[Galaxy S II General] -Juff-:
Okay, I finally got my SGS II.

First thing I did, when I got it out of it's box, was - of course - testing the sound quality.

So I started the standard Samsung player and listened to the two songs that come with the device using my Klipsch Image S4 (not high end, but pretty decent imo). And I also played around with the equaliser as well as with the sound effects. And what can I say? Horrible!!! Seriously, this is crap! Listening to music with no eq or effects on may be okay, but if you play around with any of them, the sound gets messed up. Dunno if the SGS had the same eq (because I used and liked it... o.O), but it's hard to imagine. Unusable imo.

Next thing was trying my bluetooth headset, Philips SHB 9000. I guess it doesn't represent high end headphones, but I always liked it's sound quiete much. And this time I liked it as well, because with eq and all effects turned off, the sound was pretty nice over bluetooth (just had Philip's FullSound activated). :)

Then I thought about trying the good old PowerAMP because of it's built in eq, which did a pretty good work I remembered. And this time, the sound was fine. I created my own preset with some extra bass (ya, I'm a bass junk d(-_-)b) and also tried some presets: they are all fine. I just don't like the bass & treble controls in "Tone", they messed up the sound, mainly the bass, pretty fast.

At least I tried the app "Equaliser" that some users talked about in this thread. It seems to work pretty well, I created a nice preset. Until now I don't dare using the "Virtualizer" and "Bass Booster", but they didn't sound thaaat bad (I mean at least they didn't mess up the sound completely). The reverb-thing is for playing around anyway, I guess.

Well, concerning the overall sound quality:

- There DEFINITELY are background noises! They are not very loud, but when not listening to music I can hear them - and they are pretty annoying! =/ Dunno if it's about the CPU or whatever, but they appear when certain actions are executed (like starting an app by tapping on it). If I don't do anything, I'm not able to hear them anymore. But well, my laptop has this issue as well and I can live with it. Why? Because even if I listen to music with the volume set to 1/15 it's hard to still hear this background noise. And while I listen to music with ~ 10/15 there really isn't anything to complain imo. :)

- I'm missing the punchy bass of the Voodoo SGS (I mean w/o using any eq or stuff). Out ofthe box, the SGSII's bass is a bit weak. But you can easily adjust an eq in PowerAMP or the app "Equaliser" to your needs. =)

- The SGSII is not THAT loud. A strange thing is, that the Samsung player seems to get louder than PowerAMP. With the stock player I really can't listen to 15/15, but with PowerAMP it's at least possile to listen to max. volume for a short time. But seriously, all those guys crying about the volume: it's loud enough! It's just perfectely fine with me. Of course it's not SGS with Voodoo amp on max. volume + volume setting on max., but that was just... You would NEVER EVER use it anyway. If your SGSII isn't loud enought, you should get better earphones, check your ears or do stuff like that before waiting for a Voodoo app! :D

- I can't say anything about the stereo crosstalk as I'm not audiophile anough to talk about this. Hearing differences between different volume settings or comparing this to the SGS with Voodoo is impossible for me, sorry. ;)

So, if I had to sum up my experience with the SGSII's sound and give some tips, it would look like this:

- The sound quality is good! Not very good, but with some tuning via PowerAMP eq or "Equaliser" I get a REALLY nice result. I'm completely satisfied.

- Get PowerAMP! Seriously, this player is the ****. So many options, settings, preferences & stuff, a nice equaliser, great UI and so on. Best player on market for sure.

- DON'T use the Samsung stock music player (or at least NEVER EVER use the built in eq)!

- Don't be afraid of the background noise! It's there if you wanna find it, but you will never notice when you listen to music (without silent parts).

- If you don't wanna play around with any eq, try some decent bluetooth headphones! You won't have the loss of bass and the quality is pretty good when your source material is hq.

That's it! For now, I'm done with this topic. This phone is AMAZING! I'm enjoying it and I'm pretty glad I finally bought it - even though I had my doubts because of the sound quality! =)

Edit:

As I just read the post above: imo the PowerAMP preamp messes up the sound pretty fast. Maybe not that fast if you don't use an equaliser in PowerAMP, but I wouldn't set it to 80% or something that high. ;)