[Xperia Z Android Development] Stupidchavs:
Back story: I'm a sound engineer with 8 years of training.

I was interested by the Viper4android option in aroma, so thought I'd review it based on how it interacts with our hardware and give some advice on its uses for those not so audio savvy.

The options are somewhat slim on first open, and I would suggest activating "expert mode" to gain proper control, and access to its more interesting features.

The clarity function can sometimes sound fairly good. Although I wouldn't advise use of anything other than the "natural" setting, and wouldn't boost more than around 3.5-5dB as the frequencies it boosts may get fatiguing after longer listening otherwise.

Also the dynamic feature that gives presets for different headphone brands is actually quite nice, although a little aggressive with its use of eq (tone shaping for those who don't know).

That's pretty much all I found enjoyable, and even those two features don't really do much more than some eq (maybe some dynamics and/or harmonics but nothing noticeable at the more usable settings)

The equalizer isn't particularly accurate or responsive and uses decidedly "un-musical" q values for it's frequency bands (I much prefer the Poweramp eq in fact, no more accurate but more pleasing)

Don't even get me started on its "surround" "convolver" "reverb" and "Haas effect" functions. They pretty much butcher your music library by completely destroying the stereo field. I understand that some people enjoy this (I'm not sure how) but from an engineers perspective, it's unbelievably bad and ruins the work of mix and mastering engineers.

The Haas effect in particular pulls the "middle" image out of your music, compromising things like kick, snare, bass guitar and vocals which are usually panned centrally in a mix.

Also, it doesn't handle overload (clipping) very well and almost every function available contributes toward causing it.

Direct volume control in Poweramp (and some other media players) usually guards against this by effectively increasing the dynamic range available to the audio drivers, but I found that I had to disable this to get viper functioning properly and this meant digital distortion was very prominent.

After setting up a nice playback setting for general rock and acoustic material (Radiohead, Johnny Cash etc.) I switched to something much more bass heavy: Koan sound - Introvert (vexisle remix) and this created VERY distorted results in the low end, so much so that it made the material unlistenable. After referencing against more music of this type, I found that even the subtler settings caused unpleasant distortion of low frequencies.

I didn't get a chance to test the algorithm that apparently improves compressed audio formats (i.e. mp3, aac) as I only have songs in lossless formats. I can't imagine it does magic though. The AES and other companies work very hard on their compression algorithm standards, and no magic tool or effect will be able to claw back audio quality from bad data compression.

I'd recommend that of you really insist on using viper, use the output gain control and knock AT LEAST -3dB off of the output (probably much more, around -10dB in fact, if you use any of the bass boosting features) to negate distortion. Be sparing with its settings, its not recommended to push more than about 4-6dB on anything in general, but probably no more than 4db on our device (although you may get away with around 6-8dB at higher frequencies above 4kHz if you have bad earphones, or if that just sounds good to you)

My genuine recommendation though is to not use viper at all, and instead invest in a good media player which has access to DVC (direct volume control) like Poweramp, as this greatly improves dynamic range and playback headroom.

The amount of added battery drain that the viper driver adds is in my opinion not worth the limited benefits of it.

Of course you can test it and make your own judgement, but I thought it worthwhile giving a professional opinion on how it interacts with our hardware.

Thanks to niaboc for the great rom.