[vangrieg]

Here goes my happy honeymoon with the phone. 

I was fairly happy with the phone until I tried to listen to music on it. Sound quality (no matter which headphones I use, up to Westone 3) is awful. There's no bass whatsoever, the sound is dirty, no stereo separation etc. etc.

Really, I haven't heard anything as awful in years.  

And here's a confirmation.  This is such an outlier among modern phones I really can't get how this passed the quality control. 

[Keeperovod]

Hello, did you use FM radio? Can you reboot your phone and check it after rebooting? I have slightly different problems with sound but it looks like that source of problem is in badly isolated FM chipset or maybe FM chipset isn't powered off correctly on current firmware.

[vangrieg]

No, I haven't used radio at all. If by "other problems" you mean noise/interference, I have that as well, but it's not half as annoying as the **bleep** overall sound quality for me. 

Rebooting didn't change anything.

I also tried to plug the 800 into an amp and then plug my headphones into the amp, and, just as the gsmarena test implies, there was a dramatic improvement.

Something's terribly wrong here. Hope it's software. I haven't encountered such **bleep** sound in phones for a decade or so.  

[Keeperovod]

Checked one more time. I also have beeps but very rare. I can't reproduce situation when I hear them. Also found, tht if I use FM, do a call after it and try to hear mp3s in zune I can't hear anything. Volume control doesn't work. But FM -> Call -> FM works normal, except for very bad sound quality during call. I can hear music only after pluging out and pluging in again my headphones.

I believe that problem is around FM chip but I can't find any solution.

Also sound quality during mp3 blayback is superior. I don't have any problems with it.

[crystal405]

I can confirm this. The sound via Headphones is far away from sounding as phat as it should.

Choose your favourite track and compare the Lumia to another device like your stereo via headphones. Can't believe Nokia took such a step back since my Nokia N82, I bought 3 years ago.

Did Nokia think all the youtube rippers from today don't hear the difference? I still have a demand for high quality sound!

I hope, it's just a software issue, too ...

PS: And there isn't even an equalizer to minimize the problem ............

[crystal405]

To quote from the Review, vangrieg posted:

---

"With headphones plugged in the smartphone dramatically changed its frequency response, cutting-off the bass frequencies, while its stereo crosstalk and intermodulation distortion spiked. Quite unconvincing performance for a flagship device."

---

[Keeperovod]

I have to recognize that you have a point. Sound quality is worse that in integrated ac97 sound card in my working PC if I try to hear something like Iron Maiden. But I can't say that it is "disastrous". I think that is much better that big part of android devices. In any case it is more than enough for movies or listening music in train.

Also i can't hear any difference in bundled headphones. 

[crystal405]

---

Keeperovod wrote:
I have to recognize that you have a point. Sound quality is worse that in integrated ac97 sound card in my working PC if I try to hear something like Iron Maiden. But I can't say that it is "disastrous". I think that is much better that big part of android devices. In any case it is more than enough for movies or listening music in train.

---

For me it's definetly not. And the Lumia is not some random Android Smartphone, but rather a high priced high end smartphone.

If I buy Nokia, I expect high quality Hardware components. Just like my N82 from years ago has excellent audio quality, which doesn't sound worse than a bad onboard soundcard.

[Keeperovod]

Actually you don't use Moscow underground)) It is more than enough for everyday use for me. Sound is loud and clear so I can use high volume levels and I can't hear any details because of noise around. And I can't hear any difference in FM because of its nature. So it's more than enough for my regular use. I think that if you are audiophile you have to use some special player and not general purpose smartphone. Lumia isn't targeted for audiophiles I think. You can never expect from universal device to be good as one specialized, I think.

In any case disastrous audio quality during calls is real problem. Can you turn FM on and try to call using headphones. Is it my unique bug and should I go to service for phone replacement or not&

[crystal405]

---

Keeperovod wrote:
Actually you don't use Moscow underground)) It is more than enough for everyday use for me. Sound is loud and clear so I can use high volume levels and I can't hear any details because of noise around. And I can't hear any difference in FM because of its nature. So it's more than enough for my regular use. I think that if you are audiophile you have to use some special player and not general purpose smartphone. Lumia isn't targeted for audiophiles I think. You can never expect from universal device to be good as one specialized, I think.

In any case disastrous audio quality during calls is real problem. Can you turn FM on and try to call using headphones. Is it my unique bug and should I go to service for phone replacement or not&

---

Let's stick to the sound problem with listening to music via the jack output here.

This issue has nothing to do with beeing audiophile. Even you hear the difference between a cheap onboard soundcard and the worse Lumia.

I use 20€ in-ears. Because of in-ears, I don't have much backround noise in trains. On this rather cheap headphones (far away from beeing audiohile, you see) I hear the lack of sound quality without comparing. Especially tracks with a lot of bass sound bad beceause of the low-cut, the review we posted above confimed.

For example, the deep pumping bass in this track, is completly flat on the lumia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npOcINSOWrQ&hd=1

To reach a bit of enjoyment, I have to max out the Volume. Is this really necessary on a 2011 high end smarphone priced at 500€, while my N82 was fine?

I would be glad if I knew that Nokia is aware of the problem. Maybe it's a software issue. If it's a Hardware issue, then at least implement an Equailizer!

The sound is not desastrous, but simply not good enough.

[vangrieg]

This has nothing to do with audiophile, I listen to mp3s and am generally pretty happy with the quality. 

But this is a complete disaster if you use a pair of decent headphones (which I happen to do). The gsmarena data shows performance unheard of in the last 10 years or so. This is one of the worst performers in their tests. And that's about what I hear in my $350 in-ear monitors. 

[nurium]

Am glad GSM Arena confirmed it with technical data. I too use decent quality buds and am less than impressed with both the sound quality and noise interference. Hopefully if more people raise this issue with Nokia, they will look into the issue.  I wonder if the quality when using earbuds is affected at all by either dodgy noise cancellation or the phone trying to use it as an FM attenna.

[vangrieg]

Yeah, it's good to have a confirmation of what otherwise could be dismissed as subjective audiophile requirement. 

It's just so frustrating. I usually never buy phones before reading gsmarena's audio quality review. But in this case, given Nokia's reputation, my own experience with their phones, and the fact that even HTC's phones with WP7 were good in this area, I didn't even doubt I would be all right. 

Go figure.  

[SamaelRanger]

I have the same problem with Sennheiser HD598 headphones. But with the stock earphones I haven't such "disastrous audio quality". What Nokia can do right now is to publish audio specification for compatible headphones. May be output stage of Lumia 800 is not so good as you want.

[teh0wner]

ye mine's not great either.. but not very bad either

[vangrieg]

The stock headphones are just bad headphones, they sound bad no matter what you plug them into. They hardly reproduce anything below 100Hz, so you don't hear the difference. They also have poor treble and midrange response, so the fact that it's exaggerated on the phone also reflects as "good" on them. 

This is very very bad sound quality no matter how you twist it. That you can use very bad headphones to avoid being frustrated is a workaround for some people but it's not a solution.

I'd really like to hear something from Nokia on this issue.  Maybe tipping Engadget will help get it faster? 

[ControlFlow]

I can't use lumia 800 with my nearly-perfect Sennheiser IE8 headphones - the sound quality is awful, huge basss cut-of, signal/noise relationship is bad, a LOT of noise at low volume is presented. I will sell this phone if this problems is hardware problems and can't be fixed with software update. Awful, awful sound!

[seventeenAPG]

Just got my new 800 SIM free. A fantastic device BUT sound is aweful. Not near enough base. I use Winstone 4 buds which are fantastic . They really show up how tinny the output is. I have had a HTC Mozart and a Samsung Omnia 7 both of which had fantastic sound output. In fact, quite often when staying in hotels, I would use the rear speaker on the Omnia 7 to listen to music and it sounded really great.

So please Nokia fix this is a future someware update.

[jannne]

I could not agree more - great phone, but the sound quality alone makes it a massive FAIL! Looking at GSMarena's measurements, similar problems occur with other WP7 phones to some extent, but Lumia 800 is really bad. How can they release something like this?

It seems there are two problems:

1) interference noises that occur when scrolling the screen or doing anything on the phone, also a constant brown hiss that can be heard when playing music with low volume passages

2) loss of bass and crossfeed problems with headphones

So far I've tried this phone with Sennheiser CX300, Atrio M5 and Sony MDR-CD780 and all make me so mad. The audio quality is horrible and I've got a bad feeling about it being a hw issue that cannot be fixed with a fw/sw update. I hope Nokia doesn't introduce a mega-hypa-bass-xtreme EQ setting, that would be some serious **bleep** polishing.

The frequenzy response is better when using an external amp - just tested it with my Mini3 headphone amp. But noise, hiss, crackling and other problems that just scream of dismal quality are still present.

I'm going to wait until official release of Lumia 800 in Finland and then send my phone for warranty service to see if they could at least get rid of the crackles and hisses. It is a real shame as everything music related is great on UI level...

People - spread the word!

We want a proper answer from Nokia and a plan to make things better. People need to hear about this issue before they buy the Lumia 800 to avoid further dissappoinments!

[xumix]

Seconding! I went from HTC Desire S and I CAN hear massive sound quality drop. I use Senh. CX 200 and I really hear the difference in the same tracks.