west0ne said:

I used the Chainfire root method with my S7E (also works with S7), very simple to do and leaves everything else as stock. There is plenty of information and step by step instructions over at the XDA-Developers site. Once you've rooted take a look at the ZuBi182 audio mods, it deals with volume issues and also allows you to use the normal speaker along with the earpiece speaker to provide stereo speaker output.

The Exynos version seems to be easier to root than the SnapDragon version and there are some US operator variants that have a locked bootloader so can't be rooted.

I don't think I've ever had an Android device that wasn't rooted and I've never had any issues with stability, when you start looking at custom roms that's a different issue but if you want to use something like Viper4Android you may find it difficult unless you go with a custom rom.

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pacman46 said:

great. Thank you so much I'm going to try it this weekend .I'm using the akg 3003 and the phone get plenty loud but I would love a little more umph for sure

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duncan said:

there is volume, and there is clarity, unfortunately as I find neither on the S7E I've reassigned it to Pokemon Go and web browsing duties.

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duncan said:

there is volume, and there is clarity, unfortunately as I find neither on the S7E I've reassigned it to Pokemon Go and web browsing duties.

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west0ne said:

  It could just be in my head but there is one tweak that seems to be something to do with the pre-amp stage as it relates to the power input to the headphones port and increasing that seems to provide more depth to the sound, like I say it could just be in my head. There are other tweaks that adjust the raw power output to the headphone port and if you push those too far you just end up with massive distortion. Is it possible that with the standard settings the S7 isn't giving the headphones enough voltage, current or both to get the best out of the headphones.
 
The settings I adjusted for what I consider to be the best results are
 
HPOUT1L Input Volume
HPOUT1R Input Volume
 
Both are defaulted to 32 but max out a 48, you can push these to 48 without any distortion.
 
The two settings that seem to deal with raw power are
 
HPOUT1L Impedance Volume
HPOUT1R Impedance Volume
 
Both of these default to 118 but can be pushed to 191, once you get above 150ish they get very loud but also seem to distort.
 
There is also HPOUT1 Digital Volume which again seems to default to 118 but can be pushed to 191, I'm not sure if this is the same as the HPOUT1 Impedance Volume setting but it does have an impact on raw volume.
 
If your phone is rooted give it a try. Either way as a multipurpose device that you can plug some headphones into the S7E is okay, even with tweaks I still generally use my Dragonfly which is noticeably better sounding and having the phone rooted enables me to have proper volume control with that so it was worth rooting for that reason.

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sound eq said:

 
​how do u do those tweaks I rooted my s7e

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west0ne said:

  First of all I am using the Exynos version so I don't know if the same tweaks would apply to the SnapDragon version.
 
Over at XDA-Developers there is a pre-packaged file from ZuBi182 that tweaks a load of settings, this will replace 'mixer_gains.xml' & 'mixer_paths.xml', this includes the dual speaker setting.
 
If you want to manually tweak then you will need to change some of the values in "/etc/mixer_gains.xml" make a backup of the file first just in case something goes wrong. Be warned you could end up in a boot loop, if that happens then you'll need to boot into recovery and use ADB to restore the backup you made (so make sure you have the backup).
 
In that file find every instance (there are a few) of 'HPOUT1L Input Volume' and 'HPOUT1R Input Volume' and change the value from 32 to 48 save the file and reboot.
 
If you just want to test this without making permanent changes then you can download AlsaMixer from the app store, give it root permissions, find the same settings and change the values. Any changes you make here will revert back to default as soon as you close AlsaMixer so are only really useful for testing. I suggest starting your music before making changes.
 
If you change the settings for 'Impedance Volume' or 'Digital Out Volume' be careful as it gets very loud very quickly and there comes a point where the sound starts to distort, although if you have headphones that need a lot of power you may find that you don't get the distortion.
 
These changes work at a hardware level, the volume buttons and volume slider operate at a software level so for any given point on the volume slider the output volume will be louder. If you have a EU model you still get the limit warning at the same point but the volume is significantly louder at that point.

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1. The EU version has a popup warning if you push the volume up too high and the slider changes colour, you have to manually dismiss the popup to increase the volume beyond the cap (other regions may also have this). From what I've seen this shouldn't affect any of the tweaks but you may find some of the settings are already at a higher level on non-EU versions.
2. I don't have any 24/192 on my phone because I mainly use it with an external DAC but with UAPP it will playback my 24/96 files and the specifications state that it supports 24/192 so I don't see why it wouldn't. I think some stock apps may downsample so you'll need an app that is happy with hi-res.
3. I am not using Viper4Android on my S7E but I do on an old S5, there is an issue V4A on the stock S7 and it doesn't work properly with USB DAC/Amps so I didn't really bother with it. I have done similar hardware level tweaks on my S5 and have had no issues when using them alongside V4A so you should be okay.
4. I have kept my S7E with stock rom but just rooted. I tend to CM roms when I do go custom.

west0ne said:

 

1. The EU version has a popup warning if you push the volume up too high and the slider changes colour, you have to manually dismiss the popup to increase the volume beyond the cap (other regions may also have this). From what I've seen this shouldn't affect any of the tweaks but you may find some of the settings are already at a higher level on non-EU versions.
2. I don't have any 24/192 on my phone because I mainly use it with an external DAC but with UAPP it will playback my 24/96 files and the specifications state that it supports 24/192 so I don't see why it wouldn't. I think some stock apps may downsample so you'll need an app that is happy with hi-res.
3. I am not using Viper4Android on my S7E but I do on an old S5, there is an issue V4A on the stock S7 and it doesn't work properly with USB DAC/Amps so I didn't really bother with it. I have done similar hardware level tweaks on my S5 and have had no issues when using them alongside V4A so you should be okay.
4. I have kept my S7E with stock rom but just rooted. I tend to CM roms when I do go custom.

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sound eq said:

 
​yes before I installed superman rom I used to get the cap notification, but not anymore
 
so with neutron player if I use direct usb driver that no down sampling will happen, or maybe poweramp alpha does it have a direct dac access?
 
now what is left is how to figure out how to move data apps for big games to external sd card, I know there is an option in s7e to move data to sd card but it does not move the data apps like obb files

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west0ne said:

  Not sure about Neutron or Poweramp but I thought both allowed playback at the correct bit/sample rate.
 
For some reason Samsung opted not to  keep the feature in Marshmallow that allows the SD card to be formatted as an expansion of the internal memory but I thought that most custom roms put that feature back. Have you checked in the SD format options to see if you can format the card as internal storage, it doesn't move apps/data to the external storage the way you used to be able to in Android but it's as close as you can get.

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sound eq said:

​xda released a video which is simple to move complete app an data ro external sd card

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