Hello, I've been an audio engineer for some years and I decided to bite the bullet and see what I could do to get mine and my family's Dincs to sound better, without the clipping of initial and ending syllables. So i spent a ridiculous amount of time over the weekend doing research and trying every trick i could find. Below are the best settings I have found. Now of course, it's a little late in the game what with Dinc 2 out and no more updates for Dinc 1, and in fact, the second noise cancellation mic on the Dinc 2 may have solved the sound issues I objected to (which I believe were caused by poor background noise clipping routines). But for anyone who likes their phone (with extended batteries and battery managers) like I do and wants to get some more life out of it, here's my tips:
NOTE: In all cases, you'll have to search the forum for each issue that I don't spell out the procedure for. In one case (ironically, the one that made the most audible difference), you'll have to root your phone, which you need to do your research on (Revoked is a good place to start).
In testing, I used two Dincs, and reset only one parameter at a time and had the same two people, plus myself listen after each test reading the same phrases with the same spacing between words at several levels of loudness, often resetting the phone back to original to compare and make sure we were not fooling ourselves. I'll state up front that in my humble opinion, a lot of the claims of wildly better quality didn't pan out.
Here's what I've tried that did NOT work, in my professional opinion:
1) Changing EVRC to EVRC-B using the ##778 routine. This changes the digital protocol used between your phone and the radio on the tower. The net result, is to make the vocal quality less smooth, more gritty and does NOT do anything about the clipped syllables and words.
2) There have also been some discussions about changing the actual physical structure of the phone in certain places. I have very strong feelings against this as the process I am hearing is quite easy to duplicate in am audio studio and it is very implausible that the answer is not in the software that translates your analog voice into digital bits.
The following change made a "small" change that i could hear but you may not.
3) Menu/Settings/Call/Voice Privacy. The default is "checked". This encrypts the data before transmitting it to the tower. I have found this to be a very small improvement if left "unchecked", as if the encrypting/decrypting is not a lossless process. But again, not the largest improvement I've found, and definitely not a solution for syllable clipping. I've left mine off to benefit from the small improvement anyway.
Here's the one thing I've found that makes a difference that all of us could hear:
4) FOR ROOTED PHONES ONLY: Changing two lines in the Build.Prop systems document under the category "ADDITIONAL_BUILD_PROPERTIES" near the bottom of the document:
htc.audio.alt.enable=0
htc.audio.hac.enable=0
Once your phone is rooted, you'll need to load a program called "Absolute System" that lets you edit the Build.Prop file. NOTE: It's a bit finicky, but be patient with it.
In both cases, the default values =1. You're going to change both = 0. And unlike another post i found, only changing audio.alt was not enough. You need to change both audio.alt and audio.hac to =0 to make the most improvement to the voice quality. Now the clipping is reduced to a reasonable level. I think you'll like the improved sound.
I have not seen any large battery burns or other problems since my changes, but my suspicion is that these functions were added to stretch battery use using the original measly battery in the Dinc's.
So good hunting, but DO YOUR HOMEWORK. I take no responsibility if you brick your phone. It's a big risk and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
NOTE: In all cases, you'll have to search the forum for each issue that I don't spell out the procedure for. In one case (ironically, the one that made the most audible difference), you'll have to root your phone, which you need to do your research on (Revoked is a good place to start).
In testing, I used two Dincs, and reset only one parameter at a time and had the same two people, plus myself listen after each test reading the same phrases with the same spacing between words at several levels of loudness, often resetting the phone back to original to compare and make sure we were not fooling ourselves. I'll state up front that in my humble opinion, a lot of the claims of wildly better quality didn't pan out.
Here's what I've tried that did NOT work, in my professional opinion:
1) Changing EVRC to EVRC-B using the ##778 routine. This changes the digital protocol used between your phone and the radio on the tower. The net result, is to make the vocal quality less smooth, more gritty and does NOT do anything about the clipped syllables and words.
2) There have also been some discussions about changing the actual physical structure of the phone in certain places. I have very strong feelings against this as the process I am hearing is quite easy to duplicate in am audio studio and it is very implausible that the answer is not in the software that translates your analog voice into digital bits.
The following change made a "small" change that i could hear but you may not.
3) Menu/Settings/Call/Voice Privacy. The default is "checked". This encrypts the data before transmitting it to the tower. I have found this to be a very small improvement if left "unchecked", as if the encrypting/decrypting is not a lossless process. But again, not the largest improvement I've found, and definitely not a solution for syllable clipping. I've left mine off to benefit from the small improvement anyway.
Here's the one thing I've found that makes a difference that all of us could hear:
4) FOR ROOTED PHONES ONLY: Changing two lines in the Build.Prop systems document under the category "ADDITIONAL_BUILD_PROPERTIES" near the bottom of the document:
htc.audio.alt.enable=0
htc.audio.hac.enable=0
Once your phone is rooted, you'll need to load a program called "Absolute System" that lets you edit the Build.Prop file. NOTE: It's a bit finicky, but be patient with it.
In both cases, the default values =1. You're going to change both = 0. And unlike another post i found, only changing audio.alt was not enough. You need to change both audio.alt and audio.hac to =0 to make the most improvement to the voice quality. Now the clipping is reduced to a reasonable level. I think you'll like the improved sound.
I have not seen any large battery burns or other problems since my changes, but my suspicion is that these functions were added to stretch battery use using the original measly battery in the Dinc's.
So good hunting, but DO YOUR HOMEWORK. I take no responsibility if you brick your phone. It's a big risk and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
