[Spirit FM] mustasusi:
Mike, you have no idea what you are missing here!

This is the greatest FM receiver I ever faced in a smartphone, by far.

I'm so happy today with my findings, now that I had a chance to deeply examine its capabilities with Spirit!

As I stated before due to the superior potential this receiver has, since the antenna pins appear to be more Note1-like the extremely stronger reception compared to the HTC Max and the inferior (yet still awesome) Note2, of course you can pull the 3.5mm plug half the way out to get even greater.

The stereo threshold is...WoW, the most amazing I've ever heard for a smartphone, reminds me of old Walkmen, Discmen and MDs, thanks to the support of "force stereo" it goes since ~16 (OEM goes at about ~39 but range slightly increases as reception increases accordingly), of course if you don't mind of additional white background noise (stereo has its price) that impacts clearness. The SNR is still a parameter should be taken in account, therefore the frequency may show "30" but still be mono or noisy. In fact I can pick once again weak stations in my area and have them stereo'd. Now that the procedure is clearer to me, the more I enjoy of it.

I did as follows:

1. Have both Emmis Next radio and Spirit (any version so far will do) installed. don't mess with Spirit settings. You may only change "channels" (if you want force stereo) and "band" (if you want to pick the even freqs as well as Japan freqs).

2. Launch Next radio and start playback.

3. Minimize Next radio and leave it to play in background.

4. Launch Spirit, so the playback from Next radio stops and Spirit open\close BT then throws the message "No FM accessible". You may also hear a weak rumbling sound that "dances" to on-screen touches.

5. Go to Spirit settings, under "Debug" choose "FM chip" and select "emulator".

6. Click the Spirit power button and see a reception random value (for me it's "44") and some RDS random text.

7. Pull down notification panel, long press on the Next radio line, choose "app info" and "kill" it.

8. Go back to Spirit, you should still hear that weak noise from the output, change "FM chip" settings back to "BCM" or "Automatic".

9. Click the Spirit power button again to exit.

10. Relaunch Spirit. It may play for a split second then crash\FC. Don't worry, just relaunch Spirit and you're all set. I'd recommend to close Spirit again and relaunch but I can't 100% confirm it won't get stuck sometime. I was able to use it for a few hours long when manually shut it down before I went to sleep. You can freely close and relaunch Spirit and keep listening to the radio as much as you want, as long as it doesn't get stuck. When you finish - launch Next radio, hit play and stop to "clear" the output from that rumbling noise, as it may prevent from device to go standby, hence drain the battery.

*If Spirit gets stuck - kill it and since it keeps playing, go to Next radio, play and stop then repeat this procedure (excluding step 1).

If you're unable to get over this process - remove and re-install Spirit (better have a backup to restore with initial settings).

A video of Spirit working on Sprint GN3 with sound:

http://www28.zippyshare.com/v/25365343/file.html

A little tutorial for the above procedure (if it's not clear enough, I will post another one using cursor traces) :

http://www77.zippyshare.com/v/93358430/file.html

For people who have Sprint GN3 and are too shy to ask, comment or consult - this is for you.

Now I'm just waiting for the ZL battery & case to arrive and I'm ready to go outdoors!

I still wish I could record. I was able to switch to digital and it played on a fixed volume level, visual spectrum didn't show and record dumped a 0b non increasing .wav file. I'll try and figure out how to simplify this process and update this post.

Still, thank you Mike for the awesome work, as always you are a life-saver!

Edit: If you chose "speaker" as output in Next radio, it may work only on speaker all the way.