[Galaxy S II General] Gaff_l:
It's very easy to be swayed by other people's opinions and reviews of stuff like the SGS2 sound quality. I found myself starting to doubt what I was hearing because of so many negative takes on it, so I decided to test it at least to satisfy myself.

I'm inclined to agree with fjhuerta... you get some pretty good sound, but only if you have a decent, suitable set of headphones/ear buds.

I'm not an audio expert by any means, but I've been listening to good music for a lot of years and always try for the best sound I can get out of the budget at my disposal. I've never reviewed anything before, so don't expect the right terminology, but here's my take on it.

I've done a 'quasi' A-B test between the SGS2 and my 30GB Creative Zen X-Fi (at least the best I can manage with my primitive equipment!) i.e. set the same track to start on both devices at the same time and swap the headphone plug from one to the other several times to hear the difference.

If you don't know the X-Fi it's a 'not too bad' mp3 player which got substantially good reviews when it first came out (2008, I think), not too far from the Cowan... anyway, it's always sounded pretty good to me and certainly better than some iPods/phones i've listened to.

I listen to lots of different kinds of music so I did the testing with the following selection, just to get a feel for how the SGS2 performs with different music (in no particular order):

- Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Live album, "Driftin' & Driftin'"

- Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (great for hearing really punchy bass)

- Muse - Showbiz

- (The late) Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

- Sacred Spirit 2 - "Legends" (deep rumbly bass and good riffs)

- Filippa Giordano - "Norma: Casta Diva" (soaring female voice underlayed with rich well defined bass and other midrange instruments).

- Mahler - several symphonies and Das Liede von Erde (well, I'm a Mahler freak, with about 8 different sets of all his Symphonies... what more can I say? Tragic!)

- Magdalena Kozena - Bach Arias

- Jacky Terrasson - La Javanaise (Jazz piano)

- King Sunny Ade - Juju Music

- Kevin Johansen - City Zen

I also tried several earphones:

- Sennheiser MX500 - crap! No base, ****ty sound and bloody uncomfortable!

- Sony earphones (no markings) - Lots of bass, but NOTHING else at all! And the bass was really muddy and ill-defined. (I've thrown them away!)

- 3 x assorted pairs of Creative earphones, one of which came with the X-Fi. - Hmmm, I'd use the best pair if I had no option, but if they were all you had, you could easily conclude that the SGS2 had pretty poor sound.

- Shure E2 (IEMs, very old pair, frayed cabling, kept for spare) - Now we're starting to hear something a bit more worthwhile... i.e. you can actually hear different instruments. Passable but a bit thin sounding, not much in the way of bass.

- Shure SE310 (IEM) - nice, clear open sound with good bass.

- Shure SE425 (IEM) - terrific! Great definition, bass is crisp and punchy, voices are clear and superb. (BUT, I've only just got these earphones and I thought I'd made a terrible mistake when i first tried them. They sounded nothing like as good as my [much cheaper] SE310s... until I replaced the sleeve with the larger foam ones that came in the packet. Suddenly, with my ears sealed better, it was all there - beautiful wide soundstage, deep crisp bass, soaring highs and so on.)

- Sennheiser HD 565 Ovations - terrific also! And to my surprise the SGS2 drove them at a volume that was quite high enough for a good experience without blowing my eardrums. Strangly, I've never used them with a portable player before, just with my Arcam hifi set up at home, so wasn't sure what to expect.

So, this is not really supposed to be a headphone review, but what it did show me was that with the wrong earphones it's easy to conclude that the SGS2 sounds very ordinary.

When compared with the Creative Zen X-Fi, there is no doubt that the SGS2 doesn't sound as good... but it's not that far off!

What I did find was that I had to play around a fair bit with the EQ using PowerAmp and/or Equalizer (on the Market, developed by Smart Android) to get closer to the X-Fi default sound. Straight out of the box, so speak, with no changes to EQ, the X-Fi sounds generally cleaner with wider sound stage, more defined bass (but not more/deeper than the SGS2) and greater reserves of power. But I managed to get the SGS2 fairly close and certainly good enough for me to be very happy with (provided I'm not constantly doing an A-B comparison with the X-Fi!).

Also, I found the volume to be perfectly adequate on the SGS2 using any of the Shures or the HD 565. In fact, it could be painful if cranked up to full volume. Even at full volume, I didn't notice lots of distortion, unless I tried upping the preamp level too high on PowerAmp... then it became very messy.

Most of the pieces I tried were great... powerful, exciting music. Amy Winehouse sounds tremendous (or is that just a touch of nostalgia for times past? Shame she left us so young.)

The one piece that I wasn't totally satisfied with was a Mahler Symphony 2 with Klaus Tennstedt, & Yvonne Kenny and the LPO. It's one of my favourites but it's recorded at a fairly low level and like most Mahler, deserves a good volume. The SGS2 couldn't cope, whereas the X-Fi could. The X-Fi definitely has much more power at its disposal.

I've got a Fiio E5 headphone amplifier on order. Hoping that that might improve the Tennstedt Mahler. But, you know... even without it, I'm very happy with what I listen to walking the cliffs every morning!

Oh, and one more thing... the SGS2 is SO MUCH EASIER to use than the X-Fi. It holds just as much music with an added 32GB SD, the screen is huge and you can see exactly what you're doing... no scrolling through what seems like hundreds of menus on the X-FI to get to what you want. And PowerAmp is a fantastic app, easy to navigate, good looking and good tweaking.

If you're holding back on getting the SGS2 because of negative reviews of SQ, remember... don't believe everything you read. (Not even this... for all you know it might be bull**** written by Samsung!)