Sound quality very poor

Starbase

Hello together,

one week ago I start using a Google Pixel phone together with GrapheneOS . In the past I used Samsung Galaxy S-Series phones with custom, stock-based ROMs. Unfortunately, I am extremely dissatisfied with the sound quality. It's just enough to make a call. As soon as the environment gets louder or more complex, it becomes much more difficult to understand the other side. The Pixel 5's sound lacks treble and clarity. It's hard to describe. I particularly noticed it when playing rain or thunderstorms sounds, for example.

I would like to know if there is a reasonably good workaround or another solution. Is this a problem with the entire Pixel series or is it specific to this model only?

Thanks in advanced. Greetings.

[deleted]

Hi there,

From my experience I have not encountered any significant issues with the microphone and or speaker quality on my Pixel 6a when running GrapheneOS.

As for music, I prefer to use my headphones for a better audio experience. My WH-1000XM4 headphones offer good audio quality and noise cancellation.

Starbase

[deleted]
thx you. I think that's an Pixel 5 only issue. I think I will go for a newer Pixel smartphone within the next month.

macster

Hi,

unfortunately I made the same experience with my Pixel 7. I´m kinda disapointed at the sound quality over bluetooth. I use the Sony WH-1000XM4, which produced really great sound over the last years with my Samsung Galaxy S10.
The Pixel 7 with Graphene OS however is way worse in terms of audio quality. No idea if it´s a graphene thing are just the Pixel phone itself.

memyselfandi

GrapheneOS doesn't offer high sound quality bluetooth codecs, right?

My wired Headphones sound well, but my bluetooth speakers lack a lot of detail, compared to my last phone or laptop.

DeletedUser98

GrapheneOS, like AOSP, of course offers high quality bluetooth codecs. Several actually. APTX HD, LDAC, and so on.
The situation is complicated though.

LDAC, which is used by the sony headsets, for example is set to balanced quality as a standard. In theory that should be enough. However, devices manufacturers decide what 'balanced' means. So for the Pixels if I remember correctly, this is around 300something kbps.

If you want to have the full 990 kbps for LDAC you need to set that in the developer settings.

macster

DeletedUser98 Hello and thank you for the clarification. Indeed I could find the option in the sony app, to prefer audio quality over connection stability and than I was able to activate all the bluetooth codecs and bitrate settings in the developer settings.
So the sound is as good as before (almost).
Thank you wojon!