[NOT BUG] Distortion at Beginning of Songs When Using EQ?

[Theogenes]

Hello!

I've been a user of NMP for some time now, and I absolutely LOVE it!! It's been my go-to music player for some time, and is my default recommendation to friends looking to get better sound from their phones. (And as soon as Neutron can completely bypass the kernel and output to any USB DAC, I'll consider it damn near perfect!) This morning, though, I ran into an interesting issue and was hoping to get some help or direction.

I just got a pair of Beyerdynamic T5p headphones and have been toying around with equalization in NMP to increase the bass presence. However, whenever a new song starts, there is a lot of distortion (particularly in the bass) for the first 5-8 seconds, with it getting worse around 3-4 seconds in and then getting better again. It sounds fine after about 8 seconds, but it is very noticeable before that point. It also sounds like the volume is going up and then back down again.

I have turned the EQ off and started the tracks over, and everything is fine (no volume change and no distortion). However, as soon as I turn the EQ back on, the beginning of each track acts as described above.

Possibly Pertinent Info:
Samsung S3 (USA version, on Verizon Wireless) running rooted stock 4.1.1 sw.
NMP version 1.68.1
Gapless turned on
Dither enabled
Resampling set to 'Audiophile'
Background service enabled
Power Saver enabled
64-Bit Rendering enabled

Is there something I'm doing to cause this to happen? I've rebooted my phone to see if it was just a random one-off issue, but it's still there. It's not the end of the world (the distortion, while extremely obvious, is not painful to listen to like treble distortion would be), but I thought if there's something I can do to make it better, I'd like to give it a shot! Or if it's a bug, I wanted to let Dmitry know.

Looking forward to any advice I can get! Thanks in advance, guys!!

[dmitrykos]

Hi!

Could you please check: Neutron UI -> Settings -> Automatic Gain Protection -> do you have RESET GAIN as 0 dB?

If you don't please move slider back & forth to reset it to 0 and check how it is playing.

Also what about EQ setup? If Low-band of EQ is too high then overloading will likely happen so that AGP starts decreasing gain to avoid overloading but on next track it will reset gain back to value of RESET GAIN.

Best regards,
Dmitry.

[Theogenes]

Hey Dmitry!!

Under Automatic Gain Protection, I do have 'Reset Level' set to 0.00. The gain correction strength is 2.00, if that matters. As far as EQ, the Low-Band Gain was set to 8.48 dB, which I'm assuming is really high. So I hit the 'Reset Gain & EQ' and went back into EQ to confirm, and yep, it reduced it back down to 0 dB. So I adjusted the EQ again from the the main player interface, and it actually got worse this time. Went back into EQ settings and saw they were now up to 10.09 dB. When I got it down to 4.81, I had some improved bass quantity without the distorting. I thought on one song the volume changed again, but I wasn't able to reproduce it, so it was probably either my mistake or in my head.

So ultimately, it appears you are correct, Dmitry!! I'll need to do my fine-tuning on my EQ settings from the actual settings menu, it seems. Along those lines, is there a brief tutorial anywhere to teach a relative noob to all this what each of those controls actually does? I'm messing around with them now, but I'd like to have some idea of what I'm actually doing if possible :p

Thanks as always!!! Keep up the GREAT work!!

[dmitrykos]

Hi

Yes setting low band to 8 - 10 dB is way too high, especially if you are listening to studio mixed track. Normally adjusting around +2 .. +3 dB is enough. Or you can go in different way - substractive, as described here: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/pro ... -equalizer

Just make some search by 'how to tune parametric eq' and there will be quite a lot information regarding this question.

Also, if you really need to set low-band that high then I advise you to normalize such track, so it won't be overloaded.

Best regards,
Dmitry.