New F-200 .. Holy Insane Volume! Any Workaround?


skeezix

skeezix

Internal Development
Joined
Mar 11, 2003
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Ahoy my friends,

I've just gotten an F-200 from our friends at GPH. (Watch for touchscreen outcast and so on coming soon :)

First thing I noticed -- the volume is out of control. The boot (firmware 4) clip is loud enough to wake the baby across the house; turning the volume to minimum (the point just prior to it disabling audio altogether) is still too loud to be comfortable playing audio at all. (I didn't try shooting it to max, should try.) Any workaround to globally reduce it, short of my building a new kernel? :p (I'm rather hoping to keep it on the regular firmware for dev and testing sake.)

Second thing I noticed.. screen is really nice; reminds me of the BLU .. sharp! I seem to recall a year back people had some gamma issue and there was a workaround, so I'll have to dig through and see if that was an f-200 thing or not; all this continued sleep dep from the baby has destroyed my memory banks, for sure :)

I'll have to give it a look but third thing I noticed in my total of 30sec toying with it .. no stylus holder slot? meh.

Anyway, just in time for the Pandora looks like I'll be having more free time for dev again, so life is good :)

jeff
 
One thing that would kill the loud startup sound is to just replace it with a lower recorded one or to replace with a file that is silent.

If you don't like the volume in other apps a small resistor on the speaker lead would work.

I do know that if you have the volume full blast and overclock the unit will lock up. The amp draws so much juice from the CPU that it crashes :p

The Pandora will be nice, but it is a little ways off still.

AtariST with touchscreen mouse support, and Vkeyboard would rock ! :)
 
God, if I have to mod one more GP-related handheld I'll get the sawsall and mod it good ;) Can't one machine just be good out of the box? :)

jeff
 
skeezix said:
God, if I have to mod one more GP-related handheld I'll get the sawsall and mod it good ;) Can't one machine just be good out of the box? :)

jeff
Click to expand...
I do like having the higher volume range. In some apps that were too soft, you can hear them alot better now. The sound is also fuller than before. It was alot more tinny on the F100.

Well we ARE talking about GPH here ;) The loudness is not too bad to me for regular apps. I just turn the volume lower. The startup sound is too loud though. I did the thumb mod on it. That is when you turn it on, you put your thumbs over the speaker holes :p

I have to get to replacing the startup sound.
 
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DaveC said:
Well we ARE talking about GPH here ;) The loudness is not too bad to me for regular apps. I just turn the volume lower. The startup sound is too loud though. I did the thumb mod on it. That is when you turn it on, you put your thumbs over the speaker holes :p

JakeK said:
Eveytime I start up my F200 I put my thumbs on the speakers to lower the noise. It pretty much sliences it.

Well you could also try holding down either of the volume controls (Vol -, Vol +) when you turn on the F-200. It would mute the start-up sound. ;)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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skeezix said:
Ahoy my friends,

I've just gotten an F-200 from our friends at GPH. (Watch for touchscreen outcast and so on coming soon :)

First thing I noticed -- the volume is out of control. The boot (firmware 4) clip is loud enough to wake the baby across the house; turning the volume to minimum (the point just prior to it disabling audio altogether) is still too loud to be comfortable playing audio at all. (I didn't try shooting it to max, should try.) Any workaround to globally reduce it, short of my building a new kernel? :p (I'm rather hoping to keep it on the regular firmware for dev and testing sake.)

Second thing I noticed.. screen is really nice; reminds me of the BLU .. sharp! I seem to recall a year back people had some gamma issue and there was a workaround, so I'll have to dig through and see if that was an f-200 thing or not; all this continued sleep dep from the baby has destroyed my memory banks, for sure :)

I'll have to give it a look but third thing I noticed in my total of 30sec toying with it .. no stylus holder slot? meh.

Anyway, just in time for the Pandora looks like I'll be having more free time for dev again, so life is good :)

jeff
Click to expand...
I don't know what you are talking about. My GP2X F200 is perfectly fine in the volume department. I turned the music up full blast when I was in my room and I couldn't even hear the music when I got more then 10 feet away. There is NO way the boot sound could have woken a sleeping baby up if it was across the house, unless your house is like super, super tiny.
 
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Must be some variation.. Davec confirms :) Mine is brutal :)

I'll get hacking but for now.. back to babypatrol.

jeff

man I miss spending an hour a day spamming these forums :)
 
I've actually duct taped the power led and the speakers on my gp2x eheh (used transparent tape on the speakers)
 
There was a permanent mod, done by someone. It was not very hard to do, but did require some soldering.
 
My entry point to the GP2X was the F200, so I can't compare its controls to the old stick. I can judge it on its own merits though. Starts with T and ends with errible. In fact I just bumped DaveC's d-pad mod thread, and plan to do something similar myself.
 
One thing that's absolutely not playable on the F-200 with sound is psx4gp2x, it can give you a major headache from just a few minutes of play. Does anyone know if the sound can be turned down on psx4gp2x, or is mute the only option?

Using the new D-Pad on the F-200 is much much better than that stick on the F-100, the stick was prolly one of my big issues with the F-100, everything else was great with it.

Oh, and is there a way to set the default volume in gpsp? Gmenu2x doesn't seem to cut it. I am always having to turn the volume down when starting a game, and can't put the headphones on til I do. Same issue on the F-100 with gpsp. :(

Overall, I do like the F-200, but it is missing some dev friendly tools.
 
I will have to check .. if /dev/dsp (or /dev/mixer, I forget offhand which the device uses. I use way too many Unix variants :) or the like can be re-opened from another app, perhaps we can slap together a 10 line proggy that just constantly checks and resets the mixer volumes :)

jeff
 
I got an F200 as soon as they were released and my volume is insane as well. It is so loud the case vibrates in your hands from the startup sound. It makes any game without sound volume controls that are saved and reloaded on startup unplayable.
 
Some emulators (fa Mame) are even on the lowest level loud. I'm really thinking on modding the F200. I was hoping a solution would be found in hacking the firmware.
 
skeezix said:
How do folks find the controller, relative to the silly joystick on the f-100 model?

jeff
Click to expand...
I actually prefer the stick from the F-100.

The volume on my F-200 is also a bit on the deafening side and while we're complaining that awful blue light is far too bright, it's distracting.

I'm actually using my F-100 more :unsure:
 
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I have one good advice for all, who wants to use GP2X with completely no sound, I am using it and I am very satisfied:

jack.jpg


Buy the cheapest headphones, cut off the jack and insert to the GP2X headphone output.
 
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