (even if value should be 35000).

That is perceived as the distortion.

Limiter can't fit 35000 into DAC as well. It will reduce volume as soon as value > 32767 (or close to that) is seen and it will keep that volume reduction for a few milliseconds. This is distortion too, but it's perceived better by human ear.

Of course, on Android device these max values are sent to DAC on max volume only. If this is headset, you probably hurting your hearing by that volume.
As long as you listen on less-than-max volume, you introduce headroom which can be used for distortion-less bass (or actually any frequency) amplification.