yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mathieulh:
I am not sure how relevant this is, but I just tried the phone with my Klipsch X10i and everything went fine. They also work fine with my senheiser MM550-X though I use them mostly over bluetooth.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
Are there any quantitative measurements on this distortion problem? I have an S4 SGH-I337M and an S3. An earlier spot measurement of the S3 output with 10ohm loads didn't show any distortion until 14/15 volume setting. I don't have low-impedance headphones but I am set-up to measure the headphone output of any smartphone at various frequencies and monitor the signal on a scope with any load. To really quantify this and see what is generic to the S4 alone, I would use a simple resistor load (on each channel) and look at the output at various signal levels and as a function of frequency with everything flat (Normal on the sound settings). Before I do this, has anyone else reported these types of measurements?

Also, see this discussion at AndroidCentral under "gsmarena-updated-its-audio-quality-tests-2"
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tango280581:
Spoke to ee about 5 mins ago, the guy I spoke to said it was the first theyd heard about the problem and they cant do anything about it till samsung sends them confirmation that it is indeed a problem and advises them on what to do about it. Gave me samsungs number direct but im not ringing them till tomorrow as its a 0845 number. This could turn out to be a really expensive problem for sammy aswell as brand damaging, hope the're not gonna play the ' we are not responsible for 3rd party accessories' card.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] trenzterra:
Yes, it will work, but doing so would mean your song has less bass and all. The problem I believe lies with the S4's amplifier going out of control when too much current is requested from the load (i.e. when volumes are high). I don't know if it only applies to the bass range per se, as most balanced armature IEMs have low impedance at the low frequencies but much higher impedance at the high end.

I have a feeling they're gonna play that card. I mean, 90% of S4 users won't notice the problem anyway. What I suspect they will do is quietly fix the problem behind the scenes. But it'll still be a positive for us as long as they fix it cos we could just go in a few months later and request to have it fixed.

My phone is coming back from servicing tomorrow. I'm not sure if they fixed the problem, but I doubt they have (even though they kept my phone for five days), since another friend of mine sent it in for the same reason (though he pushed for them to get it done within a day, so maybe they couldn't do the proper diagnosis).

The strange thing is, the problem seems to affect production units more than anything. My friend went to a local store which had demo sets of the S4 (9505X I think) which had no issue at all. Probably some process control issues, or they decided to skimp on quality at the very end not knowing the implications.

In any case, since I'm gonna go down tomorrow and have a nice chat with the service centre staff (and hopefully influence and persuade them to let me have a direct line of communication with Samsung HQ), could you guys suggest anything that I could bring up while meeting with them? Thank you!
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tango280581:
Any of you well informed people know how we can get this out there? Got to make noise to get em to listen. Any sites, forums etc. Have sammy got a twitter account?

Edit: [MENTION=767379]Samsungmobile[/MENTION] just tweeted em. Come on team, jump on board
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] olaf63:
I tried another pair of headsets out of the shop, in the car they seemed to work perfectly. Once at home again the cracling. So I began to walk in the garden and I found that the crackling varied. Now I think that the most different thing that can influence the behaviour of the phone could be my wifi router, for example.

Anyway then I went to a shop and could try with my otg cable my music and headsets on the demo unit there. Well, no cracking on this one. Mine in the same position exhibited the cracking.

So I phoned the Samsung assistance and the reply was as expected: Samsung doesn't warrantee other headsets that work than Samsung ones. Local assistance gave the same reply, but will send it in, but I have low hopes.

Now I know that there are good ones and faulty ones, it's not the whole production.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] donovan2123:
Just sent [MENTION=767379]Samsungmobile[/MENTION]UK a string of messages on twitter. Others do the same and maybe Samsung will acknowledge the issue and saying they don't support aftermarket headphones is a joke. I expect a flagship phone to not have issues such as this as I use phone as my music player daily and headphones that came with phone just don't cut it.

If Samsung don't sort I might consider switching to another phone maybe HTC one....
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
I have done measurements using various resistive loads comparing the S4 and S3 headphone output. The results clearly show some sort of oscillation problem in the audio output of the S4 that is not present in the S3. The problem occurs for headphone impedances less than ~ 14 ohm:

"Samsung Galaxy S4: Problem With Low-Impedance Headphones" and discussed over at AndroidCentral
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] UXELLR:
Can you measure the output impedance? Probably a lot higher than s3. Wish they could match the great sansa clip+

Will have to glue the clip to the S4 :) if I buy it. This issue makes me want to stay with the S3 a lot longer than planned.

Do the i9500 have the same problem?
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
Not yet. I measured the Z(S3) to be ~ 3 ohm at 1 kHz. Will measure the S4 later but i'd be surprised if it was much different.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] trenzterra:
I suspect the demo units do not have this issue as they are running on slightly different hardware from the production batch.

Anyway, thank you so much Jensigner for conducting the test. The test results are here: http://www.jensign.com/S4Distortion/ in case you didn't visit the thread on Android Central. Hope you won't mind me linking to your page!

P.S. I suggest you guys post on their Facebook page for greater visibility. I've already posted on Samsung Singapore's page a few days ago: https://www.facebook.com/SamsungMob...fset=0&total_comments=3&notif_t=share_comment
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
No problem linking to that page. I couldn't do it directly as I'm a new poster here.

Also, I can provide a dnld zip archive of the 5 pure-tone wav files (60, 250, 1kHz, 10kHz, 20kHz) I used in my testing for others to use. If interested contact me via the email address on my web site (home page) above. The archive has 120 sec 16bit/44.1 kHz .wav tracks at almost full digital amplitude. Each track is ~ 20Mb in size but because of the pure tone content, the zip compression is huge and the archive size is only ~ 600 kB.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] trenzterra:
Hi friends, I finally got my phone back from the service centre. They changed the mobo and for some reason, also the screen and my new unit seems to be free of distortion so far, or at least when I tested at the place itself. No idea if they revised the software or hardware or both.

Anyway it was a rushed collection as I have to head off somewhere. Maybe there's still distortion but I haven't examined it in close detail, but if everything turns out well you guys could probably head to te service centres soon.

Will update more tonight.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] otacon888:
I also have this issue with the Sony XBA4. I will be getting the I9500 tomorrow...hope it doesnt have this problem.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] trenzterra:
Ok I may have jumped the gun here. It still crackles. Using the test tone, my UE600 crackles only at volume 13 out of 15. My firmware was updated to MDN though.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] okiru880:
I'm backing the theory that the issues are related to output impedance. Generally speaking, ideal output impedance should be 1/8 of the headphones that you are using.

e.g

16ohm headphones require a headphone amp which has an output impedance of no more than 2ohms.

With my i9505 I'm using 24ohm in-ear monitors which sound okay, and also 32ohm full size cans which sound even better.

I've also tried 16ohm Sennheiser CX300-ii's which sound muddy as hell... so I'm having to use headphones which are at least 24ohms for the time being... which is not to say that the S4 has an output impedance of 3ohms (24 divided by 8)... i'm guessing that it is slightly higher than 3.

It would be interesting to have the exact measurement of the S4's output impedance (both the i9500 and i9505).

In this modern day, especially with sensitive low impedance headphones out there (16ohms and less) you would think that mobile phones would be decreasing the impedances to around 1 ohm! - suitable for 8ohm headphones.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] otacon888:
Does anyone have this problem on the I9500?
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] NZtechfreak:
Not sure if there is enough feedback from i9500 owners at this point in time.

I already posted this at Head-Fi, but here is my experience with this:

Did a blind and volume-matched test with the One and S4 (i9505 international version with the same DAC as the one). Listened on 12 and 16ohm IEMs and 32ohm cans.

First interesting thing was that the Samsung stock player is noticeably louder than PowerAMP (not yet tested other third party players). Around 10dB louder if PowerAMP has direct volume control off and ~5dB louder if PowerAMP is using direct volume control. Since we wanted to use the same player in both devices we had to drop the HTC One volume down three notches for them to match closely (only one step to match with the S4 stock player).

Turned off Beats on the One.

Noted with interest that when blinding was removed and we could see which phone we favoured in our notes we both preferred the S4 sound over the One overall, better instrument separation and clarity, less fatiguing and harsh. Generally preferred the bass on the One, although the One was quite boomy. There was one MAJOR problem with the S4 though - crackling with prominent low bass frequencies. This was absent on the T5p at 32ohm, noticeable on the 16ohm IEMs, and very noticeable on the 12ohm IEMs. I ripped the 12ohm ones from my ears after about 5s, the crackling made them unbearable. If this is output impedance related as it appears to be this would put the S4 (i9505) output impedance somewhere in the 4-8ohm range, making it impossible to recommend to anyone using more sensitive IEMs.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] trenzterra:
While I think this was the problem at first, the GS3 and G Note has around a 3 ohm impedance as well but does not suffer from such issues.

Do take a look at this again: http://www.jensign.com/S4Distortion/

The conclusion he reached was this:

Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be current-related as I thought earlier, as the distortion occurs ONLY at a particular amplitude. Anything higher or lower and there's no issue. The real strange thing is that you'd expect crackling FROM a certain amplitude onwards, but apparently not! Go higher than the particular amplitude and no issues.

By the way, to NZtechfreak and all, could you guys conduct this very simple experiment on your own?

1. Go to http://www.ronelmm.com/tones/

2. Download the 150Hz test tone and place it in your phone

3. Play the test tone on your music player, at varying volumes.

4. Record the exact volume level where the signal noticeably changes into a crackling noise instead of a hum.

I only have one low impedance IEM with me, so I am unsure how the affected volume level changes with impedance.

Basically, there are two things I want to find out:

1. Does the exact amplitude whereby the crackling sets in depend on impedance?

2. Does the threshold level varies from phone to phone with the IEM used being constant?

My result is as follows:

UE600 (~13ohm): Crackles at volume 13/15. No issue at other levels.

Please record your IEM brand and model and the volume where it crackles.

Thank you!
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] robbav:
updated to german firmware - success

Hi I just wanted to post that I updated to the german firmware on an Australian Vodafone SG S4.

I had horrible crackling before on my monster isport immersion headphones.

After i updated, ALL crackerlackin is gone. woop!

If anyone else in aus is wanting to do it - make sure you check what modem you have and flash the modem for your model back onto your phone, or you will suffer massive dropouts and garbled phone calls. The Au modem is tweaked slightly differently from the one in this firmware from germany.

my modem was: DVUAMD8 which was avail on xda - forum.

thanks for drumming up my courage to flash my 1 week old phone. I refused to put up with that awful noise.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] EnricoIT:
Not yet... Waiting on feedback from someone before flashing it!
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
With both apps closed (Active Applications ... End All), I started Samsung's Music player and tried all sorts of things (plugging, unplugging, playing different types of apps with Music) and I could not get the Google Music to automatically start/run in the background ... so I have no idea what causes it so sometimes start up. However since Google Play music is listed under "Downloaded Apps" in Application Manager it is possible to Disable it. Not sure if that effects anything else though.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] i4mt3hwin:
So I got tired of waiting and flashed a MEA rom (foxhound) + stock kernel. Not a fan of the rom itself, and the stock kernel is laggy as hell when performing basic tasks but it completely fixes the crackling issues with my UE900s. I'm not sure if it effects sound quality in any other way, but it sounds excellent to me overall. Really happy.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] raydc2r:
I received my 15ohm resistor adaptor and crackling is gone.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RCJ89:
The update has been out in the UK a while now and I have a stock handset from carphone warehouse and still no software update indicated which is really annoying to say the least now.

Also I don't tend to tamper with my phone just yet
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] skerk:
UBMF5 via OTA

UBFM5 seem to have solved the issue on my S4 in Sweden, will test with two more sets of headphones to figure if it's gone for real, but it's looking good.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pici2107:
confirm fix

Just flashed the new german firmware onto my 9505 galasy s4 wich have had that terrible clipping noise with my seinheiser cx300 and with the shure 215 and also with several dr beats audio in ear and on ear units. Now a can gladly report the new rom does the job. I've tested with my in ear buds and 1 dr beats headphone and no problem at all.

My phone was sold by vodafone in Ireland and didnt have any issues to flash the german rom with the odin 3.07

Thanks for all of you to walkaround this problem! Since an hour ago iam a happy galaxy S series owner again and really enjoying it! :laugh:
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] okle001:
I too had this problem for months until flashed latest rom UAME headphones work perfect now.

next prob no wifi so been trying many kernels, now its either no wifi and great sound or wifi and **** sound
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
more good news, at least for i9505 owners. Still waiting for someone to try this on their SGH-I337 in North America.

I'm interested in seeing what volume level folks are listening with using their headphones/earbuds (i.e. what actual dBSPL you are "listening" to).

This might allow me to gauge if there is some intrinsic volume difference in some phones (as others have reported).

So for those interested, here is what I need:

- setup your music player for typical comfortably loud listening level (not ear shattering) for some heavy content (like jazz or pop) where there isn't a lot of other noise in the room

- what volume level (on the default Samsung Music player app, with no EQ) does this translate to ? (e.g. 10/15? 12/15?)

- what is your headphone make AND its spec'd sensitivity in dbSPL/1V or efficiency in dBSPL/1mW)

This will allow easy calculation of the actual dBSPL listening level, assuming the maximum output voltage (like on my SGH-I337) is 0.80Vpeak.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nipip:
I'm hearing a lot of noise with the samsung stock headphones, using google play music and bass boost in the android equalizer.

(I9500, stock MF3 rom)

With samsung player, sound alive bass eq also makes some background noise at full setting.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
hmm, if your stock headphones are the same as mine (for the SGH-I337 ~ i9505) than then are ~ 35 ohm. When you say "noise" is it like the "crackle" discussed here?

I did some more testing on my SGH-I337 and although mine has the "fuzzies" which apparently is fixed in the Euro-firmware, I predict that once the "fuzzies" are fixed, assuming that firmware fix doesn't tamper with anything else like overall output level and frequency response, then the output should be able to deliver over 100 mA of current with no clipping! The output impedance of the headphone output on my S4 is ~ 1.2 ohm (I reported 2.4 ohm earlier but that seems to have been an error).
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kevlarman:
Listening to some Alison Krauss (bluegrass) in an empty office using Sennheiser CX500 and the Samsung Music App. SoundAlive set to normal and Adapt Sound is off.

Volume 7/15 before it gets painful

Sensitivity of these earphones is spec'd at 113dB, but I'm unsure how that was measured.

EDIT: I should probably add that I have replaced the stock silicone tips on these earphones with Comply Isolation Plus (TX400) tips, so it does attenuate ambient noise a bit better than stock, meaning I don't need to bump the volume up.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
The spec for the CX500 indicates that the 113 is per 1Vrms. With a nominal impedance of 16 ohm and for a Music player level of 7/15 that corresponds to an absolute sound pressure level of ~ 84 dBSPL which sounds about right for iem according to the table at the bottom of this wiki page (right column). Note that the long-term hearing damage threshold is stated as 85 dBSPL.

With my Sen HD598 with almost identical 112 dBSPL/1Vrms as your iems, I need a level of ~ 12/15 with Samsung Music player to get an uncomfortably loud sound which translates to ~ 96 dBSPL. I think the difference is mine are over-ears so the actual SPL at the inner ear is considerably lower (just a guess).

Correction: The 84 dBSPL sound level above is actually for a full digital-level sound track at player level 7/15. Any music track will obviously be recorded with a lower average level ... probably ~ 4 dB lower for nominally loud content to allow headroom. So your average sound level above would be about 80 dBSPL.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pszafer:
Do any of you know why in custom ROMs sound crackling problem still occurs, when in stock ROMs it's gone?

I have Omega 7 with stock kernel and problem persist, so I suppose it couldn't be kernel bug.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
For those interested in testing this, and to factor out personal taste in music, it might be better to pick a "standard" sound. Here is a 30 sec. wav track of a -3dB level 440 Hz pure tone (~ 5 Mb dnld). Most folks aren't hearing challenged at that "standard tuning fork" frequency. The -3dB level of this test track also corresponds roughly to a full recording level of fairly agressive music.
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rbrucemtl:
Because the kernel sources are not released...
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
For anyone who updated with the German firmware for i9505, apart from fixing the problem with "crackle", did you notice any differences related to headphone functionality in:

- features or functionality of Samsung's default Music player app

- any tonal changes in what you hear or any perceived volume differences
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ipmanwck:
Hey bud. I only use playerpro and listen to some music on YouTube and both sound clear now.

I did test the stock player with my eph -100s on 7.1surround option which crackled before but now it has no crackle but sound is what I can only describe as more echo like. Not tested any other sound mode as went straight back to playerpro
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jensigner:
Coming soon: FiiO E17 vs S4 vs QuadBuffer headphone audio

I just received a FiiO E17 DAC/headphone amp. I'm going to do some RMAA and audio clipping measurements on the FiiO headphone output using the digital SPDIF input (for say 16 ohm loads) and see how it compares with the direct headphone out of the S4 and with the S4 into the E17 analog-input and then into 16 ohm. Oh yes, I'll also include the QuadBuffer amp (which is just a high-performance amp, not a DAC) I designed. Stay tuned!

First Impressions:

I tested the E17 for an output level of ~ 0.9Vpeak, so comparable level to max. output of the S4 phone.

After testing the analog chain using the Line-In (bottom), and the DAC/analog chain using the Optical SPDIF in and USB playback, I find that:

- the best audio performance is obtained using the Line-In

- next best is the SPDIF input (which as expected has the lowest crosstalk)

- surprisingly the USB playback has the poorer audio performance. The THD is still low but the other type of distortion (IMD) is a lot higher.

Line-In testing results were almost identical with open headphone-out load and with 15 ohm loads (the E17 is only supported down to 16 ohm headphones). With open load (actually into 3 kohm), the performance is extremely good and so this functions perfectly well as a standard "line out" .... no need to use the doc line-out adapter really.

More results to come in combination with the S4

Chart below shows RMAA audio performance results (from Left to Right) with:

S4 connected directly to 22 ohm headphone loads

S4 connected to Line-In of FiiO E17 with E17 output loaded with 22 ohm loads

S4 connected to Line-In of QuadBuffer Amp with QuadBuff loaded with 22 ohm loads

Results are for a signal level roughly equal to the maximum possible output level of the S4 (~ 0.8Vpeak).

The big improvement in THD (total harmonic distortion) is evident with a separate headphone amp. The QuadBuffer is marginally better than the E17 in distortion and noise but much better in crosstalk. However the E17 can deliver up to ~ 3.3Vpeak output level and can therefore drive higher headphone impedances well (up to ~ 300 ohm according to specs):
[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] PockySnacks:
Where can I find this German firmware. It works with the tmobile USA variant right? Also this problem is inexcusable for such a high end device :/ Why did I rush to buy another android phone? UGH! :mad: