Re: Lumia 800 disastrous audio quality

stavrojones · ‎2012-01-17

Is this a good thing? I was always under the impression that less resistance was better in speakers/headphones.

crystal405 · ‎2012-01-17

I don't think you can say that generally.

I just checked the Lumia with wonderful Sennheiser HD 25, which got 70 Ohms. That's a pretty high resistance. And wow, the Lumia finally produces decent sound!

Imo WhiteAlien did a huge step forward to investigate the issue. Nokia should be proud of this community.

stavrojones · ‎2012-01-17

The resistance explanation is interesting, and well-done to WhiteAlien for finding it, but I find there is still something strange with the consistency of output on this phone. It doesn't explain why Spotify for me is so far outperforming Nokia's default player that it's unreal (only on certain tracks). There might be a problem with the shipped codecs or something, Spotify uses it's own internal ones (because the stream is OGG-vorbis) so perhaps this is a reason why it's immune from the harshness.

MrEdward · ‎2012-01-17

Hello from France everyone.

I just performed a quick test with 3 different headsets and my results are heading to the "resistance" explanation of our problem.

JVC HA-FXCA80 / 16 Ohms / Poor sounds (was ok with my old Iphone 3gs)
Seinnheiser PX-200 / 32 Ohms / It's almost ok, There is some bass and the hiss sound is reduced
Victor HP-m770 / 40 Ohms / Ok here we are, sounds is balanced, bass are tighted and the sound stage is ok...

So, should I wait for a fix from Nokia or buy a new headset (something like the AKG K319 > 32 ohms) ?

Speak to me my dear Nokia, I'm waiting for a sign...

Overmann · ‎2012-01-18

Well, this is very depressing reading. My Sennheiser IE7's are 16 ohm and there is no way I'm forking out for a new set in order to use a phone. But I'mnot sure i understand the implications of these findings. Does this mean that it's a hardware-thing, or is it plausible that this could be solved through an update? Would that update have to come from Nokia or MS?

WhiteAlien · ‎2012-01-18

I brought mine to Nokia care center. I had also problems with MMS not working so they took it for repair. I'll report back the result of this in 2 weeks.
I also heard that some guy did the same and they did fix sound issue. Based on maintenance report they simply reflashed the same firmware. Lets wait and see.

Keimo123 · ‎2012-01-18

My old N73 sounded very disappointing over the first months when I bought it. The first bigger software update made it sound excellent.

On the other hand my 5800 Xpress Music sounds excellent since day one.

I hope Nokia will improve Lumia's sound soon.

treysparker · ‎2012-01-19

Thats interesting...regarding the impedance...

I have a pair of HD25's i'll give them a shot and report back my findings.

Anyone have a pair of HD800s laying around? lol

rahulxsinha · ‎2012-01-19

@ All : Now here is some INTERESTING News....

Just few hours ago I updated the firmware to 7.10.8107.79.... However I could not stand the capacitive keys being Off on High Brightness setting... Hence I restored to 7740...

Surprise Surprise >> The audio quality improved a lot, Lower frequency bass got enabled, but the loudness level seems to be the same (a bit low) ... Maybe restoration initialized some drivers or so... Now, in my case I never had the lower battery capacity issue, hence restoring to 7740 was not a case of compromising the battery life....

I am not going to update to 8107 in near future... My only gripe was the audio quality which seems to be taken care of by restoration... Cheers !!!

vveasel · ‎2012-01-19

ditto. Tried Lumia with a bunch of different in-ear pieces - SQ is awful with low ohm, and 32-36 ohm seems classifiable as low since my Shure535 make no difference. However... I am typing it listening to Lumia in Grado GR8 and I happy to say - perfect combo. Very decent sound. GR8 are 120Ohm. Nevertheless it is clear that audio output circuitry in Lumia is **bleep**. (I am not affiliated with Grado in any way - just bought GR8 on Amazon).

crystal405 · ‎2012-01-19

My audio quality didn't increase with the new update.

tonttula · ‎2012-01-19

Thanks to all who figured this out. Makes sense as my headphones are in the 14-17ohms. Denon and Sennheiser fan. Grado and Westone would have some options but they are in the +250 ruros range, while i'm looking at ~150 euros in-ears.

What i asked this about my brother who does who's profession this toiches, it should not be related to sf, but is a hw "choice". Kind of **bleep**, thinking by far most of the in-ears are in below 20ohms.

AnoopParwani · ‎2012-01-19

Hi guys,

Im aware everyone has issues while listening to music via the headphones as i have that too. Thats something i can live with.

However, what i cant live it is poor on call quality issues without the headphones. The other person on the call doesnt sound all that loud, clear n crisp to me. I keep having to press the phone more towards my ear to hear them louder and better. Its sub par. Its worse than any phone ive used.

Is anyone else facing this issue or is it just me?

I just switched from an iPhone to this and im very dissappointed.

NOKIA PLEASE FIX THESE AUDIO QUALITY ISSUES!!! This needs more addressing than the battery issues..

heizsenberg · ‎2012-01-20

I have been following this thread for some time now to see if there is some solution to the problems. Im eager to buy a Nokia Win Phone, but sound quality is of utmost importance and its out of the question to buy a faulty phone. But Im tired of waiting and the Lumia 800 is supposed to be released in my country now in February, so I don't know what to do.

Thank you all Nokia users for your patience, and for trying to solve the issues. This thread has given me hope that there may be a solution to the problem, thanks to all posting here, despite the utter silence from Nokia. Before I started reading this I was determined NOT to buy the phone, based on reviews and comments around the audio issues (and the other issues). Its a shame Nokia don't respond! At least tell us if new phones shipping are fixed, or do you continue ship faulty phones to country after country still after the issues are reported? Please speak up if it was one particular faulty batch of phones, and if buying a new lumia 800 phone now are perfectly safe (at least since phone reps supposedly silently are fixing the issue when phones are returned)? Or if its fixable by software upgrade or not? Please be open and honest with your users (and potential new users including me), that's the best long term strategy!

To all, thank you again for posting all your efforts to try to fix this issue! I know how frustrating it can be, and Im eager to follow the thread to see if there is a final conclusion. Hopefully Nokia will wake up and do something about it, if they haven't already...

aadicoool · ‎2012-01-20

If music quality is of utmost importance then DO NOT BUY THIS PHONE.
Make no mistakes... I love this phone and i wont replace it with anything right now available in the market (well may be the lumia 900

). But the audio quality is such a huge let down. No matter what headphone you use or what workaround you try with Lumia, its audio output is nowhere near an iDevice.

5erg · ‎2012-01-20

Great thread. Just to stick in my 5p:

I wouldn't say that sound is disastrous. It's fine on my device at least. The only difference I can *clearly hear* (or not hear) is the lack of bass. For example, I listen to Streetlife (Chase & Status) on my PC (ok soundcard - X-FI Xtreme Gamer) and on Lumia through Zune and the lack of bass becomes very obvious.

However mids and highs sound as they should (i.e. similar on my desktop sound card), no noticable difference there.

I am a dubstep fan, lack of bass on my Lumia (received 3 days ago) is a major annoyance, however I do think this is possible to resolve programatically - some sort of a pre-amp.

Now waiting for my phone to receive the Jan update, perhaps it will fix, if not - hoping to see an equalizer app on the Marketplace sometime soon.

I use Sennheiser CX300-II (16 Ohm)

OS version: 7.10.7740.16

Nokia firmware: 1600.2479.7740.11451

Regards

crystal405 · ‎2012-01-20

aadicoool wrote:
[...]
No matter what headphone you use or what workaround you try with Lumia, its audio output is nowhere near an iDevice.

That's not true. The quality is fine if you use headphones with very high resistance (70Ohms f.ex.). The problem is that usual mobile headphones have low resistance. Then the Audio Output of the Lumia sounds like bad like hell.

Still wondering if this issue will be fixed in near future and I am waiting for another answer from Nokia.

MrEdward · ‎2012-01-20

I don't want to talk about "conspiracy" but if you take a look at the headset specialy develloped for the lumias phone (Nokia Purity by monster) you will notice that his resistance is 32 ohms..

Maybe the lumia is specially tweaked for this headset

jwshale · ‎2012-01-20

Unfortunately I am yet another user who's been experiencing extremely poor bass response when listening to music on this phone. I have tried several pair of earphones and headphones, ranging from cheap earbuds (of several types!), through Shure E2c, Sennheiser PX-100, IXOS DJ1003 to AKG 141s. Nearly all of these reveal the lack of bass on the Lumia, which is a real shame. The IXOS 'phones are OK, but then they normally have too much bass. They're also not exactly lightweight portable headphones that I'd use out-and-about.

I have also tried sound through a Bluetooth receiver, which seems to resolve the bass issues but also introduces a hint of compression that is certainly noticeable.

The talk that higher impedance headphones resolve the problem is interesting. I wonder if the issue might then be a hardware problem related to impedance matching? Has anyone got some really high impedance cans to try?

tonttula · ‎2012-01-20

Anyoby happens to have Klipsch Image X10i or X10.

Been thinking to buy them and it just happens that as far as imbedence goes it could be great pair to Lumia 800 (50 ohms).