Comments on: Subjective Audio Quality: Nokia N91 vs Sony Ericsson W810i

By: GREAT FIND-read my story:) - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:44:55 +0000

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By: iphone games music

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By: KaczorPL

KaczorPL — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:50:13 +0000

Saqib

You need to get the audio driver, search on SE forums, i use this:

Acoustic_Mix_By_Black_Ice_V.4.2_HS

and it works great.

By: Saqib

Saqib — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:36:55 +0000

Please reply and suggest me how good i can increase the sound quality and volume,
Let me know if there are any players or software to reduce my problem

Thanks

By: Jimmy Auw

Jimmy Auw — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:05:29 +0000

You can try upgrading the firmware…

By: vishwajeet

vishwajeet — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:52:20 +0000

I brought SE W810i ,

I am sorry to say that i am not happy with the sound of it,i was previously haveing w550i i thought w810i is an advanced of it, and made a deare to buy it,but i am sorry to say that w810i sucks,

Please reply and suggest me how good i can increase the sound quality and volume,
Let me know if there are any players or software to reduce my problem

Thanks

vishwajeet
ph. 9960340736

By: vishwajeet

vishwajeet — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:51:20 +0000

I brought SE W810i ,

I am sorry to say that i am not happy with the sound of it,i was previously haveing w550i i thought w810i is an advanced of it, and made a deare to buy it,but i am sorry to say that w810i sucks,

Please reply and suggest me how good i can increase the sound quality and volume,
Let me know if there are any players or software to reduce my problem

Thanks

By: Jimmy Auw

Jimmy Auw — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:05:00 +0000

Hi,
I tested with the HPM-70.

Thanks.

By: Troels Oesteraa

Troels Oesteraa — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:20:21 +0000

Hi again… It’s hard to believe so much time has passed since i last posted.
Somebody made me aware that there is a large difference in sound quality between the default HPM-70 cable that comes with the W810 and 3rd party cables on ebay… not counterfeits, but short cables with only a female mini-jack and no microphone as in the HPM-70. I.e. the 3rd party cables are much better.

What cable do you have, and did you test it with this?

Best Regards,
Troels Oesteraa

By: Prasanna

Prasanna — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 01:47:56 +0000

I brought SE W810i ,

I am sorry to say that i am not happy with the sound of it,i was previously haveing w550i i thought w810i is an advanced of it, and made a deare to buy it,but i am sorry to say that w810i sucks,

Please reply and suggest me how good i can increase the sound quality and volume,
Let me know if there are any players or software to reduce my problem

Thanks
Prasanna Salimath
09886641169
INDIA

By: Jimmy Auw

Jimmy Auw — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 03:41:34 +0000

Seems that the problem comes from the device itself. Maybe we have different hardware? I’m located at Asia (Indonesia) and you at Europe. Different hardware revision probably? If the problem comes from different hardware revision (not the firmware), I think it’s gonna be difficult to be solved.

Mine is R4CF002.

Thanks.

By: Troels Oesteraa

Troels Oesteraa — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 18:04:20 +0000

Hello again,
Here’s a bench with a cruddy SBLive value…

http://users.cybercity.dk/~dsl35822/RMAA/w810i/Sblive.html

it doesn’t change the frequency response to make it look like your graph, even though the analog input of the sblive seems to be ok.

I have a problem, and that is that i can’t ugrade the original firmware of the w810i to the latest release, SEUS tells me that no recent releases exist, even though a plethora of updates has been released since R4CE012. I have seen a lot of people with the same problem. I contacted S/E who sent my feedback to the technical department in Sweden, so they will get back to me, and hopefully i’d be able to update it to make a new bench with different firmware
Did you get to check the firmware?

Thanks

By: Jimmy Auw

Jimmy Auw — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 03:05:27 +0000

If that so, I guess the different firmware version may affect the result somehow.

The pre-amp input I think should be set to -10dBV since you are using non-professional (unbalanced connection). If you are connecting your W810i to professional pre-amp with unbalanced-to-balanced converter, then you should set your rme to +4dBV.

I’ll check the firmware tomorrow, since I borrow it from my colleague.

If you have tried with other standard PCI sound card and still got the same result, then I think we have “different” W810i… either in terms of firmware or maybe hardware revision… We got to check it later to make sure whether different hardware/firmware revision will affect the sound quality… interesting eh?

Thanks for you reply.

By: Troels Oesteraa

Troels Oesteraa — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 22:58:06 +0000

Hi again, and thanks for the in-depth reply.
I discarded option 1 as i don’t know anyone who has one and buying one just for this measurement, is.. well.. yeah. But it is a good idea none-the-less.
As to #2:
I used Cool edit pro 2.1 (~Adobe Audition) to normalize, but the frequency response looks exactly the same minus a little bass roll-off compared to the earlier measurements with the amp. The amp is DC offset protected, hence the roll-off (-0.7dB at 20Hz) but otherwise it’s very linear.
I tried with an onboard soundcard, an average run of the mill of course, but couldn’t get any proper results, except that the frequency response had a tendency to fluctuate as before. I’ll find some pci soundcards to try out instead later. There’s a jumper to adjust pre-amp levels on the input of the rme to either +4dBu or -10dBV, but it was already in the +4dBu position.
Sony Ericsson released different types of firmware for the W800 and W810. Some contain the famous “digital artifacts” at low playback volume, so it seems they have great control of how well the device should perform. I’m using the default 1. edition of the firmware for the w810 only (R4CE012).. do you remember what firmware your W810 in the test had?

Thank you

By: Jimmy Auw

Jimmy Auw — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:43:50 +0000

Hi there,
Thanks for your comment.

Actually (in my own experience testing such low level output device), is to make the output adequate the feed your measurement device input. It usually has not enough output to be measured by our measurement device (like RME, or others professional card).

You have three solution for this.
1. Use a flat pre-amp (no need for amplifier) to adjust the gain of the card.
2. Use software to adjust the gain.
3. Use non-professional card.

I’ve tried those three and option #2 or #3 is more feasible to be done.

I’ll explain some…
#1: Hard to find such flat pre-amp. If you are not sure, try to bench your RME with and without the flat pre-amp. If you get same/near same result, then the pre-amp could be used for this purpose. If not, better skip this option or find another flat one. I’ve ever used Jomeek (mic/line pre-amp) and didn’t make it Maybe I’ve made mistake configuring the Jomeek or something, but finally I didn’t use this option.

#2: Use software. Bench your W810i though you didn’t reach the “safe” green RMAA level (-2dB or something? I forget). Usually, the level should reach -10 or -8 dB only (as you’ve said, the W810i doesn’t have enough output). Don’t push the W810i volume too high, about 90% should do. And force the RMAA test to run. Use option to save the resulted wave file. Then, open the resulted WAV on audio editor program (I prefer WaveLab or Adobe Audition). Then, choose option to normalize the file. Re-open the WAV on RMAA. You should be able to read the result. Remember this way may affect the other result (DR/Noise/THD, etc), except the frequency response. Since my idea is to measure the frequency response only, so this option should be sufficient for my need.

#3: Use the best non-professional card. Why? Because such card offers line-in adjustment (pre-amp inside). I believe this pre-amp is quite flat for best non-pro card. You can boost some gain inside your card to match the low output of your W810i. That’s why I keep my M-Audio Revolution 7.1 I’ve post the RMAA result of the M-Audio and other cards I’ve tested. Please check it out to check whether this card should do the job perfectly or not. I used this way on testing the W810i and N91.

I still have the Revolution along with my ESI Juli@ and EMU 1820M. For evaluating such low level output device, I prefer to set up my Revolution thatn my Juli@ or 1820M.

About your problem, have you ever tried to measure your RME loopback with your amplifier on the chain? I mean, maybe the problem came from your LM6172 amplifier. Perhaps it produces the noise?

Thanks.

By: Troels Oesteraa

Troels Oesteraa — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 22:19:53 +0000

Hi,
You have many well-written articles in your blog, which i actually just discovered a few minutes ago… i recently tested the w810i with RMAA using an RME Digi 96/8 Pad soundcard (extremely flat freq. response), but i am getting much higher “peaks” than you do: http://users.cybercity.dk/~dsl35822/RMAA/w810i/comparison.htm

How did you measure the phones? I need to amp the signal because the level from the phone is too low, but no matter what amp i used, the spikes were the same. My firmware is R4CE012, if that makes a difference.

Do you remember/or still have the rest of the RMAA results ?(Noise, Dynamic Range, THD+N, IMD, IMD Swept, and crosstalk)

best regards,
Troels