[Onetouch Idol 3 General] Langsuir:
Hi y'all fellow Idol 3 users! And welcome to my guide which aims to help you make your phone sound exactly how you want it to. :)

Okay, so if you bought this phone, chances are you wanted a great media consumption experience, since this is the Alcatel Idol 3's strength. When I got the phone and first plugged my headphones in to test out all that JBL stuff they were advertising, I couldn't help it but feel let down. Yep. I found it sounded muddy, disorted and clicky. But since we are talking about android, I knew I could probably do something about that. Plus I KNEW the audio chip in this phone was great. So I started tweaking and I finally can say that my Idol 3 sounds like a beast.

Here are the steps, then!

1. Disable the JBL setting. First and foremost, please, pleeease... go to settings > sound and notifications and disable "JBL". Honestly, it just doesn't sound good. It introduces a LOT of disortion in exchange for a little bit of bass. They are much better ways to get bassier sound without hardly disorting it, trust me. I don't know what they were thinking... this setting just assassinates the music IMO. However you are free to do as you want, of course.

* For step 2, root is needed.

2. Install Viper4Android. The following steps will guide you through the installation of this godly piece of software. For you guys which don't know what Viper4Android is, it's one of the best sound engines (in my opinion the best) available for android. It originated in China where it became really popular. Installing Viper4Android will not alter the sound signature in any way, it will just unlock the true potential of your sound-related hardware, getting rid of bottlenecks that worsen audio quality. Just installing it WILL get you a better sound. However, it also provides lots of settings and tweaks to change the sound signature if you want to, and they work really well, unlike this JBL setting we were given. In order to install it, you can either follow my own instructions or head to the official V4A thread and follow the steps there.

2.1 Install Busybox. Download one of the many installers in the Play Store, open the app and click install. Reboot if it asks you to. You can safely delete the app afterwards.

2.2 Download the Viper4Android apk from the official site. Be sure to download ViPER4Android FX 2.3.4.0 which is the one that works with Lollipop.

2.3 Extract the zip and then pick the apk called "ViPER4Android_FX_A4.x.apk" and put it in your phone's storage, then install it.

2.4 Install the V4A driver. Open the app and it should prompt you to install the driver. Select "Audiophile quality" for the best sound quality. Even though it warns you about high cpu usage, I did not notice lags or battery drain. However if this worries you a lot you can always choose "high quality" instead, though I wouldn't recommend it. It will ask you to reboot your phone, do it.

2.5 Make it run along enforcing selinux. This mod normally wont work with enforcing selinux, so you can either change selinux to permissive mode or just flash this zip (by XDA member maximumentropy) through custom recovery, wich will make it work with enforcing selinux. I recommend the second method.

2.6 OPTIONAL STEP: In ViPER4Android's thread the instructions say you have to edit the next lines in the "build.prop" file, which is located in /system. Lines to edit:

Ipa.decode=true to lpa.decode=false

tunnel.decode=true to tunnel.decode=false

lpa.use-stagefright=true to lpa.use-stagefright=false

I found that the second line was already set to false in my device. If you are not in stock rom you might not find this lines, if that's the case just ignore this step.

This step is optional because I used ViPER4Android for a few days without doing it and everything seemed to work. So if you prefer not to mess with the build.prop you can try without doing this.

2.7 Enable ViPER4Android. Open the app and you will find there are several tabs: "Headphones", "Speaker", "Bluetooth"... just activate the first checkbox in every tab if you want ViPER4Android working globally.

2.8 Turn off conflicting settings in some music players. Most player should work fine out of the box, but in some cases there are settings that conflict with V4A.

2.8.1 Poweramp: turn off EQ, tone and limiter. Go to settings > sound engine > advanced customization, and untick the first checkbox. The other settings didn't seem to conflict for me, but you can try disabling them too if you are having trouble to make it work (I have them all disabled).

This section needs expansion! Tell me how you made your favourite music player work with V4A.

2.9 Test it out! Play some music and open V4A. Click the dropdown menu and choose "Driver status". It should say:

NEON Enabled: Yes

Enabled: Yes

Status: Normal

Audio Format: Supported

Processing: Yes

If that's what you see, then contrats! Everything is set. :)

3. Grab a nice sounding music player. The consensus is that the one with the best quality is "Neutron Music Player". I do agree with this, however, the UI is really crappy and I just cannot cope with that scroll. That is why I use Poweramp, which also sounds nice, and has the addition of a nice little "punch" in the lower frequencies. If you know some other great sounding players be sure to comment below and tell so I can expand the guide!

4. Get a nice pair of headphones. The included ones by JBL do pretty well for the price they are valued at ($40) but that doesn't mean there aren't better choices out there! Also they didn't seem to fit comfortably in my ears with any of the sizes inlcuded. If you want something with a similar price and an even better sound, I recomend the Sony MH1C, a pair of IEMs you can get for $30 but sound like some good $100+ IEMs. If you want traditionally shaped headphones then my recommendaiton is the KOSS PortaPro (or the KSC75 wich are essentially the same but with a different form factor). They are also dirt cheap and have a very decent sound. For more recommendations you can ask me (though I am no expert) or just head to the Head-Fi forums. You won't get better advice anywhere else when concerning headphones! These guys really know their stuff.

Lastly, I hope this guide is of use to some of you and allows you to enjoy the Alcatel Idol 3 to the fullest. I wanted to contribute to this great device's community since I felt it diserves way more attention than it is getting. And by the way, english is not my first language, so please excuse any error I might have made!

:D

FURTHER TWEAKING:

You will see that ViPER4Andoid has a lot of settings, especially if you select the "Expert" UI setting from the dropdown menu. If you want ideas and advice on using them, head over the the official V4A thread.