Android still doesn’t handle USB audio very well. USB DAC dongles have their own volume settings, however Android doesn’t ever change this. This means that if a dongle has a preset volume level that is relatively low, android can never go above this.
Someone on Reddit has written a better explanation: https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/11wfe05/android_dongle_volume_issue_lets_ask_for_a_fix/
Help us get this issue higher up on android’s priority list by pressing the +1 button. I know it probably doesn’t affect many users here but thank you anyway!
I must be lucky, because this has never affected me. I have two different USBC dacs that I use on my android phones. The first one (super cheap one from eBay) defaults to max hw volume when plugged in, that happens to be a pleasant listening volume when the software volume is at 70%. The second (nicer, better) one has much higher drive capacity, but it defaults to 50% hw volume when plugged in, so again happens to be exactly the right listening volume when sw volume is at 70%.
I can also use UAPP to manually change the hw volume if I need to. The downside is UAPP for some reason always puts the good DAC to 100% hw volume by default that is enough to hurt my ears and damage my cheap earbuds.
It’s good there are workarounds but it would be amazing to have this fixed system wide! Is there free version of UAPP?
My car doesn’t have Bluetooth, and my phone doesn’t have an aux jack, so I am all too familiar with this problem. My ex with an iPhone used a dongle-to-aux which worked fine, but my phone was always incredibly quiet, so basically unusable. It’s a shame that Google isn’t really doing anything about this problem. I did my part and starred it, looks like there’s only ~200 stars at this time
I agree Google should fix this, but there is a workaround. You could get a Bluetooth to AUX dongle if this is bothering you. They’re fairly cheap.
Nice to see some work arounds but ideally we’d see a system wide fix. Let’s try get as many people as we can to star this issue!
Sending audio over Bluetooth is always a bad idea (other than simple voice calls).
Thanks, wonder how we can get a wider audience to star this issue. Thought I’d start on Lemmy.
Android volume control overall has been a huge pain in the ass. i used to be able to control Bluetooth mic volume separately and now you can’t and now only pixel buds get good mic volume. my other headsets are all too quiet. very annoying and I’ve been complaining for years now.
Does this only affect certain dongles?
I use a Meizu Hifi Pro and it doesn’t behave like it has an internal volume, instead deferring to whatever the phones volume is.
Some dongles default their volume to 100% (or close to). Android doesn’t touch the hardware volume and simply controls the volume of the digital sound it’s sending to the DAC I believe.
What I am really wanting is for Google to remove the 16/44.1 limit in Androids audio chain. It seems like they have the plumbing for it as of 13 but I still need to use Synfonium’s custom audio pipeline to get full res audio.
