Proposal for new apps in MoDaCo-Hero-Rom / better sound quality

[Guest Tibor Gáts]

Hi,

Is it possible to include this useful app in your ROM?:

http://android-leak.com/applications/louder-volume-hack-1-4/

(I mean always the newest version...)

This application has several choices of sound settings. The most important: it has an EQUALIZER already tuned to compensate the Hero's speaker's distorsion. So we can get a little bit better quality sound out of it. It also has settings for making the speaker to be louder - if someone needs that.

Thanx,

Tibor

Edited September 23, 2009 by Tibor Gáts

[Guest Tibor Gáts]

And it would be also very nice to have FLAC support in the next MoDaCo ROM!

(CyanogenMod ROM provides FLAC support from version 3.9.3)

[Guest Roton]

Louder? Are you guys crazy? I have to hold my hero a few cm's away from my ear because even at the lowest volume the call volume is annoyingly high! Same through headphones too.

[Guest trstn]

Louder? Are you guys crazy? I have to hold my hero a few cm's away from my ear because even at the lowest volume the call volume is annoyingly high! Same through headphones too.

Ditto for me.

What I would like to see...

* Some kind of automated partitioner for the SDcard (probably dreaming though)

* FLAC/OGG support

* the animation back on the digital clock (the numbers just change now - most boring)

* Reduce the time needed to long press things to get menus

* And of course, a custom MoDaCo boot screen

Also, cause this really irritates me and HTC probably won't ever care. Can we have an extra 0 on the 24 hour digital clock?

00:10 displays as 0:10,

08:30 displays as 8:30.

Might just be me, but that really bugs me.

[Guest Dr Hotdog]

* Some kind of automated partitioner for the SDcard (probably dreaming though)

I think partitioning is best done with desktop partition editors when hooked up to a PC. There are some nice graphical tools that already exist to make this easier and less intimidating for those new to it. Some partition editors are even able to resize and reposition existing partitions while (probably) preserving the existing data, no need to completely reformat the card. I used GParted on a Linux PC to add an ext3 partition for Apps2SD without wiping the existing files on the main FAT32 partition. Equivalent (free) software probably exists for Mac OS X too, though the options for Windows are likely to be more limited.

* FLAC/OGG support

Ogg Vorbis support is already there out of the box, it just doesn't get mentioned much because not many people use it. Almost all the music on my SD card is in the form of .ogg files and they play just fine.

FLAC would be nice, but you pay a significant file size penalty for that little bit of extra audio quality over .ogg (or other lossy formats) and I'm not sure the audio output quality of the Hero is good enough for most people to be able to tell the difference. I doubt I could, and definitely not in the generally noisy environments where I'm likely to be using my Hero as a music player.

* the animation back on the digital clock (the numbers just change now - most boring)

* Reduce the time needed to long press things to get menus

I agree with these, though the long press delay would probably need to be customizable (via a settings entry ideally, config file at a pinch) as people are going to have different ideas about what the correct value is.

Also, cause this really irritates me and HTC probably won't ever care. Can we have an extra 0 on the 24 hour digital clock?

00:10 displays as 0:10,

08:30 displays as 8:30.

Might just be me, but that really bugs me.

I hadn't noticed that, but now you've mentioned it it's also bugging me... Thanks a lot :)

[Guest Tibor Gáts]

Louder? Are you guys crazy? I have to hold my hero a few cm's away from my ear because even at the lowest volume the call volume is annoyingly high! Same through headphones too.

Sorry, I posted in a misunderstandable way... I don't want a louder phone - that is only one possible setting of that application. The much important feature: it has an EQUALIZER already tuned to compensate the Hero's speaker's distorsion. So we can get a little bit better quality sound out of it.

[Guest Roton]

Sorry, I posted in a misunderstandable way... I don't want a louder phone - that is only one possible setting of that application. The much important feature: it has an EQUALIZER already tuned to compensate the Hero's speaker's distorsion. So we can get a little bit better quality sound out of it.

Ah I see, yes then I agree an equalizer is really needed. FLAC files are huge but yeah I think the hero should handle it. The iphone has had FLAC support for ages and anything the iphone can do the hero should do better :)

[Guest Dr Hotdog]

FLAC support may turn up in standard Android in the not too distant future, there are a few people actively working on coming up with an implementation and persuading Google to include it. See here:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1461

Edited September 25, 2009 by Dr Hotdog

[Guest trstn]

I hadn't noticed that, but now you've mentioned it it's also bugging me... Thanks a lot :)

Heh sorry, I've got an eye for these things. Good comments re the rest, I tend to use fairly good headphones to listen to music so and to be fair, the audio processor and codecs used in the Hero do seem to be fairly good, but no equaliser really lets it down.

Hadn't realised .ogg were on as default, will load up some of those later.