Hi! New here, the ascend II is my first android phone. I came from BB to this reluctantly, but I am enjoying it more and more. I did a search for speaker crackle, unmounted my sd card, and powered off phone to try to pull shavings out of speaker via strong magnet, but to no avail. Is there some kind of application that will let you control the speaker with an equalizer, or something? I do have to have the volume as loud as possible to hear calls coming in, but I hear the crackle more than anything else. I searched the settings and couldn't find any for the speaker. My wife has the same phone, and the same problem. Is this a known issue? Or are we "Just lucky" and got two phones out of a bad batch? Thank you for reading this!