[Sony Xperia E1] dunker56:
I feel as tho I have come so far but still have a few annoyances that I'm hoping someone can help answer as to why and perhaps put me on the right path to resolving. I would really appreciate some help at this time. So to summarize;

1) I have successfully rooted this E1, to such a degree that I have altered values on the mixer_path file to get full volume from this phone, this has worked and the phone is now sufficiently loud enough.

2) My bootloader is still locked, and I don't really know what this means?

3) The system wants me to remove towelroot, even gives warnings in notification tray (circled red), in addition I am getting continuous update popups to do a system update, but I am told by a friend (who did the rooting) that if I do said update I lose the root... It's bloody annoying. It basically means my root is very precarious, one accidental tap of 'ok' instead of 'later' and I lose all my hard work (well all the hard work my friend did). Despite messing with settings in the UpdateCentre it's still persistent.

4) Viper4Android is installed, but I'm getting very odd results as to whether it is applied or not. I have poweramp, shuttle+, GMP and of course the Walkman app all installed, it seems that in GMP I can hear V4A toggle on and off depending upon which screen I am looking at within GMP. Sometimes in Walkman app and I navigate to V4A settings and change something, nothing happens, another time it does take effect. I was under the impression V4A was quite deeply rooted into the system, but I'm getting flakey results as to when it is applied.

5) Each music app has it's own pluses and minuses but I haven't found one app that does it all. For example, Walkman app sounds the best (when it works), I can use it's own DSP Settings (ClearBass, EQ etc) in conjunction with V4A, the end result sounds great, but no Lyric display from this app (when I choose 'Download song info' it just hangs and doesnt download anything :S

Poweramp has the Lyric display, but not V4A or ClearBass etc.

Shuttle+ should be using ClearBass and V4A, but accessing the DSP settings for ClearBass etc is not working currently (developer is aware and trying to fix, he is having same problem).

GMP has access to streaming new songs as well as playing my own collection, but it's doing very weird things toggling V4A on and off, and also not gaining access to SOny DSPs, not sure if it displays my tagged lyrics either...

I basically can't find one place that does everything...

My whole point in buying this E1 was to see if I could master the following;

a) ascertain as to whether Android could manage to sound as good as some 'premium' DAPs (Digital Audio Players), such as Cowon etc. I feel as tho it can, the combination of Sony DSPs and V4A is very good, with low hiss also, but it isn't stable.

b) Have access to my own music collection (onboard device), and be able to display tagged Lyrics. This it can do, but at the expense of point a) (seeing as Poweramp is the only app that seems to support this feature but cannot take advantage of V4A or Sony DSPs (Clear Bass etc).

c) Be able to 'rate' songs

d) Have the ability to listen to new music also, such as streaming from services like GMP. Specifically it would be nice to listen to my own collection (shuffled) and have the odd new song come in every now and then as opposed to listening to only new stuff.

Am I asking too much?

Apologies for long post.